
I love my house. I really, truly love it and have no intention of moving anytime in the near or distant future. I’ve had more than enough moving, buying and selling to last me a lifetime thankyouverymuch. That being said, I think we need to discuss a little something called “Updates Galore”. Have you seen this sign before? I’ve noticed during our home buying/selling process that a lot of realtors like to put a sign saying “Updates Galore” above the “For Sale” sign. From my experience, it’s a big bunch o’ hooey.
Let’s have a little lesson and look up the definition of “galore”. According to
dictionary.com it means “in abundance, in plentiful amounts.” That’s what I thought. To me, that means my house should have an
abundance of updates.
To be fair, here’s what’s been updated (in list format seeing as I do love a good list).
There are some nice items on there no doubt, but let’s take a look at what has not been updated galore.
An old fridge with lights and a water dispenser that didn’t work (Chris fixed those) and an ice dispenser that literally makes about one cube per day.
Numerous “grounded” 3-prong outlets that are not actually grounded. Glad we didn’t plug our expensive electronics into any of those!
A fuse box that wasn’t up to code (electrician mumbo jumbo about 100 amp vs. 200 amp and we are now upgraded to 200 amp. Yay us!)
An old furnace
An old A/C unit
Two full bathrooms with all their original 1950s fixtures/cabinetry –
one mint green,
one pink – including tub diverters that were so corroded that the water would simultaneously gush out of the tub spout and the showerhead regardless of which one you actually wanted to use (Chris fixed after numerous trips to the hardware store)
A basement “
half bath” that consists of a toilet, a shower head and a plywood wall and looks like it belongs in a prison cell
A garage door opener from the ‘70s that we can’t get a second remote for (the previous owners only had one to give us even though it’s a TWO car garage) because it’s old and dangerous. They stopped making it because it doesn’t have that handy dandy reversing mechanism that keeps it from squashing every man, woman, child and beloved pet that gets in its way
Numerous outdoor flood lights that we can’t figure out how to turn on. Yes, we have tried every switch we can find and putting in new light bulbs.
A sliding screen door that keeps falling off the tracks
Three cable lines that are not in overly convenient locations. One in a spare bedroom, one in my craft room and one in the dining room.
Yes, dining room. Yes, it’s really a dining room, not a kind of, maybe dining room, but a definite dining room.
Mostly original light fixtures which are these big squares set into the ceiling and we haven’t figured out yet how we can replace them with new fixtures
As I said, I love my house and fortunately a lot of those issues are things we can fix ourselves being the handy couple that we are or that work for the time being. And for the most part we find it comical. Oh, the outlets aren’t grounded? That’s ok, the house has UPDATES GALORE!
PS - If you clicked on any of those linkies and saw pictures of my house, please note, that is NOT my furniture. MY furniture is still at my old house until it sells (hopefully very soon!!) and those pictures were taken before we moved in.