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My husband and I thought we were going to love taking care of the gardens and doing yard work. One month into the new house, we're looking for a lawn maintenance company. We had no idea it was so time-consuming and backbreaking.
I like yard & garden work.
That said, the house my family now lives in is the 5th house we've owned - so there are really no surprises.
This time we bought a 4,000 sqf two-story brick house with 4 bedrooms. It already had brand new high-efficiency furnace, heat pump & central air, as well as new plumbing & electrical. But the lady we bought it from was really falling behind on regular maintenance. So her loss was our gain - literally - and we've thoroughly enjoyed fixing it up. We absolutely love our house!
This thread is good! At first I thought we might have made a mistake
not taking the first house we had planned to,it had a HUGE irregular
shaped yard, now Im glad Ive got my tiny yard,just big enough for
bbq parties and a couple raised beds. Now if we could just get
the holes fixed that we drilled to pump in cellulose into a couple interior
walls for sound dampening(it works!). Its a bugger to get texture right.
I honestly dont think we can.
Greenchili
Last edited by Greenchili; 12-04-2008 at 08:54 AM..
Reason: spelling
We made our house too big. It is hard to care for clean and heat all that space. Smaller would have been better. We added a sunroom that we really never use. It is pretty mcuh a place for the dog to sleep. We have too many exterior doors (8). It is hard to get them all sealed, and make certain that the kids close them when they go in and out. It is fun for the kids to go out one door and in another, then out another, etc, but they tend to leave them open.
The verdict is still out on the pool. We set it up to maintain itself (Salt Chlorinater, execellent filtration and a robotic cleaner), but there is still a lot of maintanence and we do nto use it as much as I thought that we would. The leaves are a pain. How do you get leaves off of the bototm of a pool? We just dive down and scoop them up with out hands. Once they sink, nothing seems to get them out.
We made our house too big. It is hard to care for clean and heat all that space. Smaller would have been better. We added a sunroom that we really never use. It is pretty mcuh a place for the dog to sleep.
Unfortuantely we are about to add a "sunroom" to our place.
Ours will be more of a "mudroom"(because right now all of our shoes and boots end up on the kitchen floor....) and a place for plants in the winter.
Lot of people we know are wanting to fill their pools with concrete and get on with their lives.
Our pool is enclosed (the enclosure can be opened) it is pretty neat and keeps out most of the debris. Somehow leaves still manage to get in though. Creepy things leaves, I think that they crawl in looking for a swim and just end up drowning. If we ever get everything to work properly, our pool should be essentially maintenance free. That IF seems to be difficult to achieve.
We have a large yard (one acre) and we love it. However it is mostly woods so there is nto a lot of maintenance.
The POOL!!! We also have a HUGe inground pool and I swear it takes us longer to clean it than the kids actually swim in it. Plus, we have NO trees, but all our neighbors do so of course all of their leaves end up in MY pool. Stupid leaves!!! But, one good thing about the pool is it's gunite, so we just drain it in the winter and it's less maintainence. Also, this year we had a really short summer and were out of town alot so we didn't use it as much as we thought we would. But, I plan to stay home every day next summer and get my $$ worth
Well, I have another reason to hate my pool!!! This spring my Aust Shep decided to walk inside the pool while we were trying to drain it. We were gone and didn't even think about him getting into it Anyhoo, he fell in the deep in and couldn't climb back out the shallow end cause he kept slipping. Luckily, he could stand in it and it was only knee deep. But, he tore up his nails trying to dig out and I had to take him to the vet cause he got an infection. Needless to say, he stayed away from the pool since then. Well...till tonight. We drained our pool for the winter, but it has been raining and there is about a foot of nasty old rain water in the deep in. I guess he decided to explore and the slanted part was all icy and he slipped in. We let our Jack Russel out to go potty and after he wasn't barking at the door awhile later, I went looking for him and heard a splash and a whine. So, I yelled for the kids to come help and ran and turned on the pool/yard lights and saw that both the dogs were in the icy yucky water. So, I climbed down as far as I could to try to grab their collars and I slipped all the way in. The water was so cold and so dirty...I felt so bad for my dogs. So, I was able to grab my Jack Russel's collar and push him up to my kids, but my Aust Shep kept running from me. I finally got ahold of my Aust Shep and my Jack got all excited and fell in again So, I got him back out, had the kids put him in the house and had to start all over with my Aust Shep! I finally tied a rope to his collar, wrapped it around my wrist, and had the kids and neighbor pull us out with the long pool vacuum! Now, I am draining it the rest of the way to prevent another accident. We were "supposed" to put up a fence this summer, but didn't get around to it. This year, it will definitely be a priority!!! UGH
High ceilings!!! It makes for a nice, dramatic entrance in our foyer and our sunken family room. It's one of the things I loved when we first saw our house. Now that we want to paint..... Plus, cleaning and wiping cobwebs are a pain as well. Don't even get me started on heating the family room.
Honorable mentions, but not really something I have to deal with:
Our master have a sitting room. Ok so now we have to buy furniture to put in there. Right now its being used as a place for my two boys to run wild, jump, and do cartwheels.
Oversized garden tub in master bathroom. So ask me how many times we've actually taken a bath in this thing? You would be right if you guessed none. Kind of wish the separate shower was much, much bigger.
Fireplace. This is something else we don't use. It's coming in handy right now since Santa needs a place to enter the house Besides, where else will we hang the stockings. Otherwise, it's a wall I can't use to rearrange my furniture.
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One month into the new house, we're looking for a lawn maintenance company. We had no idea it was so time-consuming and backbreaking. 
UGH
Plus, cleaning and wiping cobwebs are a pain as well. Don't even get me started on heating the family room.
