I missed a semi-important anniversary eleven days ago. On the 17th, it was one year since we became home-owners 🙂 I can’t say that we marked the occasion with any celebration though.
It’s a nice thing, to have our own place. It’s still in need of a good deal of work – in a year we haven’t done a great deal to it at all. Partly due to lack of funds, and partly due to lack of energy. The most important thing we have done is tear down the wall between kitchen and lounge, creating one big open-living space. That makes a huge difference to the feel of the place, even though it’s still a bit lacking, cosmetically speaking. The kitchen was rebuilt using the same cabinetry in a different configuration, but with new benchtops, a new sink and tapware, oven, cooktop and rangehood. We finally installed the new tiles a couple of weeks back, and we’ll be repainting the cabinets and attaching new door and drawer handles sometime soon (ish, I hope 😳 ). Then the entire lounge/kitchen/dining area needs painting and the floorboards will be polished sometime in ’07. We move pretty slowly at this stuff (the next door neighbour is putting us to shame), but I truly hope that this time next year I can report much greater progress.
Still. We’ve weathered our first year of mortgage repayments (with two interest rate rises to boot), survived our first taste of actual renovation, and we still like the place. Can’t ask for much more than that.