Are you ready? Because this cute and fun baby blog is about to turn into an episode of Renovation Nightmares…or whatever that HGTV show is called.

Just wanted to provide fair warning.

For real though, we bought a new house. But it’s actually an old house. And it’s got more problems than a cast member on Teen Mom.

So why on earth did we buy it? That’s a fantastic question. I don’t know, ask Dan.

Just kidding. It was my stupid idea. BUT, we bought it because it’s in the perfect location, in the perfect school district, with the perfect yard and enough space for all of us. Also, the right price, and it has a treehouse for Mia!

When we didn’t actually have to live there it seemed like a great investment. It’s the classic “ugliest house in the nicest neighborhood” – and since Dan is pretty handy, and happens to be related to a professional contractor, we thought we could fix it up and earn some sweat equity. That’s probably still true, but a lot less glamorous than it sounds.

Actually it doesn’t sound glamorous. But when you are 25 and relatively poor (or relatively rich, I guess, depending on how you look at it) sweat equity is the only kind of equity you can get (unless you happen to be an investment banker or something, in which case you probably wouldn’t be poor relative to anything).

So here we are. We’re fixing up an old, ugly house. And the first project on the list is the main bathroom. This is what it used to look like:

 

Nice, huh? Linoleum, cracked toilet, flaking shower tile, 15″ vanity – and of course the stately white/cream/beige/taupe color palette.

Well, a few thousand dollars and a week later it looks like this:

HAHAHAHAH! Got ya! You thought it was going to look like a beautiful spa bathroom straight out of a Pinterest board, right? NOT.

This is what you get when at the last minute you decide you want to expand the footprint and change the layout, and then plumbing has to be moved, and then the plumbing is in fact, not up to code, so it has to be replaced, and then since you changed the layout the vanity you ordered is too small, and the new vanity top takes a week to be delivered and the plumber can’t come until Friday and the subfloor needs to be patched and – oh I’m sorry, did I lose you?

So that’s what my new house looks like. And this is only the first project of like, a hundred. The downstairs bathroom is next, since the sink has a hole in it and the tile floor is missing more than a couple tiles. Then the kitchen, then the siding, then the windows… amazing what a quarter of a million dollars can get you these days, no?

Hopefully sometime in the next couple weeks I’ll post again with a true before and after of the bathroom. In the meantime, take note that what you hear about renovations is definitely true – it’s gonna take twice as long and cost twice as much.

No wait, make that three times.