The 4th owners of the house I grew up in had told me they were going to add on, either up or out the back. A year later I ran into them and they said no, they weren't going to add on, they found that the house worked perfectly for them as it was.

15 years later, after years of getting unsolicited offers and finally accepting one, they are selling to a family who wanted just the lot and are tearing down the house. They don't know the house, they just want to build a bigger one. Pretty sure it'll cause no end of problems for the house next door, that sits a little lower and is without a basement.

I think it depends on whether you purchased the house as a renovator. If I purchased a house that I had a different vision for and I bought it with the intent to make changes, then I'd start work right away.

When I purchased my home I made a few small changes (painted, swapped out a toilet and a sink).

After six years we gutted the bathroom and two years later did an addition moving the kitchen and adding a br/ba.

The second project was a result of my husband moving in. Had it still just been me, I would have just renovated the kitchen/ba as I originally planned.

Money, or lack there of, was the cause of my delay. That was a good thing because my life changed while I was gathering funds.

We've never taken on a major project, but did recently replace our perfectly fine front door on our home that's just a little over a year old with an iron-and-textured-glass door, and could not be more pleased. It's something that probably few people would care to tackle on a newer home, but it was important to us and I'm glad we made the change. That said, I'm no property virgin and can't see the value of living with something for a year before changing it - particularly since I'm fairly well versed in what I like and what I want.

Your pergola is gorgeous, Lars!

Lars, I love the pergola, too! Way better than the fire pit.

We haven't changed much with our house in the 23 years we've been in it. When the carpet badly needed replacing we installed laminate flooring in the main parts of the house and new carpet in the bedrooms. About 8-10 years ago we replaced the perfectly fine white Formica kitchen counters just for a fresher look and to cut down the size of the peninsula. And five years ago we remodeled most of the spare bathroom and had the master bath remodeled, just because they badly needed it.

Of course, we picked our house because we liked the angles and the large windows, so I guess we're still happy with those choices!

Donna

The first thing we did was to stain the white concrete patio

When we could afford it, we replaced the granite tile counter tops with quartz, of a somewhat similar color. I would have liked to have replaced the floor and cabinets, but I can live with both and would rather save the money. DB replaced the stove with a high end (red) Bertazzoni, even though the old one still worked fine - he just wanted something prettier and cleaner. The old stove had rust that I could not remove and a few plastic parts were missing. We replaced the old dishwasher with a quieter one, and we did the same with the washer and dryer. The counter tops were the most major reno we have done, and new gutters are probably second. We also bought a new door, partly because I was bored with the old one (It looks identical to the one on Bewitched, and I did not like seeing both of them at the same time.), and that made a dramatic difference to the front of the house as well as the living room. The old door had been cut down to 35" wide, and so the door hardware did not fit properly, as the hole for the door knob was in the wrong place. Our new door is a very different style.

We bought this house knowing that it needed redecorating, the kitchen needed major work, and we needed to add a full dormer on the 2nd floor and finish unfinished attic space, and add a bath - also redo another one. We could not have lived in this house very long without doing these things. It was finished just about a year after we bought it. No regrets.

I think the idea is to live with it for awhile to see what works and what doesn't from a functional standpoint....layout, kitchens, bathrooms....before you remodel. I think it's a good idea. You might decide you don't like that half wall in the DR or that you do like kitchen layout after all.

I agree with that in theory, and that's pretty much what we have done in the first 2 houses we've owned. But for our next house, we hope to find a place that needs some work and have it all done before we move in. I just am not interested in living through any more construction projects in my life!

Love the yard and patio!

We purchased a weekend property with the full intention of renovating. It was purchased for the location, and lot size, not for the actual house even though the house itself was move in ready.

Personally, I see no reason to live with something for a year before deciding if you love or hate it. If you know your own style, and what works for you, why wait? It may be functional but you'll never love it.

I think that first time home buyers (Property Virgins) might benefit by waiting and living in a house before taking on a major change. Owning is different then renting, pay for a few major repairs and then rethink your changes.

Sure, they may really really want a big jacuzzi tub, but if they take their time and think about it for awhile they may be able to talk to someone who will give them the negatives with the positives.

