As I mentioned before, I had to stop my renovations when I kicked my ex out. There was no money to continue. I had concrete floors for years. I did have the tiles, but no time or money to lay them. My gorgeous neighbour ended up rescuing my ugly duckling of a house by laying the floor. What a man!
There was a lot to still do, and over the years, we were tackling bits and pieces in between spending a lot of time at his place. He had a pool, where else would you be in a hot Perth summer? Perhaps the time could have been better spent so as to avoid the "last minute" stress, but we do enjoy the relaxation between shifts at work.
I'm fortunate that my man is incredibly capable and knows how to do renovations. It has saved a lot of money for us. His secret is Google*. There is probably not a lot of things you can't learn on there. Brain surgery, I suppose? Anyway, while he was doing the boring stuff, I was being creative by trying to use what we had already. I had bought tiles for two bathrooms and found there was enough to do the third as long as we bought some complimentary ones for the other walls. Most of my house was completed using this concept and (I think) it came up pretty well.
My husbands' amazing handy work!
We only needed to do enough to sell my house. If I'd had the time and money, I would have done so much more and it was difficult to leave, knowing all of those plans! During the time my husband was working his butt off, I was painting furniture (Cheaper than therapy) and wasting precious time by not starting to sell my stuff sooner.
My procrastination (I have a Masters in putting things off for another day) resulted in me selling items I had slaved over for a pittance. People can see the desperation and become Vultures when it comes to buying unique stuff. My advice: Listen to the wise people around you. Start preparing early and don't decide to change the scope midway. We changed our minds about how soon we were leaving and my husbands' forced retirement did push us to almost breaking point.
It was during all of this that we had our first words (conversations with exclamations) and it was terrible. My husband went between telling me to sell it all for whatever I could get, to telling me to put the prices up as I was selling too cheap. Sounds dreadful, but he was trying to calm my already stressed and fragile state of mind. I should mention that he was also suffering with mental health issues. Not a good place to be... At least we were there for each other and had an idea about what we wanted to do all this for. In hindsight, we had no real concept of what we were getting into. Finding Utopia isn't a field of roses.
*Any reference I have used is purely to demonstrate how we have done things. I do not get any commission from anyone I mention.
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