This blog is an account of my family's various misadventures in DIY home repair and remodeling while living in an older, small home of 888 square feet. Hopefully it will be therapeutic to us to share our experiences in home repair, after all misery loves company.
We hope that our readers will learn something useful from our DIY mistakes.
We were a young couple, just in our twenties, with two children when we bought this small "starter" home in 1990. A few short years later we would have two additional children, making us a family of six living in this small space.
As we quickly discovered, there were many issues with this home that were created because of the manner in which the home was originally constructed in 1973.
There were of course, other issues with the house.
I was told by my next door neighbor that well over a dozen families lived here over the years before we bought the house in 1990. This included a hair dresser who had her shop in the kitchen, and a member of the local branch of a rather notorious biker gang.
Home Ownership Lesson #1: ALWAYS talk to the neighbors BEFORE you buy a house. Having so many people here over the years created other issues with the house and surrounding property that could best be described as the natural result of decades of "deferred maintenance."
Finally, there have been numerous issues with the house and property created by us and our children living here, as well as various calamities and "acts of God," including all of the pipes freezing and later bursting after a cold snap that saw temperatures reach 24 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the collapse of the roof of the garage due to over three feet of snow, and the damage to the kitchen after a fire.
If you would like to learn more about the challenges of living in a small house, and our misadventures in home maintenance, home repair and home remodeling, please click on the My Beloved Hovel Blog Page to read more about our family's quest to turn our beloved hovel into a comfortable and livable home! To learn more about specific product reviews of the products we purchased and used along the way in our DIY escapades, please click on the Product Reviews Page.
