Owning a home six months on

Hey! Remember when I wrote that post about the long eight year journey to buy a house? Turns out I’ve now owned a home for half a year so I decided to do a follow up post on what it’s been like. In fact, I can describe it in one word:

Busy.

Owning a home is one thing, but when your first home is a new build, the amount of work that you have ahead of you is a lot. Plus, since I lived with my parents for eight years after graduating, I didn't have much furniture of my own. So the amount of time spent assembling and buying furniture was going to be higher than expected.

There’s been moments where I've gone “I don’t have this? How come I don’t have this? I thought houses came with this.” My wife has had similar thoughts as well, especially when we realised that we'd need to buy bathroom mirrors and towel rails.

But slowly, things are coming together. It’s starting to feel like a home and not an empty shell of a house that’s for sale.

In terms of permanent fixtures, there’s so many things to buy. Here’s a list of things that I’ve bought that are a permanent fixture:

• Blinds x3
• House sign
• Curtain rail
• Hand towel rail x3
• Bathroom mirrors x2

And for furniture I’ve bought:

• Kitchen table, chairs, bench
• Coffee table
• TV bench
• Curtains
• Mattress
• Bed frame
• Side tables
• Bathroom cabinet
• Console table
• Chest of drawers
• Free standing Mirror
• Lamp shades x9
• Ring alarm system (it’s honestly cool, I'm tempted to write up a post about it)

And in terms of what I need to buy:

• Wardrobe (probably the biggest purchase)
• Keylite blinds (yes, special blinds) x2
• Vanity table
• Pictures
• Bed mattress for spare bedroom
• Bed frame for spare bedroom
• Side tables for spare bedroom
• Curtains for spare bedroom
• Extra office chair for my wife
• Garden furniture

As you can see, there is a mountain of work left to do.

There’s probably some things that I’ve forgotten from this list, and thinking about it, I could probably put more furniture in the bedroom (as it’s quite big, even bigger than the bedroom my parents had when I was a kid!). Maybe add a table in a corner somewhere with some draws to create some more storage.

Decorations is also another thought (and something else I need to spend money) to make the place feel more like a home and more complete. I'll need to purchase plenty of pictures, objects etc to decorate the home. All of this will take time (and money)

The garden is another problem, the grass is getting long so I need to buy a mower and cut it. When I first moved in, I needed to let the grass grow so the roots would grab the ground, and with the wet weather, I haven't found the opportunity to cut it. Plus, with the summer months approaching it'll be good to have some furniture so me and my Wife can eat outside (plus, handy when entertaining guests).

In terms of how much I’ve spent, I don't have an accurate answer but roughly I’d say somewhere between £2K and £3K. Furniture is pretty expensive, and I’ve been buying mine from Argos and IKEA most of the time. And with paying a mortgage, bills and cost of living, I would’ve liked to have done more but have been unable to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed working on the house, it’s great to turn an empty house into a home. Working on the house has been a priority and has taken time away from other things (like updating this blog and working on my other hobby projects!).

I’ve also written up some key points that I’ve learnt about owning a home.

Take your time

At first I thought I could get majority of the house ready in a couple of weeks. I was hugely wrong. Turns out buying and assembling furniture takes time. I will say, I’m quite good at assembling furniture now. But it's taken me plenty of attempts to get good at it.

You still need to measure for furniture, plan out where everything will go and organise which rooms have the highest priority. All of this takes time, and think of it as a sprint, not a race.

Budget it!

Can you believe how expensive furniture is? The cost of lampshades took me by surprise. I had an idea of buying plenty of furniture and then building it over time. Turns out, that plan wouldn't work. I can only guess that the cost of living crisis played a part in why furniture is so expensive. I know that I'll need to save up over a few months so I can buy a wardrobe (which are very expensive).

Research

So the windows I have in my bedroom are so unique that they have their own unique serial numbers. Yes, that's not a lie. Each window has their own unique serial number (no firmware thankfully, yet). And if you guessed if these special windows require special blinds then you are correct, and the special blinds are very expensive.

Focus on the essentials

When I first moved in, I didn't really know what room to work on first. So I decided to work on the essential rooms first (like the main bedroom having a bed to sleep in, etc). Once that had been done and I could live day to day I shifted my focus on quality of life improvements.

Make time for yourself

You can get burnout on constantly working on furniture etc, so do take a break. It's something I've learnt the hard way.

Accept help

This is another lesson that I've learnt the hard way. Sometimes, you need to accept help. And getting help can get jobs done quicker. Plus, it's good to get the perspective from someone else.

More time on the blog and hobby projects?

I'm hoping I get some more time to myself. It's been a very busy six months and as more of the jobs I need to do around the house go down, I hope I can spend some time enjoying living in my house.

I'm tempted to book a two week holiday so I can focus tackle the bigger jobs and hopefully take some time off to relax. I haven't even looked at updating the F1 2023 Data Analysis project or PyTorch, so that's something I want to look at. Plus, I've got several in progress blog posts that I'd like to finish!

And that's a wrap on this short blog post. Hopefully I'll post some more interesting content in the near future.

See you next time 👋