Monday, August 07, 2006
home
We live in a 2 bedroom house that we bought shortly after we got married in 2002. It's a great first house and has lots of charming aspects, such as the coved ceilings in the living room and the lovely fireplace and the hexagon-tile bathroom floor. Plus it has lots of useful amenities like the finished basement that R* uses for a music studio and the gas stove and the nearly-new washer and dryer. However. It lacks a lot of things that we have discovered that we would like in a house that we'll live in long-term. For example, we have no coat closet. Or dining room. Or shower in the same vicinity as our bathroom. Or enough bedrooms to have both an office and a child, assuming we have a child someday.
We've been kicking around the idea of either selling this house and buying a bigger/nicer/more conveniently located house, or doing a huge remodel of this house. While the idea of doing a huge remodel is kind of daunting (who wants to live in an apartment for 6 months while strangers tear up their house with jigsaws and sledgehammers?), I kind of loved the idea of getting exactly what we wanted at the end. Not only would we add bedrooms and a full bathroom and all that... we would get to take care of a lot of the little details, like putting linoleum in the kicthen and refinishing the hardwood floors. And we could get a bathtub that is actually comfortable. And I could have a windowseat in my bedroom for reading.
But now R* is saying that it would be more cost-effective in the long run to buy a new house instead. I don't even pretend to understand real-estate investing, but I think he was saying that because we live in a not-as-nice neighborhood, the value of our remodeled house would never go up enough to get our investment back. Whereas starting fresh with a new house would allow us to make incremental improvements and build more equity. Or something like that? Anyway, I feel surprisingly sad about the idea of not remodeling our current house. I thought it was going to be so cool to get to redo things in exactly the way we wanted. And while I LOVE house shopping, I know there's no way that we'll find a perfect house that has everything I want. It's just not possible. I guess that's life, eh? I'm sure we'll eventually find a place that we love, and over time we'll make it into our home. I suspect that our next house will be our long-term home, so we'll have time to do what we want with it. And then when we get old and retire, R* can get his wish of buying a snazzy condo and living downtown. :)
We've been kicking around the idea of either selling this house and buying a bigger/nicer/more conveniently located house, or doing a huge remodel of this house. While the idea of doing a huge remodel is kind of daunting (who wants to live in an apartment for 6 months while strangers tear up their house with jigsaws and sledgehammers?), I kind of loved the idea of getting exactly what we wanted at the end. Not only would we add bedrooms and a full bathroom and all that... we would get to take care of a lot of the little details, like putting linoleum in the kicthen and refinishing the hardwood floors. And we could get a bathtub that is actually comfortable. And I could have a windowseat in my bedroom for reading.
But now R* is saying that it would be more cost-effective in the long run to buy a new house instead. I don't even pretend to understand real-estate investing, but I think he was saying that because we live in a not-as-nice neighborhood, the value of our remodeled house would never go up enough to get our investment back. Whereas starting fresh with a new house would allow us to make incremental improvements and build more equity. Or something like that? Anyway, I feel surprisingly sad about the idea of not remodeling our current house. I thought it was going to be so cool to get to redo things in exactly the way we wanted. And while I LOVE house shopping, I know there's no way that we'll find a perfect house that has everything I want. It's just not possible. I guess that's life, eh? I'm sure we'll eventually find a place that we love, and over time we'll make it into our home. I suspect that our next house will be our long-term home, so we'll have time to do what we want with it. And then when we get old and retire, R* can get his wish of buying a snazzy condo and living downtown. :)
Labels: house
