When I bought the house, I knew I was in for a long road of road of renovations.

The inspection was pretty grim. As I had expected, pretty much everything failed, but the major stuff (except for the foundation) was reported to be sound -spoiler alert – maybe not. The seller and I both made some concessions, and hoped for the best. Even with that the house had a lot of surprises in store for me right off the bat.

I planned to do enough to move in and then work on it over time.  As much as I wanted to fix everything up right away, time and money wouldn’t allow it.  Also, I truly believe that if it is possible it is best to live in a house for a while before making major changes.  Sometimes what you think is the best way to remodel changes once you get a true feel for the house and how it flows and how life gets lived inside it.

I had a pretty short list of things that I hoped to accomplish before I moved in. Based on experience, I know that things always take longer and cost more than you think they will, and I tried to factor that in.

Goals before moving in:

Foundation work
Rip out carpet
Clean from top to bottom
Drywall repairs and paint in master bedroom
Laundry room functioning

Thanks to the housing crisis, lenders would no longer allow foundation repair costs to be placed in escrow, so the foundation work had to be completed by the seller before I could close on the house.

I took a week off of work and figured I would have plenty of time to complete the rest of the list.   Even if you are Seinfeldian clean, carpet gets pretty nasty and it’s pretty gross to see how much dirt and grime gets stuck under it.  Let’s just say that old Jerry wouldn’t have touched this carpet with a ten foot pole.  One week later the only thing that had gone according to plan was ripping up the carpet, and the house looked worse than the day I bought it.