It totally depends on what the item is and how well you know yourself. A first time home owner may not know if they will take part in the the fire pit craze. Our first year we always had wall paper to remove, paint colors to change. Our first home I totally stripped/sanded and re-stained the kitchen cabinets with in a month of moving in. The DARK stain was NEVER going to be acceptable. There was no debate or doubt. I think there are plenty of people who buy a home knowing it is not PERFECT for them and have plans on how to make it so. Waiting a year certain things, particularly expensive, no going back things, might me smart.

eh...six to one half dozen to another, we could never have waited and lived with the house we bought for a year. It may sound like good advise for those buying turn key but it's not an ideal option for a lot of folks.

We tried to buy as turn key as possible because we really did not want to have to live through any major renovations, and other houses we looked at were going to require major changes - for us, in which case we would not have wanted to wait a year before renovating. With the house we bought, we had to pay $15,000 over our budget (which we borrowed from our sister) because everything in our neighborhood is so expensive. Even a vacant lot is over 1/2 million, and so the land values alone make small houses rather pricey. We could have afforded the house we bought at list price with the sellers paying closing costs, but there was a bidding war that drove the price up, which is fairly common here.

I saw a few houses that were decorated so horribly that I had a hard time getting past that; one had so many chopped up small rooms that I could not imagine how I could get a functional floor plan and still have the number of separate rooms that we needed. Plus it had washer and dryer in the middle of the kitchen and no other logical place to move them. They also had really awful AstroTurf in the back yard and a plethora of Hindu gods in the living room, and I did not want to arouse their wrath. One house had wall to wall mirrors with thousands of glass tchotchkes - very scary in earthquake country.

We renovated all of our bathrooms and the kitchen before we moved in. We ignored all advice to wait and live with it, and I am so glad we did. The benefit of not having to live there while the reno was going on far outweighed the small thing or two we would have done differently if we waited.

It's nice that you had the money to renovate before moving in. Our rent alone to stay in our house in Venice would have been $3500 a month, and that house now rents for $5000 a month. We did not want to spend that kind of money on rent any longer.

I do consider it a luxury that we were able to live elsewhere while the renovation was going on. It was expensive to stay in our rental for an extra six months, but I factored in the price of my sanity.

Your pergola is wonderful! Love the patio furniture too! We have been in our house just over a year. The only thing change we have made is our family room flooring. Before we moved in we replaced the carpet with wood floors that match the other wood floors. Otherwise, I would still like to change everything I wanted to change the first time I've visited the house. Also still have a bit of paralysis on my decorating, the house has such a split personality. Eventually I will just have to pick a direction and move forward.

Lars, I love your pergola. It looks so much more inviting and it must bring you hours of enjoyment and relaxation. For some things, maybe waiting up to a year to figure out exactly how you want things to work, make plans and selections might be a good idea. But sometimes you just know something isn't working out and then you should go for it.

Yes, you are right that our pergola offers us many hours of enjoyment and relaxation. We also installed two outdoor fountains, which attracts birds to come and play in the yard and water. Before the pergola, we did not spend that much time outdoors, as we really need the shade. The pergola came as a kit with a pretty much open top, and I added redwood slats so that it provides 80-90% shade. My brother is a redhead and cannot take much sun, and I simply prefer to sit in the shade. Also, a lot of the bromeliads that I grow cannot handle much sun, and I also have a few orchids in the pergola that cannot handle too much sun. Because we were tapped out after buying the house, we really did need to wait until we could afford to do much, but DB did rip up the carpet in his bedroom before moving in to expose the original oak floor. It needed a tiny bit of repair, but the carpet also had dog urine in it, which caused a horrible, unlivable odor. When we viewed the house before, there was always an overwhelming scent from some kind of masking deodorizer, and so I had no idea how horrible the dog urine smell was going to be. I think ripping carpet and replacing it with hardwood is generally a good idea, but in our case, the hardwood was already there under the carpet in two of the bedrooms.

I still want to paint the dining room/art studio but still haven't gotten around to it. I've lived with a color that I intensely dislike for seven years and will be much happier when I get that changed. If it were the living room or my bedroom, I would have changed it a long time ago.

I just bought my house a year ago, and it's taken me that long to figure out how I want to use the outdoor spaces. I thought I wanted it one way, but really, I want to do it differently. I'm glad I waited. But it wasn't out of respect for the house, it was plain old indecision! I love your pergola space, and love that you enjoy it.

I buy older homes that need updating since I don't want a house that has been updated with finishes that everyone else is doing. I closed on a 1950's ranch house in May that is in a great location, had a good footprint, plenty of space for me and my dogs, and a nice fenced yard for the dogs.

