We have lived in our 1913 Foursquare for over 7 years now. I have definately had a love/hate relationship. When people ask, what are you doing this weekend, I just want to smack them. What do you think? WORKING ON THE HOUSE. It's ALWAYS something. There's also the question, why don't you just hire someone? Sure, we could hire someone to remodel the kitchen. But what about the roof? and the siding? and the deck? and the bathroom? and the floors, walls, attic, basement, on and on and on. If you hire someone to repair everything, then you've put way more money into the house then you'll EVER get back. It gets overwhelming at times. I seriously don't know what I'd do with my free time if I didn't have this house to work on. I really resented it until one day, a few years ago my kids told me I could never sell it. That they loved this house and one day I would have to sell it to them. I was shocked. THIS house? The one we slave over and that is constantly in chaos? The same house that tells you it's NOT okay to invite your friends over, until the deck is rebuilt, b/c it's too dangerous for guests. THIS HOUSE? And that made me really rethink it. The house is huge. The house has 8inch tall baseboards and working pocket doors. The house has 2 acres of wooded yard and allows them to do what they like in the yard. This house isn't so new that they have to worry about denting the floor. But it's much nicer than the smaller ranches that some of their friends live in. The basement was remodeled for the three boys and their friends. They have sleepovers there (with extra insulation, so I can't hear them!). If they want to change their room, or we need to add something, we just knocked down a wall, or build it in. Can you really do that in a new house? This house has sucked us dry, financially and emotionally. But it also has made us rely on ourselves even more. We find out how to fix things and we teach our kids that you do NOT have to be dependant on others to get things done. In the end, it has been worth it. And with at least another 2 years (hahahahaha, isn't that funny) worth of work on the house, we will continue on. What also made me feel better was watching my friends and family with their NEW houses. I have already see two people who built houses within the last 7 years need to replace ALL of the windows in those houses. Really. Also the furnaces. One friend needed to replace the exterior doors in his 5 year old house, built in an expensive neighborhood. PLUS, the siding. Just b/c it is new doesn't mean it's done right. Watch 'Holmes on Homes' on HGTV. BIG eye opener. Sometimes, you forget how your house looks nice. I find that it's good to take pictures and look at them on the computer. When you're walking into your living room every day for a month and only see the floors that need refinished, you miss the antique fireplace mantel you bought and installed and the stone tile you added. The walls you redid and the built ins. When I take a picture and look at it, I see the beauty of the ROOM, not the damage to the floor. Also, it's good to compare the new pictures to the old ones. Were there really hearts on the country blue wallpaper? hahahaha Lastly, dealing with the PO's previous mistakes are always What were they thinking? Just when we thought we got all of them corrected, we take down the deck to find they didn't use flashing on the ledger board. Sigh. I always worry that once I remove every last trace of the 80's, it will be time to remove every last trace of this decade. :) Sorry to go on and on, but I just found this forum and I'm glad there are people here that are just like me. Working on their old home, loving it and hating it. I wonder if everyone has lists for every room, if by the time you get to that list for a room you change your mind, if you have more than 4 projects going on at a time and if you think you'll be done by the time your youngest time graduates high school. If your idea of a great Sunday afternoon is going to Menards/Home Depot/Lowes and shopping. If the guy from the local wine/coffee shop knows your name very well (coffee in the morning/wine at the end of the day)and his first question is what are you working on now? If your friends/family come to you first when they get bids from their contractors, to see what the materials would cost vs labor, because why in the world would they put in a new door by themselves, let alone go on the hunt across the internet and two states to find the perfect 100 year old door for their house, then build it into the opening? Is this a disease?

Kudos to teacats and bbstx. We are renovating a very old house and have been taking pics before,during and after every room project.(down to the studs and everything in between). We use a "cloth" crafters measuring tape-looks like a tailors tape-that is 10' long in all of the photos,very convenient to find studs,electrical and plumbing later when it is all covered up. Also, with all of the finished room measurements it is easy to bring along the pictures when looking at furniture and other "stuff" for it.Tapes are cheap too about a buck at Micheals. Also we use a nifty program from Benjamin Moore that lets you insert your room photos into it and "paint"the room and trim from their colors-Note,the colors will not be exact to the true colors due to monitor variations-but we have found it very handy.You can also hang fabric swatches in the room and work around them with color combinations.Think it was around $10.00 several years ago for the download but has saved us a lot of time narrowing down colors and or fabric. Cheers

I refreshed my oak kitchen with new counters, backsplash and farm sink. I used the Kohler Whitehaven "short apron" style which can be installed on a standard sink base cabinet. However, I don't think it will work in your corner, though I believe there is a 24" one. A competent carpenter / refinisher might be able to match the stain and reconfigure that corner. I did change out / add to my kitchen just a bit and the pieces I stained to match the rest of the kitchen blend right in. I did refinish my cabinets, but I kept them pretty much the same lighter oak color to match the rest of the woodwork in my home. However, I refinished and stained the cabinets I used in the basement kitchenette special walnut. They were original to the house when it was 1970's dark stained everything, so dark to start with, and I did not think I could sand enough to remove the stain in the grain. I see a bit of a door with white trim through the doorway of the older part of the house. If the trim in the newer part is white, you might be able to bring that into the kitchen - baseboards and window trim only. That would make it easier to stain the cabinets a tad darker if you wanted too - though it is a lot of work. If your doors are standard size, you could order unfinished oak doors and drawer fronts, finish those and then you would only need to strip the boxes. I would not even consider it except for the lovely darker woodwork in the older part of the home. I am not sure how darker cabinets would work with the lighter wood ceiling. I have both light and darker oak in my basement and it does not bother me, but your space could be different. My kitchen with short apron farm sink: https://www.houzz.com/photos/my-pics-work-in-progress-phvw-vp~93784356 https://www.houzz.com/photos/my-pics-work-in-progress-phvw-vp~93784291 Darker stain - basement kitchenette: https://www.houzz.com/photos/my-pics-work-in-progress-phvw-vp~65270573 I did not have a corner cabinet for the basement kitchen and put together a corner with shelves I made. A carpenter could manage similar and you can curtain a farm sink (short or tall apron) if you have to mess with cabinets moving the sink or pulling it out to fit the farm sink. This curtain is easily moved: This one is really sweet - been trying to figure out something in between for my own kitchen:)

In my new home, I have a housekeeper come every other week. I like clean homes. I do NOT like the actual job of cleaning them. I'd rather work in the garden, or do some cooking, or deal with the chickens, or keep up with physical maintenance and house painting/staining, or do graphic arts or anything else. I'm fine with doing laundry, too. I clean up after myself in the kitchen, but the housekeeper does floors, bathrooms and general dusting/windows and such. And I now have a robot vacuum who is pretty decent at what he does. He even has a name: Sharkey. I'm not crazy about cleaning his filter, but it comes with the territory and lasts five minutes... I didn't have a housekeeper back at my old CT home. One reason my getting out of there and getting the place on the market is taking so long... especially since I then had a full time job that lasted well over the standard 40 hour work week. THIS one will be clean! But it doesn't need to be anally-House Beautiful clean. Simply lived in and tidy. My reasons for not wanting a fully white kitchen or other rooms are not about appearing clean, but about my just only wanting white as an accent. Aesthetically. That's what works for my sense of eye appeal.