Dream Book Design

3 Years In This House!

I am that dork that likes to remember random dates of stuff {and by remember I mean write it down in my planner year-to-year}. Yesterday I had written down “3 years in house”. That.Is.Nuts. We cannot believe that we have only been here for 3 years, and at the same time cannot believe that is has been 3 years already!

I guess you could say that time flies when you’re having fun. And when I think back to the long and hard journey it took for us to get here, I treasure these three years even more (if that’s even possible). We went through numerous real estate companies and still, they couldn’t find anything that truly captured our eyes. I remember seeing my friends use someone like this real estate agent nyc agency, and their realtor found them the house of their dreams within the first time of trying. Amazing. But why wasn’t it happening for us? And just as we were about to give up, we came across a house that we now call our home. It finally made itself known to us, and now I’m actually grateful for the experience. It’s given us this perfect house after all.

I love looking back and seeing just how much the house itself has been changed by us {and a few helpers along the way}. To think that our family room once looked like this is crazy:



I thought I would share some of our biggest tips to anyone who is considering buying a home that needs some ‘work’ done to it. One important thing I think all people on a property hunt should keep in mind is that you’ll want to be in good financial health so you won’t experience any obstacles when it comes to applying for a mortgage. If you have bad credit, you may have difficulties with this. Thankfully, you can find a guide to credit repair online with all the essential information you’ll need to achieve good credit.

  • Go in to the home with a vision, but stay flexible throughout the process. Visions change once you really get in to a space.
  • If doing serious demo work {aka- moving walls,etc.} its super helpful to use a Floor Planner program. We did this when we re-did our kitchen and it helped tremendously. This is what you can get from using the program:

  • When creating a single room, if you are like me, you like to be able to visually see it to feel super comfortable with it. Because of this, J has mastered floorplanner.com and Lowes virtual room designer. He pretty much puts together a Lowes virtual room for me every time we decide to really make-over a room, hence the kitchen one:
  • Plan out your light switches and outlets wisely if moving them or adding them. There is nothing worse than having to walk across a room that you just finished to get to an outlet or switch.
  • This may seem like a small tip, but its one that we are really kicking ourselves for not following before. Use the construction grade paper {comes in rolls} from Home Depot to cover your floors when doing work on walls. Now if you are simply doing a little paint touch up, its not necessary. But if you are installing wainscoting and painting {or more} take the time to lay the paper down instead of using paint tarps. At least for us paint tarps are annoying because you constantly have to move them to be with you in the room while painting, they slip on their own, leaving you with paint on the floor. They end up disgusting after many uses, etc. We finally took our own advice on this for the nursery, and let me tell you- we love it. We have had the same paper laid on the floors in there for a few weeks now, and it will last until we are completely finished with the room.
  • If doing a project that requires workers other than yourself, make sure you use people you can trust. Whether its your GC, or their staff- theres nothing worse than feeling like your being taken advantage of, or mislead. Also, if you find a worker that you just love and trust, keep their number specifically. We had one specific worker for our kitchen makeover that we totally loved. He was always on time {and I mean to the freaking DOT on time, which is so rare in that industry} did beautiful work, was incredibly honest, and respectful. Because of those things, anytime we run in to a project we need help on, we call him. Anytime a friend asks for a great handyman in general, we give his number.
  • Look around and do your research before making any big purchases. If you’ve decided that you want to live in Boston, contact as many local real estate companies as possible! When you contact real estate companies like Donnelly + Co. Real Estate, ask them what properties they have in the area and see if any take your fancy. Research is key!
  • Go to open houses in your area to get ideas..and then morph them in to your own.
Overall, the 3 years in this home have been amazing. We have gone from ‘not even being married a year’, to loving all the free time we had together as a couple, to adding Boomer to our family {we already had Honey for about a month before we moved in:) }to new jobs for both of us, to J entering {and almost finishing-hallelujah} his MBA program, to now almost bringing a baby home. It has been a beautiful 3 years and I love the home we have created. I couldn’t have done any of this without my best friend by my side {or you know, being the one who uses all the heavy machinery}. Its the biggest blessing when you marry the right person…

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