Month: January 2015

Where to start? Necessity vs Creativity

| Jenny C

I’m sure you’ll be nodding your head in understanding when I say it’s hard to begin a renovation.  Just as I’m sure you’ve asked yourself the same questions that we started asking ourselves, now that we finally had a home of our own:

  • Where do we start?  (There’s so much that needs doing!)
  • Where will we get the money?  (We have two kids, no savings left, a new mortgage and only 1.25 incomes)
  • Where will we get the time?  (translate as:  where will we fit it in, between work, household chores, the kids’ school and sporting commitments, etc?  I’m the first to admit these are trivial “first world” problems, but still…)

We sat on things for a couple of years before we managed to begin our improvements, and it gave us plenty of time to dream up some very creative solutions to our renovating challenges!

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We chose two projects to begin with:  one that had become essential to making our home more livable, now that we had experienced all four seasons in our abode; and one that was TOTALLY UNNECESSARY but most satisfying to my need for a creative outlet.  The first was insulation, the second was a fanciful tile mosaic in the Eastern courtyard.

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Insulation, well, that makes for exciting blogging, doesn’t it?  Never fear, readers, it’s a short tale, being one of the few improvements we’ll ever pay someone else to do.  Thus, our involvement was minimal, and here’s all we did:

  • researched different types of insulation (on the net)
  • found some local suppliers / installers
  • got three quotes
  • booked a time slot and got it done.  Easy!

Of course it was easy, we didn’t do it ourselves.  But there went our savings, and thus began the journey of DIYing everything else that would need doing in the future!

Next week:  our wonderful, wonderful courtyard mosaic.  I’m not being vain in that statement (as it is my own work entirely):  I simply mean that it has been an utter delight to work on:  a project all of my own (a rare occurrance when you have curious and “helpful” children), an all-engrossing creative outlet which I’ve found peaceful and monotonous in a meditative sense, and deeply satisfying in the creative.