The First House--did you love yours?

[tagylyn]

My first house is a 78 yr old semi detached tudor house. I absolutely fell in love with it as soon as I drove in front of it and knew "this is the house". I scheduled a showing for 3 days later.
When I bought I felt it was a forever house but I also knew that life changes every moment.
5 yrs has gone by and my house is on the market and currently accepted a contract tonight. It is bittersweet, I actually teared up. I will probably cry at settlement
I married last October and my husband and I decided we wanted to move to Florida. He starts his new job the first week of September.
My husband loves this house too!! He's always saying "I wish we could take our house with us".
We are going to rent for a year untill we find "this is the house" again!

[KristyLiz]

I'm sorry you don't love your first house. However, I think the paneling can be easily changed and then you can put your own touches to the house and make it a home that you love.

As for me, I loved my first house!

It was perfect, and more than I expected. I cried when we moved 3 years later, even though the new house was bigger with more upgrades.

I think you just have an emotional attachment to your first house.

[aamazing75]

I'm glad someone posted about this issue. I have been looking at a lot of homes to purchase & I am having a personal issue with carpet. It grosses me out to think of having to move in and live on the carpet somone else has lived on. I really like wood flooring, but I think we'd have to wait a little while to affort to put it in. What do you do in the meantime, just have it professionally cleaned? Also, some of the paint jobs in some of them are a bit shoddy, like paint on the moulding, sloppyness in general. I guess I need to get over it if I'm ever gonna go through with buying a "used" home, huh?

[CheyDee]

The most important thing is that the house has good "bones" and is in a good location. Things like paneling are cosmetic and can be changed. As suggested, you could paint over it (but you would still have those panel lines, unless you filled them in first with plaster) or sheet rock over it, but there are other options, too. Home improvement stores and the like sell textured wallpaper. It comes in an off white neutral color and is made to be painted. This wallpaper is much thicker than ordinary wallpaper and will hide all of the paneling underneath. They come in all sorts of low keyed, embossed designs through very ornate designs. You can be as creative as you want when painting this wallpaper after it is hung and may even want to dry brush some of the textured areas in an alternate color(s) after you paint a base color. Another option is to trowel plaster over the paneling and create a faux finish, which could then be painted in, for example, a Tuscany style.

I have purchased several homes and have never been deterred by bad paint jobs or ugly colors, carpeting, paneling, horrid or ripped wallpaper, etc. I just keep in mind how much work and $ I will have to invest in order to fix it the way I want it and weigh that in with the price of the house.

As for being grossed out by carpeting, I would rip up a corner of it in an inconspicuous place, (like where furniture would cover it), and see if I were surprised by wood floors underneath. If not and there was only a subfloor underneath, I would have the carpets professionally cleaned by a company that uses a truck mounted steamer, until I was ready to replace them.