We’ve been in our house for 4 years! It seems like just yesterday that we were going through the stresses of home buying. We’ve made some adjustments and improvements (like how the house looks from the outside) but there is still a lot we’d like to do to make our house THE HOUSE we envisioned when we purchased it. Our most recent improvement was to the upstairs bathroom (photos further down in the post).

A year after we closed, I wrote a post about what we had learned (up until that point) about owning a home. I still feel like it’s pretty accurate. But as time has gone on and we’ve renovated, outsourced and hired people to change our house to make it into what we want — I’ve also learned some things. I will dispense this knowledge… now:

What I’ve learned from home renovations:

You need permission. You’re probably thinking “I own my house. I can do whatever I want.” But, where we live, that’s not true! You need permission for every change. New roof? New porch? Paint color? Dumpster? You need permission AND a permit from our town.

Everything takes so much time. I don’t know if it’s shorter to DIY or to hire someone to do it for you. It seems like any project takes immediately twice the amount of time than originally thought. Triple the amount of time when the workers don’t show up. And honestly, lots of times, they don’t show up.

Math is not our strong suit. Remember when you were in school, sitting in math class thinking to yourself “when will I need to know how to do any of this?” — turns out… WHEN YOU OWN A HOUSE. All those lessons on calculations, and angles, and length and height come into play with a house.

Keep your receipts. We’ve hired people to do the work but we’ve purchased all the materials ourselves. But since we’re not good at math, or measuring and we’re not Chip and Joanna — we buy a lot of stuff that is just wrong. It doesn’t fit or it’s not what we thought it was, or maybe it’s totally fine but when we get home it doesn’t work in the space, or doesn’t match or my pregnancy brain has remorseful second thoughts.

And lastly:

It’s hard on your relationship. From trying to agree on style, to sticking to a budget to agreeing you’ve gone way over budget and need to reign yourselves in, to making sure the pets are safe with workers in and out of the house, to having to take off work to be home for inspectors to check in — it’s all just hard especially when you’re the type of couple who stick to a routine.

And now, the bathroom reveal:

I know this is probably why you’re here. I’m a sucker for before and after photos (are you?) and especially when they show off such drastic changes like these… well, its pure gold. Let’s just take a stroll down memory lane and remember where we started… (side note, I don’t know why they’re so yellow but I think it just solidifies the horror that was this place).

Maybe it’s the lighting, or the wood paneling, or that gorgeous wallpaper… but I’m not quite sure how we fell in love with this house, quite honestly. Sometimes you just overlook certain things when you’re blinded by love?!

Ah, the beautiful stained shower/tub (I swear… we tried to scrub it) plus a sneak peek at the flooring. Really gives you that cabin feel, don’t you think?

And now…

I really can’t explain how much I love this bathroom. But I love the tiled tub (truthfully, that wasn’t the plan but the original tub we bought didn’t fit the space (see… we can’t measure but we kept the receipt, thank goodness). I love the flooring and the paint color and the vanity. It’s so calming and peaceful and I can already tell it’s going to be easy to keep clean because it’s so nice… and nice things are easier to WANT to keep clean (in my opinion).

Have you gone through home renovations? Any tips?