Welcome Home … Again
Executive summary: We’ve made a concerted effort to get everything done and our new home is ready for show-and-tell!
We moved in mid-March but it’s taken a few weeks to cross the finish line. We’ve had our hands full … and tied, with two kids who severely limit our ability to get anything done. As with any move, there was a long list of to-do’s, from setting up utilities to hiring movers to new school registration to painting, hemming, hanging, organizing, cleaning, and on and on and on. There was even a delightful emergency plumbing visit on move-in day. And now, the last piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place, in the form of plantation shutters that I’d ordered before we even closed on the condo (note to self: in the future, allow more lead time for anything custom). The installers came and now I declare this place as complete as it ever will be, with the understanding that things will evolve over time as our family’s needs change. So I took the opportunity to snap pictures of every room and update Peek at our Pad – come over and have a look!
The condo is only 8 years old, so things are in decent condition. Besides, Stanford doesn’t let us really change anything, so all the decor decisions I made are superficial and “renter friendly.” But it somehow still added up to a hefty chunk of change. The biggest budget item was hiring handymen to paint the doors (I had my heart set on a dusty dark blue shade), swap out a couple of light fixtures, scrape away the discolored grout, check out the weird sound in the garbage disposal, replace a broken faucet, and an unending list of small fixes like that. It took two people three days (during which they literally waited for the paint to dry) and the total cost was $6k, I’m almost embarrassed to say. But as this is our first purchased home, I felt like asserting some ownership rights in the form of sprucing up the place. I’ve never even had that money-guzzling option before as a renter. The second most pricey item was the plantation shutters – there is a large but non-functional window that needed covering, and an 8-foot opening above a pony wall that I wanted to be able to close off in order to transform the small “study” into a private flex space/ tiny bedroom. This part was $3k between the custom shutters and the installation. So yes, I spent $9k just to prep the condo for moving in, and another $6k on top of that for the new furniture, curtains, light fixtures, etc. that we needed to fill this larger space out. I like to think that all our years of working and saving led to this “opportunity” for us to make an investment in our home.
But enough with the numbers and the explanations, let’s get to the fun stuff! I share details in Peek at our Pad, which I’ve updated with every major room, found here: