If any of you are wondering what DIY is—It means Do-it-yourself and is apparently what the British say when they are dong home improvement projects. I just read a book called “Mr. Maybe” and they kept referring to “DYI”. It took me a little while to figure it out. “Mr. Maybe” was a very cute book by the way. I recommend it for a light-hearted, humorous read. I was at my friend Brenda’s house tonight and kept getting books off of her bookshelf to read and then having to put them back because in one week’s time Brad and I will begin a massive DIY project. We are painting our living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway, and bedroom. We are putting new baseboards in the dining room, living room, and family room and putting up new molding in our room and the family room. We are also refinishing our wood floors, buying new curtains, installing a convection microwave, painting a fence, pouring concrete and framing and hanging pictures. Oh yeah, we are also painting the back of our house where we added on a few years ago. We also will lay paving stones beneath our gazebo if we have time. Brad says he is going to write a schedule for us to go by so we can be sure to get all of this done. We may be reaching to get it all done but we sure will try hard!
Brad and I have begun to fully realize that our family (namely my Dad and Mom)think we are insane to live on an older, modest house and drive older cars when it is so easy to finance these days and live in and drive the biggest, newest and best of everything. We know everyone disapproves, but we do not want to be in debt! We are almost finished paying of the bills we accrued when we were newly married and trying to get both of us through school while having babies and supporting our family. Once those are paid off, we are going to try to save up and PAY CASH for a new vehicle (God willing our car will make it until then). Then we want to save a big down payment for a new house. We both know it will take a while but we also both know that we will drive the cars we want to drive and live in the house of our dreams someday and we will do it all without burying ourselves in debt! Why is that so difficult for our family to accept? My brother has a VERY nice big house and he and his ex-wife drove very nice new cars and they got a divorce. Thus proving that material things do not make a marriage or an individual more happy or content. I don’t really care what people think–it is just that the pressure from family to buy a house we can’t afford is sometimes a little oppressive.
I have become a scrapbooking maniac. I am about 3/4 of the way through scrapbooking my wedding photos. Then I am going to scrapbook each of my boy’s first year and then hopefully get all of the rest of my pictures scrapbooked. I have enough to keep me busy for a very long time. I am enjoying my cropping sessions on Thursday nights. A friend of mine actually went with me last Thursday. I am hoping my cousin will be able to go with me this Thursday. It is nice to go sit down with so many family-oriented women. Now if I could just get a book club started like the Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons . . .
Food Journal 
I don’t think you guys are insane for living in an older, less expensive home, Heather. Dede and I have done the same thing. She had bought what would become “our” house a couple of years before we met. The very old man who lived here before passed away and his greedy (adult) kids were eager to sell the place and divvy up the cash. So, our 3-bedroom, 2-bath home cost less than most nicely equipped SUVs.
It was a fixer-upper from the very beginning and Dede had hit the whole place with fresh paint before moving in. And she had made an attempt at encouraging the brown grass to green up a smidge. When I came along, however, things got to rolling. I was already working the lawn into a new. lusher state even before we were married. Once married and moved in, I took the whole “sweat equity” thing to heart.
In the 8 years since, we’ve pumped as much money into the house as it originally cost Dede, if not more. We’ve done 1 major project each year and sometimes slipped in some extras between. Hail damage caused the new roof to be the first priority, which led to discovering some serious damage that the old swamp cooler had done to the underlying wood. This led to a new central air system about 6 months later. Vinyl siding and several new windows. New fencing around the back yard. Gutted and reworked our master bath after the shower pan gave out. The list goes on.
But the coolest thing is that we could afford to do these projects, little by little, because we weren’t chained to $800-1,000. monthly payments on some shiney new palace in a prestigious neighborhood. And in the end, we have a home that truly reflects our personalities, tastes, and styles – not that of some architect or designer that we’ve never met. We may never be able to sell our house and get back what we’ve put into it, but that wasn’t really ever the point.
My only regret is that we didn’t learn until later on that you should always take “before” and “after” photos. You won’t remember just how awful that old sliding patio door looking once you’re using to seeing the nice new French doors everyday for a couple of years. You’ll feel twice as proud of your accomplishments if you have pictures to reference back to that shows how your house originally looked.
Anyway, good luck on your ambitious projects and be sure to post a pic or two!!
— Shameless self-promoting plug to follow —You can get a glimpse of some of what we’ve done to our home at this link:
Our House
Comment by Rob — July 20, 2004 @ 7:30 am |
Hi – I’m from the Uk, where DIY is common. Nothing beats the sense of acheivement that you get when you finish one project and move on. Like you we bought an older house with the intention of doing all the work ourselves. So far, it’s working. Best of all with DIY, you learn new things. We put all the electrics in ourselves, the fencing ourselves and are in the process of putting coving in the bedrooms.
DIY also gives you a sense of pride in your own home, and better still, you can do it cheaply. We’ve just decorated a room and it cost us £250 (that included new skirtings and carpet). A friend of ours has just had a room decorated by a professional and it cost £750 and she’s still finding bits that she’s not happy with.
Good luck with the DIY and blow what anyone else thinks – it’s your house, so do what you want with it
Comment by Jo Golding — October 27, 2004 @ 4:10 am |