The new house is great and we’re loving it. We have painted a few walls, moved in almost all our stuff, and now we are thinking about the next steps.
On the “would be nice” list:
- large fishtank (~100 gallon, plus supporting equipment)
- bookcases/shelves in our room to hold our growing library
- bed frame/headboard/footboard and matching drawers. We have seen two that we really like, but we are holding off because we don’t want the bed so high up that Aleah would hurt herself trying to get off the bed.
- Â shelves in the garage
- paint the walls in the garage
On the “will do someday”
- replace linoulium floors with tile
- replace carpet with wood
What I’m really interested in talking about is the last two items here.
Personally, I’m thinking these projects are a few years out. Partially because the existing flooring is doing a decent job, partially so we can save up money for these projects. Christina and I would prefer to do the tile before the wood, as the carpet will go with tile better than wood would go with the linoulium. The tile is a cheaper project too.
But, I have a few questions ya’ll might be able to answer/ponder with me.
Would it be worth it to buy a nice vaccum now, knowing we want to get rid of the carpet in 3-5 years? It would keep the carpet in better shape, we’ll always have cat trees we can vaccum, and I’d love to get one that doesn’t need bags.
Would it be better to build shelves into the walls or would stand alone bookshelves be better?
Would you do tile’n’wood or would you just rip everything out, then paint and wax the cement?
Oh, those all sound like such fun plans.
Let’s seee….
Vacuum – is what you have shot, or is it servicable? We have a Hoover windtunnel, bagless and works good enough for us. Don’t recall what we paid for it, but it wasn’t excessive. You can get good & bagless without having to spend too much $$$. I’d say that if a vacuum purchase is something you might be pondering anyway, I’d go that medium route. If what you have is working just fine, maybe stay with it. But you’ll always have carpet somewhere – even if it’s just in the form of area rugs.
I’d say stand-alone bookshelves. You can get them a few at a time – control costs when you want to spend $$ on flooring projects. And if you move, you can take them with you. Doing built ins or even mounted shelves is going to take either lots of money or lots of time (planning) – for the moment, I’d say just get some regular bookshelves. And when you do have the money or the time to plan out wall mounted shelves, or built in bookcases, you can move the shelf units to some other room. I doubt you’ll run out of things to put on shelves.
Tile & wood. I’d certainly say tile & wood. Classic flooring that will only do good things for long term home value. Now, we have seen some houses with bamboo and cork floors. The cork was really cool. Kevin didn’t like it, but I think it had a lot to recommend it. Just something to research. And yeah, I think you’re right with tile first, then wood. Wood and linoleum is a bit dodgy. Of course, you might want to talk with folks (professional folks) about making the transitional areas work right. I don’t know how the tile/carpet transition will change into a tile/hardwood transition – I’m sure it will be fine, but I’d have that plan in place before starting.
Oh, I thought of other things we have on that list of ‘upgrades’:
Ceiling fans for the other two bedrooms
Programmable termostat