In my first house (which needed a ton of work) we painted the living room and dining room, as well as sanded and polyurethaned the floors prior to moving in. The rest of the house was ripped apart as time/money allowed.

In my current house, I had a leisurely time moving (bought in September 2005, moved in May 2006). The kitchen stayed the same; the family room and office were painted first. Several bedrooms were painted a bit later, but prior to move in. The dining room was completely re-done prior to move in including the carpet being ripped out and a new floor laid. I am finally going to have the living room painted and draperies made. The floor will wait until our dog is no longer with us (old boy with walking issues).

I'd advise doing all floors before moving in. If you are using rugs as drop cloths, that would require painting before floors. I've obviously done it both ways, and gained little from a long wait. It was so nice to have 90% of the house finished before move-in. I am dreading the mess and clutter that comes with dismantling a room for painting.

Good luck :-)

Experience has taught me to wait and see how you are going to live in your new house. Till you've been there for awhile you really don't know how the spaces are going to work for you or how the light is going to play in it.
Buying a house is exhausting work. Moving is emotional. Both are money eatters. I've found I made better and less mistakes by giving myself time to make the adjustment physically, mentally and finacially before going into any major redos.
The one thing I do do right away however is to organize my storage spaces in the attic, basement and garage. Normally people tend to do those spaces last. I find that getting them done first you find out how much work space you really have and what condition things in those often hidden spaces are really in.
EXAMPL: Working in the attic you might discover a hidden leak. Which in turn might lead you to budget in a new roof. At the very least you know you need to keep an eye on the roof..Catching it early on you might save bigger repairs latter on or solve the reason the wall in a room downstairs is soft.
Something if you hadn't been spending sometime in the attic organizing it you wouldn't have known.

We're taking the wait and see approach too. I think it's giving more time to think through what we really want for this house.

We moved last fall and have had a few surprises like the thermostat was for a heat pump and not a natural gas heater. With the wrong thermostat it is possible to run the heater and air conditioner at the same time. Those little things that got painted over like expansion cracks are reappearing. I don't think the former owner bothered to contact the utility companies before he planted trees. I had the lines marked this week. There are trees planted near the buried electric and gas lines. I now know I can't plant roses in my front flower bed because there isn't enough light.

The things I'm mentioning aren't high ticket, but could end up nickling and diming us to death if we do something wrong.

When we moved almost two years ago, we had the immediate and the wait and see.

The immediate was getting the hardwood floors refinished, upsatirs carpet replaced and then hiring a cleaning service to throughly clean the house.

Next step was to get my workshop functioning. Can't make any repairs, changes without my tools and machines in place.

Third set was hiring a carpenter, paint contractor and landscape contractor. Replaced the builder's special entry door with an upscale ThermaTru with new exterior molding. The paint contractor power washed, primed and painted the exterior. The landscaper ripped out the old steps, walk and plantings (if you could call it that) and installed stone walkway, steps and walls plus a waterfall!

Painting the interior waited for almost a year. Color decisions are difficult for us. It started with the dinning room and has worked it's way to the living room, the family room, the kitchen and just last week, the full bath on the main level.

I'm just starting the pre work for the stairway to the bedrooms. I still have a barn to repair, a music studio to finish off and bathroom fixtures to replace.

Go by the philosophy we live by - "One day at a time, one step at a time."

Don't forget, you need to do all the other regular maintenance around the house and still have time to enjoy it and your family.

Enjoy the journey.

eal51 in western CT

I found a program online which allowed me to pre-place my furniture in each room to see how it would flow and and fit together. This made the physical moving in a piece of cake as my DH and his crew just followed the design for each room. We've been here four months now and it's all worked out beautifully.

I also second the advice to have whatever you want done to the floors BEFORE HAND. We had the opportunity to visit our home several times during different times of the day to see how and where the sunlight hit, and we chose appropriate replacement light fixtures based on this knowledge. We were also able to paint before we moved in with that in mind and with the exception of one room being a bit darker during the day than I anticipated it's worked out beautifully.

In summary, my advice is to do as much pre-planning and basic improvements before you move in because honestly once you're in you're exhausted for a couple of months from the physical and emotional relief of it being "a done deal". We are just now catching up and beginning to look at the yard and a few other projects we'd like to undertake eventually and muster up the energy to get them done.

Congrats on your new home!

We had the hardwood floors refinished, the laundry room floor vinyl replaced with slate, and the backyard fencing done as the first projects. I'd planned to paint a pepto-pink wall in the sitting room a neutral color before moving, but a month later, it's still pink! I do plan to paint it before anyone comes to visit.

