A grueling 9 days of renovations, and almost done

DH and I recently moved into a new house, and we've spent the last 9 days renovating. I am absolutely exhausted. Keeping an eye on the contractors, going to pick up more supplies, sitting outside in the heat while they're sanding, finding drywall dust everywhere, trying to deal with the snags we hit yesterday....I am completely and totally exhausted. Only one more day left. We're first time homeowners, so this is our first experience with renovations. I'm still surprised to be finding drywall dust everywhere, even though they weren't working in some rooms, and worried about inhaling that stuff.

I don't think I'll ever want to renovate anything ever again. Too exhausting and stressful. I'm not even sure I'm glad we did what we did--while the finished product looks nice, I'm not sure going through all that was worth it.

[ladymoreta]

Glad it's almost over! My parents built their house, so I remember drywall dust well... Good luck getting everything clean and back to normal, and if you're comfortable posting them, I'd love to see pictures!

[SoonerTexan]

Pictures are necessary!

[MarissaNicole]

Congrats - I'm sure you'll appreciate it when the memory of all the work and cleaning fades!

To tell you the truth, the shine of home ownership is starting to fade. This is DH and my first house. We had been renting previously. I was so excited to finally have saved up enough to get our first house--and now I'm having a bit of buyer's remorse in the sense of all the work that a house requires. DH says we couldn't have rented forever--but honestly I think I prefer renting to owning, because it's less work and much less stress.

Yuck - sorry it's been so miserable! When it's all over & the dust has cleared, I'd love to see pictures, too.
DH & I bought our first house at the beginning of residency. We didn't do major renovations, but we painted every wall, put in some tile, and added a deck. Once the work was done and everything had settled, we felt like we had made it ours. It is a lot more frustrating to have to deal with replacing broken stuff, etc., yourself. But I hope you'll be able to relax & enjoy before long.

Yuck - sorry it's been so miserable! When it's all over & the dust has cleared, I'd love to see pictures, too.
DH & I bought our first house at the beginning of residency. We didn't do major renovations, but we painted every wall, put in some tile, and added a deck. Once the work was done and everything had settled, we felt like we had made it ours. It is a lot more frustrating to have to deal with replacing broken stuff, etc., yourself. But I hope you'll be able to relax & enjoy before long.

Did you do the painting yourself? We hired painters, and I wish we hadn't. But neither DH nor I have ever painted anything before, and the painting job in our last rental was so horrendous--the owners did it themselves--that we didn't want to try it in our new house, since we had never done it before. However, the painting (whole house, interior) was the worst part of the renovations, so I wish we hadn't painted. Though the house was all beige when we bought it--not a single painted room.

We did almost everything ourselves. My mom does a fantastic job with painting - very detail-oriented. She helped with all the interior paint. We painted every wall on the main floor. Unlike your house, ours was ALL different colors - a different color on every wall. We added a lot more neutrals with just a few accent walls of a different color.
The exterior paint we hired out. DH & his brother built the deck. His mom put in some tile with a tile-cutter that she owns (awesome).

We did it in phases, so it wasn't so bad. Again, after it was all over, we felt like the place was really ours. (ETA - I think it might have bothered me more if we had strangers inside our house all the time instead of family.)

Next time we buy a house, I'd LOVE to hire an interior decorator to manage the whole thing. But during residency, there was no way we could afford it. We may not be able to afford it in attendinghood either!

I hope you end up loving the colors once you have your furniture back in place and the dust all cleaned out!

[medpedspouse]

There are some interior decorators that you can afford during residency. Ask around - if you like someone's house decorating, ask who helped them or if they did it themselves. One year for Valentines day (during residency) DH gave me a certificate with these ladies that are redesigners. They use the stuff you want to keep and make suggestions for the rest. I think it cost $150. We found out about them from one of the program coordinators.

Now that we are out of residency, I went through 3 interior designers (expensive too) and was so frustrated. They just did not get us. So, DH flew those two ladies for a long weekend (it was cheaper than the designers i had used) and it helped me quite a bit.

Now that we are out of residency, I went through 3 interior designers (expensive too) and was so frustrated. They just did not get us. So, DH flew those two ladies for a long weekend (it was cheaper than the designers i had used) and it helped me quite a bit.

We tried an interior designer who was a free service from a large chain furniture store. It did not work out at all. She also did not "get" us. I provided her with lots of photos of the look I was going for, and she didn't really get it. Also, since this is a free service from a chain store, she was unwilling to pull multiple fabric options for sofas, etc. She presented us with one option, and that was supposed to be the final one. When I did not like her fabric choices, she got annoyed, and I was not offered other options. So I'm not sure I will be working with any interior designers. It was an annoying experience. I think I'll just start going to furniture stores and looking through all the catalogs on my own.