It was 7 months ago today that Leslie and I picked up the keys on our first home, a 1920’s Craftsman bungalow in Long Beach, CA. We bought more house than we thought we could afford (and sometimes I question that decision), and overall it’s been a great experience. The feeling of walking in the door of a place that you have complete domain over is unlike anything else. As difficult as it is to make the mortgage, insurance, taxes and other expenses each month, the grounded feeling I have feels so much better than the displaced feeling of living in a place owned by someone else.

I love our home. We chose it because there were a lot of major upgrades already done like upgraded electrical and plumbing, a new roof and upgraded kitchen and bathroom. As nice as it is, though, it’s only starting to feel like ours as we start to decorate it with our tastes. Which brings me to our latest project.

A few weeks back, Leslie was sitting in what we’re calling the Reading Room and decided she wanted to take all the wood trim around the windows, doors, baseboards and crown molding back down to the wood and stain it. This is typical of bungalows from that period and, admittedly, is really attractive.It’s been a couple weeks since we started and so far it’s been a tedious process of laying down heavy stripping chemicals, waiting, scraping and repeating that process over and over, sometimes on the same surface because of the copious amounts of paint, some of which might be lead based. If we end up dead from this process, let this post be a recording of the events that led up to our demise. I hope that doesn’t happen though. Leslie and I have come to an agreement about this project. She doing the majority of the paint stripping and I’m going to do the sanding and then we’ll probably both do the stain work. That way only one of us dies at a time.

There’s another step to this process that I’m not looking forward to mostly because of the cost involved. The windows are the old weight and pulley system, some of which are not working properly. I probably won’t be able to do the work myself, so I’ll have to bring an expert, which means a big dollar special tradesman. Whatever the cost, I believe the return will be far greater. The place will look much cooler and the I’ve been told the value jumps up quite a bit. I hope so because I need that value to raise about another 100k before I can refinance and get rid of the killer 2nd mortgage. Wish us luck. I’ll update regularly so you can see the progression.

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