Extreme Home Makeover: Meurer Edition

When Brett first bought our home in Novemeber 2006, he was convinced we'd be here for "Two, maybe three years-tops...." The plan was to make a decent profit, and use that profit to buy a much nicer single family home. Given the state of the economy, however, it seems we are going to be stuck here quite a bit longer. Our community was never finished and our builder left 8 or 9 brand new townhomes when he foreclosed. The bad news for us: if we sell now, which we'd love to, we will probably take about a $40,000 -$50,000 bath. Obviously, we are not interested in doing that, so we are staying put for now.

Since we're stuck here longer than anticipated, we need to do something drastic to "make it work" around here. Our storage is extremely limited, and we are trying to keep Little B's toys separate from our "adult space"- which is not proving to be successful the way were are set up now. So, now that the tax return is in, its time to begin the makeover. Item #1 is moving everything out of our basement to create a playroom of sorts for the little man. I met with a builder yesterday who will be installing a full wall of custom built-in storage for us in the basement. This will hopefully alleviate the 'toys eating our house' issue of late. The problem being, there is so much more to do and it is unfortunately NOT cheap! Our "to do" list for now remains:

-Get new carpeting or get carpets professionally cleaned (I'm pulling for new!)

-Get new curtain rod and curtains for over patio door

-Windows washed

-Finish buying and hanging shelves in hallways to accomodate our thousands of framed pictures

We look forward to gradually checking things off our list (and hopefully not adding many more!).