We've spent most of this month adding pieces of furniture (left most of it behind) and opening up all the boxes. Endless boxes ... We're now to the point with the furniture that we can start hanging the paintings and photos and maybe getting out some vases etc.

Some other things we wanted done right away (replace vinyl in baths with ceramic tile) will be done later this year, instead of right away. And we're taking our time with painting too, except for that pink wall.

Don't sweat getting it all done right away. I'm amazed at those shows on tv where a couple buys a house and immediately rips it all up. I think you can just live and breathe in a space for awhile and see what inspirations come to you. I wouldn't buy a house with preconceived notions of how I'd instantly remodel it all.

Another strong supporting vote for doing the floors before you move in. I've been slowly retrofitting flooring and it is hands down the most disruptive, tedious and laborious chore of all. Remember, floors are where EVERYTHING else goes! Which means that if you have to remove or store each and every bit of that everything it's going to make the hassle factor a ton worse on the project, even before you get to the point of actually doing anything to the floor itself.

So if you can get those done before you have furniture, clutter, and the general debris of life piled on top it will make your life ever so much easier.

One of the things we're doing is having an alarm system installed. We want one anyway, and doing it now gives us some peace of mind as we begin to move boxes to the new house before we actually live there. We closed on the new place in mid-Feb, and don't close on the old house till the end of March, so we have time for a nice, leisurely move. (Although why do I doubt that's what it's going to be?)

Icheer, I'd be interested in the link to the site that lets you pre-plan your furniture placement.

Also if you need to have any cottage-cheese ceilings scraped, do that before you move in. We did that with our previous house and it is a messy, messy job.

Frankly, I would do as much as I could before moving in, depending on physical and financial exhaustion ;-) You probably already know if you prefer solid surface floors to carpeting, or neutrals vs color, etc. Trust your instincts and what you know about your preferences and get the 'background' done before all your 'stuff' goes in. You'll be glad you did. There will still be tons of details and little decisions you'll make to keep you busy after you've moved in.

I second getting the floors done before you move in. I wish we had done that in our tv room. The carpeting is 10 year old builder's grade stuff with a couple stains on it. We didn't care when we bought because we knew we'd be upgrading the carpet in a couple years once are kids are less likely to spill stuff on it.

Well, now we have a HUGE entertainment center with a projection tv in that room, and there's no WAY that thing will be moving anytime soon. Which means no redoing that carpet until we move out of the house.

Fortunately, we can recarpet the stairs and second floor (which is that same 10 year old builder's grade), and figure we'll just give a carpet allowance for the TV room to the buyers we sell to in the future.

As for paint, I recommend waiting until you are in the house. In our old house, we lived with the nasty wallpaper until we decided what we wanted to do in each room, and then we tackled stripping the wallpaper and painting. We did a room every few months until it was all done.

We painted before moving in, because we wound up replacing all the carpet (also beforehand). It's much more fun to paint when you don't have to worry about dripping on the carpet.

We had started bringing in boxes, but stored them all in the basement or garage until the furniture and stuff came (which was after the carpet/paint). The one room we didn't get done before the carpeting has yet to be done. I hope to do it this spring. Before the paint goes bad.

first thing you do before anything else: CHANGE THE DOOR LOCKS.

I thought I remembered using a room arranger by Better Homes and Gardens, but the only one I can find from my work computer is this one, which looks exactly the same but is from a different website.

Here is a link that might be useful: Room arranger

dgmarie,
Door locks! Of course, we did this in our last condo but haven't even re-thought of it yet. Thanks! I may consider putting off painting but go ahead and through some pergo down in the basement in place of the old carpet. I can see starting to store stuff down there and 10 years from now it's still teh same old green stuff!

Bumping to move troll spam down / off the page

we waited, last time, to do things like hang pictures, change closet shelving, etc.

And so we didn't do ANY of it, ever.

Next time, by gum, I'm installing the closet shelves, hanging hooks, and yes, hanging pictures RIGHT AWAY!

(we still have the locks from the old owners; the front-door look on the apartment building has changed, but not until we'd lived here several years)

If we had sold&bought, the timing wouldn't have allowed us to redo the floors (unless we had been able to convince the people we were buying from to let us redo the floors while they still owned it, and we might have succeeded, once we passed the point of no return) before moving in.

But it would still be easier to redo the floors before you unpack (and it might be worth it to move everything into storage, and stay at grandma's for the week they were being redone)

One other thing to do if you need to, is paint closets. My home was newly painted when I purchased it 10 years ago, but the closets were not done. From my experience the only time they are empty, is before you move in!