Renovation Update

Renos in the suite are moving forward, albeit slowly. We didn’t want to wait until we were completely finished before putting an ad out, because then we would likely have to wait until April 1st to rent the suite. So we cleaned up as much as possible and put an ad out. The suite shows really well even with the living room unfinished. We’ve had five inquiries so far: a 50-year-old landscaper with her 26-year-old son living with her for six months (she also has a dog and three cats); a young couple with a four-month-old baby; a single mother and her six-year-old son; and a retired man and his still-working wife whose house they rent is being sold. An interesting cross-section of people, and three out of four have pets. I’m slightly reluctant about dogs, knowing how dirty they make this house after being outside. I bought carpet yesterday, and it’s light beige! I wanted something neutral, and now I’m thinking damn that’s going to look dirty fast.

I have to tell you, it’s emotionally taxing on me, all these renovations. I want to learn and I want to do as much as possible myself, but I don’t have any experience at all with homes. I’m finding myself trying very hard to plan ahead, but I keep making mistakes, or miscalculations. And then I feel stupid and inadequate and why did I think I could ever do this? It’s almost a DIY disaster around here some days.

We took down a wall, and now of course getting heat to that room properly is near impossible without cutting dozens of holes in the TEXTURED ceiling. There is an electrician here this morning, trying to solve this problem. We’ve managed to figure something out, but I will have to fix a few holes in the wall, and the baseboard heater isn’t in the best spot. Hopefully it heats up the room enough. I’m sure carpet was the best flooring solution now, as laminate would have been too cold on the feets.

Am I worried too much about the comfort of my tenants? We’re spending $900 to put carpet into 300 square feet. And I even bought pretty cheap carpet at $1.50 a square foot. Then there’s underlay, installation, tax. It all adds up to much more than we wanted to spend, but we didn’t really budget or prepare very well before taking the wall down. Should we have left the room as storage? Should we have put in laminate? Should we have tried to match up the very thin flooring (which sits right on top of concrete!) and thrown a rug over the tiles leftover from the wood stove we took out?

Sure, I’m concerned about how much $ we are spending on our rental suite, but I also feel good about it. It’s just in my nature to do things as right as possible. The room needed heat and it needed to be a long-term solution. The rooms needs flooring and it must be comfortable. I learned an important lesson once, from the landlady at my Metchosin home. It was such a lovely house. She told me that she designed and built it thinking how she would feel if she was living there herself. I always appreciated her sentiments — afford others the same respect you would give yourself. It’s simply a good way to be.

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