Homer the Home Owner

Alicia and I bought an apartment back in December, but as it was leased at the time, we didn't get to move in until recently. Having months without any real involvement made the whole exercise seem rather laid back and trivial. Home ownership a bunch of work? Pfft, this is a doddle...

All that has changed with our official occupation. There's now an endless queue of tasks, fixes and improvements to be made if the place is to ever be habitable by humans any time this century. When you're renting, you never have these ideas. You work around the faults, use a few tricks to improve things, and bugger off elsewhere if the issues reach crisis point. Now that we actually own the place, it's awfully tempting to change absolutely everything, from the doorknobs to the toilet roll holder.

We always planned to spend a bit of cash making the place livable, which doesn't help with the crazy home improvement urges. It's the classic money burning a hole in one's pocket problem, and since the money is there in the kitty it seems quite reasonable to buy a new front door, or replace all the windows with triple glazed panels filled with xeon. Of course we've been told by all and sundry that the renovations will always cost more than we expect, so that helps a bit to keep the madness under control.

The great thing is that we've met the people upstairs, who have exactly the same unit except it's been renovated. It's like looking into the future. We won't copy all their ideas, but we will steal a few.

Looking ahead, we're probably going to knock down the wall between the kitchen and the lounge. We have no idea what kind of structural limitations we'll face there, but the more we can destroy the better. We'll put down floorboards in the kitchen and lounge, and redo the kitchen with more bench space, more cupboards and an exhaust fan. It amazes me there's not one of those in the kitchen right now - last night Alicia made lamb chops and we nearly died of smoke inhalation. We also want to do something with the power, as we keep tripping our circuits with more than a few heaters on in the evening.

We also have some grander plans to rearrange the bathroom, and for a walk in wardrobe for the main bedroom. The latter has overcapitalization written all over it, but the temptation remains.