I knew when I bought it that the Master Bath needed to be redone right away, the shower tiles leaked water into the basement. Demolition is starting on Monday. I also will eventually redo the entire kitchen and change it's footprint. I could see that immediately.

I have a good eye and I can envision in my mind what I want as the end result, so while this house is nice now, it will be really nice when I get finished with it.

I think I would need a year in most places, especially if starting from scratch. I need that time to observe the way the light changes during the year and to get a feel for the way I occupy the space, or my family. When it comes down to it, even those things that are not incredibly expensive to change, like paint, I would hate to go through the effort of doing it again.

Another problem for me though is that I do not truly know what I want unless I have a mistake as a counterpoint. I thought I wanted yellow walls. We were in a rental while our house was being put and our landlord let us paint. Thank goodness because I found out that I did not truly want yellow, but more of an ochre which helped me pick the right color for the house being built.

For our gardens, our acreage was a blank slate and we had too many options of how to lay it out. While my vegetable garden/potager is lovely and will not be moving, I wish I had a better developed master plan and would have likely located it elsewhere but I did not have enough experience under my belt at the time to realize these things so now I can just make the best of it.

1929S, I like the way your back yard is lit. I added lighting only a couple of years ago:

The pergola has much more light inside it, as I strung a bunch of lights in its ceiling, and it is quite bright when we want to stay there at night, which we often do in the winter. Like you, we have pleasant outdoor temps all year, and this increases our living space significantly. Also, we have a Big Green Egg and do a lot of cooking outdoors. If I had known how inexpensive it was to add outdoor outlets, I would have done that sooner. I have an outlet to use for additional back yard lighting but have not yet installed it. We plan to put some pavers around the round fountain with a path connecting to the concrete. We may pave some more of the back yard near the back wall, as the soil is really bad for plants, and I think it would look neater and be easier to maintain. I like doing sections or projects in stages and see how it evolves over time. I think if I did everything at once, I would get bored with it.

I like your pavers also, which are much nicer than the concrete we got with our house. At some point, I want to put tiles (possibly Saltillo) over all the concrete in the back. I like your Spanish architecture, but there is none of that in my neighborhood, as it was built 1947-1953 (for Hughes Aircraft workers), and so all the houses are MCM generic, bungalow or ranch.

Another lighting element I want to replace is a porch light, preferably LED, that would be motion-activated, but in this case, it is almost impossible to find motion-activate - unlike the flood light in the back.

Thanks. Your house has a great look too.

We splurged on commercial grade hard wired string lighting with commercial outdoor 1.1 watt bulbs. All that lighting is the equivalent of about two regular light bulbs. It casts a nice even glow over the patio at night.

I need to look up the pavers. We had very old solid brick on the old patio, but couldn't match it for the expanded space.

Originally we were going to have a tree towards the back of the lot, but I really want a plunge pool in the future. We will retire in this house and like to be home, but it gets hot here. Today it's supposed to be 103 and a floatie plus a beer would really be nice. If we change our minds, then we'll add a tree.

That's hotter than Palm Springs! I'm only 2-1/2 miles from the beach, and so it is cooler here during the hot months, but it's still supposed to be 95 here today, but only 96 in PS. I'm sure 103 is unusual for your area of O.C. I'm going to have to water some plants at lunch.

It depends

If something really, really annoys me AND we can afford it-I change it right away..or pretty soon

But I do think about it. Very intensively lol. During "right away"

When I was choosing the floor color in the current house, I did all sorts of silly things, including putting the flooring samples next to my face, and looking at myself in the mirror..:) Technically, wasn't easy..I strongly reminded myself of that monkey with the eyeglasses, from the fable..:)

Otherwise, I can wait for years..

The new home, we couldn't wait for years, since once we decided on asbestos abatement-we were left with the shell of the house..

It was pretty hard. We're not there yet-and I already know so many mistakes have been made..some are more fault of the building crew, or just circumstances..but some are on us.

I'd rather have the luxury of living there while deciding, even shortly..when you're already in the space, you get the feel, you see what makes sense..it's like building a new road-you watch where cows naturally go, or something:) Only you are the cow, in this case:)

Oh well.

We'll have to do the landscaping though. The backyard greatly suffered through this long saga...and continues to-it's really, really hot here. As was already mentioned:)

Which brings me to the question-what's the difference between landscaping designer, and landscaping contractor?

The designer could have GC'd the project, but we used our contractor for the hardscape and our Gardner for sprinklers and planting.