We’ve officially been homeowners for three months and it still feels like yesterday that we were closing on it. Some days, I feel like we’ve got this home ownership thing down, but most days I feel like we’re barely keeping our head above water as we try to figure everything out. Turns out, there is a LOT more that goes into owning a home that we didn’t realize (and I thought we were really prepared!)
READ MORE: The Carr Home: The House Buying Process
Since owning a home is a new adventure for me, I really want to share our experiences here on HTC. If this is something you want to read more content on (like how we’re decorating our space and other lessons we’re learning) please let me know in the comments below!
5 Lessons for First-Time Homeowners
Lesson One: Yards are a LOT of work
We’ve never had a yard before, but that was on the top of our “must-have” list because we wanted our pups to have a space they could play in every day. We were prepared to buy a lawn mower after moving in but didn’t think beyond that. Turns out, there is more to maintaining a yard than just mowing it every two weeks.
The previous owners didn’t do a great job of maintaining the lawn or yard over the last few years, but we didn’t realize how rough of shape it was in until a couple weeks into being homeowners. We had to get weed killer to spray between the cracks of our driveway because they were overgrown with tiny grass and weeds. Our lawn was COVERED in dandelions, which spread like wildfire, so we spent several hours pulling them up by hand. That helped with the dandelion problem but made our front lawn pretty lumpy from all the holes. We have patches of thick grass and patches of dry grass, so we learned that we needed to fertilize the grass at least twice during the season. We also had to figure out how to turn on and program our sprinkler system (which we put off for weeks because we were convinced something was going to be wrong with it.) Thankfully, our next door neighbors came over to help Dustin turn them on and run the test and we only had one sprinkler head (out of 25) that didn’t run properly. Additionally, our whole backyard is fenced in, which means that Dustin needed a weed whacker on top of a lawnmower to cut down the grass that grows along the fence.
[Read more…] about The Carr Home: Lessons as First-Time Homeowners v.1
