A Vow for After the Renovation
On Monday, the Firm emailed me ROM - rough order of magnitude - estimates for three potential Phase 1 options for our renovation. While we knew we couldn’t afford do everything we wanted in one fell swoop, I’ve got to admit that seeing how high these three estimates are hurts. We have a Zoom with them later today that will hopefully help put things in perspective for us and help us choose the right option, but still. Oof.
Even before we decide, though, I am making a vow to myself: I will not shortchange the un-renovated parts of the house post-Phase 1, while we wait for Phase 2, like I have for the last five and a half years.
There’s a lot we’ve been tolerating about how we’ve decorated our house since we moved in. We knew we’d be making big changes eventually so, while I wanted to like anything we spent money on, I coasted on “oh, well, we’ll level up after the renovation” for far too long - and on too many silly things.
For instance, I accidentally ordered a 6x9 rug pad for the 8x10 rug in our living room, and I didn’t realize the mistake until we put the rug down on top of the rug pad. But I didn’t want to have to go through the faff of returning the rug pad, ordering a new one, taking up the rug and moving the furniture again, and then putting it all down/back. For years, I’ve just been telling myself that I’ll make sure to get the right size rug pad (and a thicker one, while I’m at it) when we move back in after the renovation.
Another example: when Claire moved from her crib into a big-girl bed, we decided to put the kids into bunk beds. The experiment lasted a few months before we admitted it had failed, and we flipped the bunk bed upside down to be just a standard bed for Robbie. (Claire got his old twin bed.) At least once a week, I bump my head on the top frame of the reversed bunk bed when I do Robbie’s bedtime. It’s an Ikea bed that we got for $150 off FBMP; it’s not like we’d be out tons of money if we sold it on and bought another in-the-meantime Ikea twin off FMBP (like the one we bought for Robbie in 2020 that Claire now uses). But no - I just grimace when I hit my head and think, “well, this won’t happen after the renovation.”
There’s a good chance that we won’t be able to do the entirety of the second floor in Phase 1 and Robbie won’t get a new room, but this vow means that we’re going to furnish and decorate it properly even if he’ll move again in another 5.5 years. I will try to future-proof purchases, which will be easier to do because we’ll have the floor plan for Phase 2, but I’m not going to skimp out on making decisions that I’ll just grin and bear (or not grin, to Jon’s chagrin) for years until we can finish the whole renovation.
This is our forever home, thanks to having refinanced when mortgage rates plummeted four years ago, and I’m going to start acting like it!
