So, you bought the house from the [insert previous owner's last name here]‘s. You may or may not have been lucky enough to meet these people to put a face with the name. All of the pleasantries of closing are behind you – they have moved on, and you have moved in. Now you really get to examine the place.
An example of the cosmetic trim work around our place.
Hmmmm…. hey, did you realize that all of the window and door trim in the house is pre-fabricated, pre-primed, and unpainted?
And that if you bump any of the gazillion wires that delicately hang from the ceiling in the basement the phone line craps out?
How about that paneling in the den – looks like unsuccessful attempts were made to remove it, and then equally unsuccessful attempts were made to replace it?
Huh… look at that, one of the panes of glass in the kitchen door has been replaced with plexiglass.
The really white wall around the door has had the paneling removed. You can see blotches of adhesive on the wall.
Here's a close up of the trim, paneling gone, but "crown moulding" is still in position about 1/4" away from the wall.
In our house, we say that these poorly executed home improvement projects have been Cervenka-ed. This may be unfair – given that we only have the end product to view and really don’t know who the responsible party was or what their means were, but we’ve really taken to this new verb.
The office renovation was the first step for us un-Cervenka-ing the house. I think that our next project will be the den. We spend most of our time in the den, and it’s perhaps the least attractive room in the house. Paneled walls painted white, blue trim… and it must be completely un-insulated – there is a breeze coming out of the electrical outlets. It’s probably 5 degrees colder in this room. We’ll probably save more on heating costs than it’ll cost us to renovate the den. I’ll have to do the math on that.
Why do I live with all of the little Cervenka-ed projects around my house? The main reason is that my goals are much larger. Why should I spend money and effort updating minor things now when we plan to change them again in the coming years? I guess I just look at the trim and automatically see what it’s going to look like in a couple of years, rather than what it looks like now. Maybe this is a lesson for myself – perhaps I need to stop being a dreamer and start being a doer.
Those previous owners, they were nice enough people – and you do have at least one thing in common with them – you share a house. We hope to leave it in better condition than we found it.
Wonder what we Carsoned in our last home?
I like the way you are looking at this – very interesting. Our last house was Selby-ed to death, and it took a lot of years of hard work to un-Selby. Our current home is new construction, so I guess we’ll be the ones doing all the stamping here!
Thanks Heather! I guess it keeps us unified toward our goal of fixing up the place. Plus we enjoy a good laugh about what was done in the past. Our place really does have character… for better or worse.