Home renovations are tedious, and can take a hefty financial and even emotional toll on even the strongest of souls. I’ve seen and heard of people renovating parts of their home that have led to financial difficulty and strife between marital partners that has resulted in separation. And what would one expect, when you dump a whole a whack of your hard-earned dollars into altering aspects of your home? this usually involves moving a whole bunch of shit and maybe having limited use of the one place in this life that’s intended on being your sanctuary and place for peace.
For us, we purchased our current home in 2016 when I was transferred into Regina during my policing career. Although the layout and structure of the house was sound, there were many aspects of it that were reminiscent of the late 1960’s when it was built, such as orange carpet and fake wooden planks on the walls of the basement, outdated wood-grain cabinetry and shitty window that radiate heat in the summer and frost up with ice in the winter. All that being said, we had assumed we’d only be in this house for 3 to 5 years, upon which time I’d be transferred to another posting and we’d be selling. We were wrong.
As a result, we found ourselves in the midst of a complete basement renovation due to structural damage and water leakage. Although not a bank-breaking endeavour, it provided a much-needed facelift to the basement and it’s now a fantastic, liveable space. Completed in late fall of 2021, we had discussed the potential upgrading of the upper floor as well. Back in May, we chose to renovate our upstairs bathroom, as this is one of the key rooms of the home that every family member requires. Through the progress made on our bathroom, we decided that coordinating flooring and drywall for the hallway and bedrooms would be easier if we simply did it all in one go. So we did.
After several long months of living like borders as we had to jam everything from the rear of the house to the front, and having the majority of the family camping out in the basement, we’ve finally completed the renovations and will be able to start moving things back into our respective bedrooms and bathroom. I had the pleasure of using our newly-installed bathtub and I have to say, well worth the money.
Although only a few months in total (we started in May of this year) it felt like forever and has made living within the home difficult. But the end results speak for themselves and we’re quite happy with how things look. Everything is fresh and new, and it sure is nice to walk along the new flooring without every step making it sound like I weigh a metric ton. Now that all of this has been put into place, we get to start the arduous task of putting everything back in place. A silver lining behind all of that is that it will give us the opportunity to go through all of our respective belongings and begin to Kon Marie the living shit out all of it and hopefully downsize all the non-necessaries within our household.
Although it can be easily agreed that renovations can be stressful and tough to deal with, it can be well worth the effort if you can find it within yourselves to push through and get through so that you can get the results you want. It will be nice to get Nathan back into his room, especially. I think the little booger has gotten to used to having access to a television throughout the night. But doing so will also give me back my fitness corner, which will be nice. Sleeping in my own bed, which I have been unable to do for the past four months, will also be icing on the cake.
The question now, given the rising cost and demand for construction materials and professionals to do the work, will be when we’ll be able to complete renovations on the front half of the house, which includes large windows and a kitchen. It may be a few years before we have the financial resources and the patience to jump into that piranha-infested bullshit again. But it’ll happens eventually. In the meantime, we get to enjoy the efforts of the contractors who performed the work for us. ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 