OOOOH, I don’t know where to start! So many projects to work on in this house…..AND I LOVE IT!!!! Follow me through all of our DIY Home Projects. But first I’m going to take a step back!
Why renovating (almost) every room in a house?
Why did we decide to renovate every room in our new house? It is not that we have tons of money to spend. We have 3 kids! But that is also part of being Dutch, I think.
- The Dutch are mostly very practical. To live so close together (the Netherlands is 1/6th of Iowa, but there are 17 million people), they need to work efficient and get things done.
- Some people say the Dutch are problem solvers and organized.
- I don’t think a lot of Dutch are open-minded, some are. Some are pushing their way of thinking (which could be a problem, doing these DIY Home Projects with my husband. Sorry, hun, it’s in my blood;)
- The Dutch want to get the best for the cheapest price. And that is what I’m trying to do with our Home Projects. We try to find solutions to make things practical, on a budget, and it still looks beautiful to show it off!
Our family of 5 lived in a house of 1200 sqf. for almost 11 years. It was a new house, but it was getting a little too small, or our family was getting too big. Especially if we invited people over for Sunday brunch, Thanksgiving, Christmas or a birthday party. Not to mention when each of our kids brought a friend over to play.
I started to look for a bigger house in 2016. Every time I found a bigger house, a house we could afford, the house was in bad shape. A new roof was needed or the basement needed to be redone. These could be big investments and big time consuming projects. Or I showed it to my husband and he said: “Naahh!”
One day in March 2018 I found a house which is almost 2,000 sqf. and build in 1996. I showed it to my husband THIS time and he said “HELL YES!!!”. We went to see it and the kids were all over it. The house has a lot of wood, bamboo flooring almost throughout the whole house. A weird lay out, but I liked that and I think it would work for our family very well.
Our little house was quickly on the market. We repainted the walls in the house, cleaned it inside and out and touched up the curb appeal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a quick sale.
We made this super bold move and in a non-Dutch way, we rented the new house and had the little house for sale at the same time. Don’t ask me why we did it…it just felt right! That meant that there was a huge risk of paying mortgage AND rent at the same time. It took us 15 months before we sold the little house and bought our new house. Luckily we had renters for a lot of those months. But these were still very stressful 15 months! Part of it we did Open Houses and individual showings ourselves. At the end we found a wonderful realtor who eventually sold the house for us!
In those 15 months we settled into our new-to-become home and the DIY House Projects started to pop up in my mind and on my “Pinterest”- boards. I made a folder with paint examples, drawings of the rooms and to-do lists. The idea of buying our new house was so real to me, I couldn’t believe, we could go back to our little house, because we couldn’t pay for 2 houses! It was very close a few times!
On February 15, 2020 was the day we sold our little house AND bought our house we lived in for 15 months…..what a relief! Time to start our DIY Home Projects! It was kind of scary too, because my husband and I never really did any DIY Home Projects together before. Or neither of us are skilled in anything. Okay, we can change a light bulb, but that’s about it! This could be very interesting!
And then the COVID-19 pandemic started. We were all home! The kids suddenly all had their individual “Home school” schedules. In between, I managed to do some of these projects.
Come back for more DIY Home Projects
Because we’re not done yet!
1. Bathroom
2. Master Bedroom
3. Kids room Girl
Hello everyone,
Welcome to my Crafty Dutch Girl blog! Grab a cup of “koffie” and browse through fun blog posts about our Dutch family expat life in the USA, Dutch history, Dutch recipes, Dutch things to do in the USA and all kinds of crafts and activities. Don’t forget to connect with me for new ideas! “Groetjes en tot ziens”.