"It's just paint and flooring" and other lies about real estate...

First of all, let's establish that I am guilty. I don rose-colored glasses when looking at real estate.

Please, friends and family, don't start planning the intervention - we're not shopping for a new house! For as long as I live in northern Colorado (and "forever" is a possibility) it will be in this house.

The first house K and I owned in our beloved town was a brand-new, nothing-to-be-done-to-it, 3000-ish square foot builder-grade house in a builder-planned neighborhood with cul de sacs and rules about paint colors, appropriate landscaping, and of course, severe limitations on the number and type of vehicles that may be parked in front of a house. We had lovely neighbors (for the most part - although the "tipping point" that caused us to start thinking about a new home was when our 2 1/2 year-old son came inside from playing on the deck (while our backyard neighbors *um* played on their deck) and asked me "mama, what's F-U-*-K?" I gasped a little and told him that it was a very bad word that showed that someone was super-duper angry and naughty. We then had a long discussion about what might make those college boys living behind us so darn angry. Also, it turns out, K and I weren't happy living somewhere that was brand new and neutral and anonymous. We need our home to evolve with us and keep us interested - much like our marriage.

So, the search began.

We knew we wanted some space - as in land (at least 1/2 acre and preferably more) - and we were willing to sacrifice square footage to get it. We didn't want to be out of town (we have a non-commuting clause in our marital happiness rider), didn't want (and couldn't afford) one of those large lot "planned communities", and wanted something with a sound structure and sound mechanical systems. You know, something that needed "just the cosmetic stuff".

We looked for a couple of years. We almost pulled the trigger a time or three. Once we lost our nerve because the house was near C's elementary school but that was all it had going for it (except for cool, original cork floors). We tried for years to love a certain house bordering our favorite midcentury modern neighborhood but it had a backyard neighbor and a split-entry (you walk in the door and have an immediate decision - 'up or down' a minor pet peeve of mine that was enough of an excuse to pass on a house that it seems we must not have loved that much anyway). Then, we found a house in the neighborhood we live in today. We were blindly in love - the land, the proximity to the foothills and recreation opportunities, 1/4 mile to the grocery store, 2 1/2 miles to work (totally bikeable - on bike paths)... but when we really looked at the house (already at the top of our price range), we realized it was (well, at least 60% of it was) a scraper (as in, needed to be bulldozed and rebuilt). I was heartbroken.

Fast forward ~ 1 year and we found our current house. Great location, within (the tippy top) of our price range, solidly built and good mechanicals (except for a slightly worrying 40-year-old boiler), and "just in need of some paint/flooring/cosmetic updates" we put our cul de sac house on the market, bought the new house, sold the builder-grade beauty (all 3000 square feet of it - in exchange for the 2000 square feet we occupy now) and were, in retrospect, insanely lucky that the bottom dropped out of the market a couple of months after that -- 2 mortgages would have been the financial death of us. Real estate love is blind, and apparently, financially stupid.

Once we took possession of the house, the reality of the "cosmetic" updates our house needed (and I do mean "needed" - that cat pee carpet had to go!) and the dollar signs associated with those updates set in. We swore we would live there for at least 6 months before we did anything other than throw out curtains, etc. In the mean time, I read magazines, blogs, forums. I became obsessed with what "needed to be done" and tried hard to define our "style" - modern? cottage? traditional? shabby chic?

In 2006, we decided to jump in with both feet and get going on the home improvements. We ripped, we tore, we did 99% of the demo ourselves. We scrubbed, we primed, we painted (and painted and painted), we removed flooring and window treatments, discovered elements of the 40-year story of our house via evidence of past remodels and configurations, and slept very little. Our house was looking better and we were all exhausted. We brought in "professionals" to help us (the drunk painter story will follow at a later date - it's a cocktail party favorite now that it no longer makes me cry) - realized that we don't like being at the mercy of the "schedules" of professionals, and finally, after having no where to shower for 3 weeks just before our son started kindergarten, realized that the whole process was eating us alive.

We finished the bathrooms, the bedrooms, and the lower level TV+computer+relaxing room, and decided to take a good, long break from home improvements.

Our house looked better, smelled better, and we no longer had to wonder what was growing behind the bathroom tile.

We took a step back and decided to focus on the kids, our own health (completely ignored during the process - SO MUCH TAKEOUT food), and enjoying the place we had worked so hard to buy and then modify to suit us. I went back to work to help pay for some of the unexpected expenses of the renovation.

(During this whole process - which we sometimes found to be an ordeal - the people who bought the first house we fell in love with in our neighborhood had discovered a mold problem and asbestos, bulldozed all but the relatively newly added master bedroom suite (which they lived in with their 4 children) and built a new house on the old foundation. Clearly, in renovation, as in life, people have different capacities for chaos. Our hat's off to them. We are cut from different cloth.

Looooong story short: "cosmetic" changes are still changes. They take work, money, and a certain amount of exhaustion and inevitably, spousal argument. If I ever live in another house, I will take my time, learn to live with "oddities", and approach remodeling ONE.ROOM.AT.A.TIME.

In the end, we're closer than we were before and we love our home even more but the trip from there to here has been tumultuous, exhausting, and (hopefully, for the sake of everyone else who will not take heed to my statements) unnecessarily emotionally and financially draining.

My real estate word to the wiser-than-us: If it's "too ugly to bear" and you don't have $50K in reserve to call in Candice Olsen to fix it and you have kids ---- run away.