My wife and I bought our current house in 2019, it was built in the 1960s, and it was never updated. We were in a situation where we needed to move quickly, so we bought it as is and figured we would fix it up on our own.
The first thing I will say about this plan is that I will never do it again. I can see the appeal of fixing up a house to live in later, but doing it while you're living in it is not the best plan. I didn't realize how long some of these projects would take to get done on our own, and how much they would interrupt our lives.
Just about everything in the house needed to be renovated. The walls in each room were all painted hideous colors, the carpet was old, smelly, and didn't match from room to room. It even had the original shag carpet in the basement in a beautiful puke green color.
Here are some before and after pictures of what we have done so far to the house:
The kitchen and bathroom floors had this old, clapped out linoleum in them that seemed to have fused to the subfloor. You could mop and scrub this as much as you wanted, but the dirt was from a different generation, and it just wouldn't give up. I think this was my most hated part of the house. I couldn't stand how terrible it looked. It was so bad that I didn't like inviting guests over. I always felt like I needed to explain to them that, yes, we mop our floors, it just doesn't look like it.
The first day after signing the papers to buy the house, we tore up the old carpet and repainted the walls.
The main floor had hardwood flooring under the carpet, unfortunately, it was in terrible shape and the subfloor was squeaking so bad underneath it that it wasn't reasonable for us to fix. The floor squeaked so bad that when we would put our son to bed in his crib, we had to walk slowly and methodically in the right spots of the floor. So that it wouldn't make too much noise and wake him up.
You can't tell from the pictures, but the hardwood was in bad shape. It had sections cut out and patched with 2×4s from where vents were, and it was stained and chipped in other places.
The shower had to be replaced with a bath tub so we could give our baby baths. This was one of the first big projects we did.
Every door in the house needed to be replaced as well. My father and I spent a couple of weeks replacing each door and frame in the house. Nothing makes for better father son bonding time like arguing over how perfectly level the door needs to be when installing it.
After the doors, we decided to replace the flooring. This was the worst project we had done so far.
I had to rip out all the old hardwood flooring and put down new subfloor before installing the new flooring. Removing the old hardwood flooring was a massive pain. I don't recommend doing it by yourself like I did. Tearing out the wood and pulling all the nails up is backbreaking work. On top of that, it needed to be hauled out and taken to the dump.
Trying to live in your house without flooring is not a fun time. Since I was doing most of the work myself, we had to make do with having sections of the floor not finished for a period of time. Everyone had to make sure they wore shoes in the house so that they wouldn't get splinters in their feet from the plywood.
It was such a relief once the floor was finished. I think this was the biggest change to the house yet. It made the whole place look so much better.
This is where we stopped before winter. Hopefully, this spring we will be installing all the new trim in the house.
We added a new bedroom in the basement right before we had our baby in 2021, but I didn't seem to take any pictures of that project. We turned one half of the unfinished part of the basement into a bedroom, and had to install an egress window in it.
I have also been replacing the plumbing in the house, I installed all new water lines last year as well as a new water heater. Just recently, one of the old copper drain lines broke. I image I will be replacing all of them this year.
I'm not sure what the next project will be that I will tackle. Our main bathroom needs to be remodeled, as well as the kitchen. I removed the shag carpet from the basement, so now it's just a concrete floor. That's not as high of a priority, though.
Would I do this again? Absolutely not.
But I also wouldn’t trade what we’ve learned from it. I have learned a lot of new skills working on this house, and I have a whole new respect for anyone who takes on a fixer-upper. We’re not done yet, but we’re finally starting to see the home we imagined taking shape.
The joys of homeownership… I will try to document the next project as I work on it.