Hi Foxy Friends! Last month I did a post on how to buy a house, so I'm back with some more advice...on what to do AFTER you've bought your house! Let's assume that you've signed the papers, the inspection went great and you now have the keys in hand,yay! Congrats, welcome to home ownership!
ONE
Make a list of everything that you want to do to your house and prioritize. Rome wasn't built in a day, and either is doing everything you want in your house. So make a list and try and figure out how much things are going to cost. We knew we wanted to change the color of our house, STAT. See that graphic up there...yep that was the color of our house...and that makes it look nicer than it was. So first thing we did, literally we got the keys and the told the painter GO! If you want more details on what we renovated, click here.
Much better right? See all those boxes in the window? Yep that was our "blinds" for a good 6 months...haha! Our neighbor across the streets bedroom window faces this window and he could see our tv...so yep those boxes stayed there for a while.
TWO
Be patient, you have a budget, stick to it. I know you want to buy drapes and blinds for every window and decorate and fill every room with house, but most likely you have way more room than furniture...take your time, find the pieces that fit you instead of going all out and getting everything at once. We waited a YEAR before we got drapes in our room. We saved up and then bought our drapes...boy was it nice to have a dark room to sleep in.
Best day ever when he came to install our drapes.
THREE
If you can do it yourself, go for it, if you know it's above your knowledge hire it out...we know our time is valuable so we hired most of our renovations out, the only thing we did do was paint...and man did we paint. We went through 23 gallons for primer and 20 gallons of paint. We painted every wall, every ceiling, every baseboard and doorway. We did not paint the doors...that seemed to intimidating to me! We didn't get cable for the first 5 months we lived there, I knew if we had cable we would watch tv instead of paint...so we painted from the time we got home till dark. Great motivator to get stuff done!
If I never saw another paint brush it would be too soon. That being said, I know how to cut in between the wall and ceiling like no ones business, if you need tips just ask, throw that blue tape out, there is an easier way to do it!
FOUR
We took the Dave Ramsey Classes, read about that here and here, that being said we like to budget for everything, I can't remember where Mr. read it, perhaps it was in the Dave Ramsey class, but we were told that you need to save $1 for every square foot of house each year for maintenance. We've been in our house for nearly 7 years and this is very true for us. And even if you don't use it all in that year, you're going to eventually need to get a new roof, water heater breaks, etc. It's nice to have that little bit of savings that you know you can use and not have to worry of something major happening. When Mini Fox was 4 weeks old we got a slab leak, so we decided to replace our plumbing, which totally sucked, but you know what financially we had already prepared for it, so it wasn't a big deal money wise. That's always nice to know that. If you want to see what our house looked like getting re-plumbed...click here...it's scary, you might want to click away, hehe.
FIVE
Just remember that you don't need everything all at once. We really wanted to get our backyard redone, but figured while we save up the money to get it done, we would use it to see how we really were going to be using the space. Turns out what where we thought we wanted the table was not where it ended up because it was in the direct sunlight all the time. But had we done the backyard right away and not lived with it for a couple of summers, we wouldn't have know how we wanted it. Same goes for the house, use the space a little, it may surprise you how you end up using things!
OH and one last tip, buy small plants! They are cheaper and just let them grow! We bought the smallest ones we could, and it took a year, but it was worth saving hundreds of dollars to go the cheaper route, and what's a year when you're in your "forever" home? And space out the plants, they grow more than you think, ask the people where you buy the plants how far away you should space it, we totally would have bought too much had we not asked!
So there you have it, 5 tips of what to do after you buy a house! Hope these were helpful! And congrats on getting your house!
Linking up here
oil wipes for my face, and used those to help bridge the uncomfortable gap between washings. 
works the best for me. I've tried some of the popular ones, and they just didn't work for my hair...so there is one out there, you just have to find it. Note: I've never tried the non aerosol kind of dry shampoo...not because I don't want to, just that I keep forgetting to look, so if any of you have one that you love, pass it on my way!
. It gives you volume you didn't even know you had! When I first started using it I was convinced it was magic in a bottle...it's amazing stuff, especially if you have fine hair, give this a try!
