You can’t force it. You can’t plan it. A home just happens. You know the John Lennon lyric, “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans”? I think a home happens the same way.
This may seem counter-intuitive to what I preach and sell with my mood boards…a plan for creating a home one room at a time. Well, it’s not. A plan is still important and necessary for creating a home. But you have to be ready for things that aren’t in the plan. Creating a home involves a lot of plans and dreams.
In an ideal world, where time and budget are no matter, you could create your home room by room, completely finishing one room before moving on to the next. But in real life, where time and money are constrains, a home happens out of order.
We had a plan for our basement finishing project. We started last March and it is still not done. In fact if you look at my blog for the last 6 months of 2012, you hardly see the basement. That’s because real-life time and money constraints got in the way. We did not make the time over the summer to do all the DIY projects we planned. We wanted to pay for everything in cash and only get the things we truly wanted, so there were funding delays. I went as far as a home spending hiatus to save up money for the basement flooring.
All the while, we had the rest of our house and heads full of dreams and plans for those spaces. While the basement was on hold, we tackled small projects in other areas of the home. We chose what to work on based on different factors. We prioritized painting some rooms , like the guest bathroom, that still had flat paint from the builder. Sometimes we squeezed in a project that wasn’t necessary just because it was fun or easy, like the shelves and turtle shell updates in the nursery. A few projects have taken priority, because they were critical for supporting life changes, like our recent kitchen tweaks in support of a healthier lifestyle.
The basement has come back around. We recently installed cork and carpet. Now we are tackling some other large DIY projects. They don’t all have an end in sight yet, so every once in a while we will take a break from the basement to do a quick project elsewhere in the home. I try to be as timely as possible with what I share on the blog, so if sometimes my posts seem random and out of order, that’s why…because that’s how the projects are getting done.
So, my home happens out of order. As much as I want to complete my home and blog about it in order from start to finish of one room at a time, that just isn’t how my home happens. It happens out of order, and that is okay.
You’re so right! With all the planning, it is easy to forget that sometimes life gets in the way – suddenly my office is a lot more important to me than my walk-in closet, so it might actually be a while before I finish decorating it and work on the “black hole” that is supposed to be a bright and cheerful workspace =)
And the fun projects always get in the way, but that’s what makes them so much fun! =)
I can totally relate to this. We, too, wanted to pay for our basement development outright, and have had to finish everything in stages. All construction was finished in September (except for the tile backsplash we plan on getting installed when we do new tile in the front entrance).
Now we’re on to decorating- furniture, window treatments, etc. which is being done over time as well. We started construction last May and I’m hoping to have it all done by this upcoming one (crossing fingers).
Paying cash to finish our basement was hard; I’ve never stuck so hard to a budget. It felt so good in the end though; at the beginning we looked at home equity loans and thought we would be paying for this forever and in the end were able to find a contractor who bid 1/3 of the first estimate (a friend who gave us best friend pricing)
I second that – it’s exactly how 9B develops as well. Sometimes we don’t have enough time, sometimes it’s the money that keeps us from finishing a room. We have a lot of plans, ideas and dreams and eventually everything will be our perfect home. And while it isn’t perfect yet, it is still our home and there isn’t a single day that we aren’t grateful for what we have, finished or not. ;)
Jule
Oh so so true! Couldn’t have said it better myself! Kudos to you for sharing this and for keepin’ it real. :)
xo,
Jen