It is a well known fact that living in San Francisco is expensive. Apartment rent in a decent 1 or 2 berooms in a good neighborhood costs fortune, there are tons of nice but expensive restaurants and all the nice small and unique boutiques sell three digits and four digits shoes and dresses. Just walk out to embarcadero on saturday, and some organic fruits alone would cost $3-$4/lb, and gasoline price already high in nation, higher yet within california skyrockets to highest in the city. And, yet there are nice houses, well maintained, and owner occupancy too. How does one do that? Go rob a bank? Unless one's willing to go like mission bay or something, finding anything under half-million is like looking for gold dust in sand beach. Especially
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We'll install one. We were very optimistic. I grew up watching my parents renovating house on their own, with a few visits to Home Depot now and then. They did wall paper in the living room, my mother picked bathroom tiles and my father installed it in 3 weeks of time, and my mother picked out a dishwasher to replace an old one and my father read instruction and did it in 1 weekend. So how bad can it be? The partitioning of wall was ok, the place is newly painted. Kitchen looks old and window/drapery is ancient but we can take care of it. A month into occupying our new home, 3rd floor 3 bedroom with a small balcony, we picked out a new curtain to replace faded pink vertical blinds in the livingroom. With lots of dusts to inhale, it took like a whole weekend but it was done. Wall looks somehwat ugly with holes and old paints under old curtain bracket that is now visible. We got used to it, and it's pretty nice and decent. Next comes kitchen. The realtor guy who was selling another unit in the complex remembered ours as 'ah! the one with pipe in the kitchen'. Yup, that's us, sadly... The old owner had not renovated the place since it's original construction and everything in kitchen screamed old and …show more content…
I want to see the flowers and trees start to bloom, to hear the smack of baseballs in the park by our house, and spend warm lazy days in the backyard. I start to buy flowers and bulbs in anticipation of spring and summer, buy seeds with the promise of a lush garden in months to come, and am torn between wanting one more good snowstorm and not wanting the newly budding tree branches to be broken from a late season blizzard. Now is the time I get excited and energized about the fun things I'll be doing once the weather gets warmer. I start to budget for vacation, pay attention to what I'm eating (in case that vacation includes a bathing suit), and take a critical look at our house and all the projects that need to be finished. While there are huge items on that list (expanding the second floor to include 2 more bedrooms), the big things won't happen for a few years. There are plenty of smaller things however, because we just bought our house last summer and haven't had the time or weather yet to get things off of our to-do list. This Summer's Home Improvement To-Do List: Staining and sealing our wooden deck. Planting a garden. Painting. Sealing our Wood Deck We have two very small wood decks with stairs to our back yard. They have never been sealed and the lack of waterproofing is starting to show with cracks and discoloration. This summer I intend to get a wood stain plus sealer from Home Depot or Lowe's
We'll install one. We were very optimistic. I grew up watching my parents renovating house on their own, with a few visits to Home Depot now and then. They did wall paper in the living room, my mother picked bathroom tiles and my father installed it in 3 weeks of time, and my mother picked out a dishwasher to replace an old one and my father read instruction and did it in 1 weekend. So how bad can it be? The partitioning of wall was ok, the place is newly painted. Kitchen looks old and window/drapery is ancient but we can take care of it. A month into occupying our new home, 3rd floor 3 bedroom with a small balcony, we picked out a new curtain to replace faded pink vertical blinds in the livingroom. With lots of dusts to inhale, it took like a whole weekend but it was done. Wall looks somehwat ugly with holes and old paints under old curtain bracket that is now visible. We got used to it, and it's pretty nice and decent. Next comes kitchen. The realtor guy who was selling another unit in the complex remembered ours as 'ah! the one with pipe in the kitchen'. Yup, that's us, sadly... The old owner had not renovated the place since it's original construction and everything in kitchen screamed old and …show more content…
I want to see the flowers and trees start to bloom, to hear the smack of baseballs in the park by our house, and spend warm lazy days in the backyard. I start to buy flowers and bulbs in anticipation of spring and summer, buy seeds with the promise of a lush garden in months to come, and am torn between wanting one more good snowstorm and not wanting the newly budding tree branches to be broken from a late season blizzard. Now is the time I get excited and energized about the fun things I'll be doing once the weather gets warmer. I start to budget for vacation, pay attention to what I'm eating (in case that vacation includes a bathing suit), and take a critical look at our house and all the projects that need to be finished. While there are huge items on that list (expanding the second floor to include 2 more bedrooms), the big things won't happen for a few years. There are plenty of smaller things however, because we just bought our house last summer and haven't had the time or weather yet to get things off of our to-do list. This Summer's Home Improvement To-Do List: Staining and sealing our wooden deck. Planting a garden. Painting. Sealing our Wood Deck We have two very small wood decks with stairs to our back yard. They have never been sealed and the lack of waterproofing is starting to show with cracks and discoloration. This summer I intend to get a wood stain plus sealer from Home Depot or Lowe's