When my husband and I bought our house over 10 years ago, we knew it would need a little TLC. In our eagerness to get out of our getting-too-small-for-us rental, we both immediately fell in love with our home’s quiet, convenient location, large yard, and the wonderful neighbors, many of whom we already knew. We brushed off its dated features, which, in large part, had not been changed since 1983, the year the house was constructed. Every realtor, inspector, and contractor that walked through with us before we made our final offer assured us: “This house has great bones.” And it really does.

While many of our friends were opting for move-in-ready homes with open floor plans, on-trend subway tile, sparkling stainless steel appliances, and a different shade of fresh gray paint in every room, we embraced our ‘80s baby with her more-closed-than-open design, canary yellow walls, plaid wallpaper borders, aged white appliances, and floral window treatments. What we lacked in a new-fangled steam shower and sleek free-standing soaking tub in our master bathroom, we made up for with our gargantuan pink (I think the technical term when this color was all the rage in 1983 was “dusty rose”) built-in jetted garden tub and its coordinating pink shower tile and pink floor tile.

We were novice homebuyers, grateful to own our own home and excited by the process of making it ours. We reasoned that these cosmetic challenges were nothing that couldn’t be overcome with a couple cans of paint, a few trips to Home Depot, and the help of Pinterest for some design “pin-spiration.” Plus, we were anxious to settle somewhere since in the middle of house-hunting, I was also seven months pregnant with our first child. We would dive into these home projects head first and right away, we said, as we signed on the dotted line to purchase our new home.

In a Herculean effort to get our new abode in order while we were still a family of two, we spent the last several months before our daughter was born replacing old carpet, painting the walls, transforming the upstairs bedroom that had belonged to the previous owners’ teenage daughter into a nursery, and cutting down several struggling pine trees that loomed dangerously close over the new nursery. We had grand plans to move full steam ahead with knocking down a few obstructive walls, opening up our kitchen, demoing the Pepto Bismol bathroom, and overhauling the general aesthetic of each and every room.

I went into labor carrying empty moving boxes downstairs from our daughter’s nursery, and her room was the only one in our house that was completely furnished and decorated according to our plan when we brought her home in April of 2014. And what the real estate agents, inspectors, and contractors don’t tell you is that fixing up a house, even one with “great bones,” takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of patience — three things that we were just about fresh out of as a young couple, just starting out, with a brand new baby.

Over the course of the next 10 years, we learned the hard way that funds set aside for pipe dream things like surround-sound speakers, custom closets, and smart appliances disappear faster than you can say “old roof vs. Hurricane Matthew,” “30-year-old HVAC unit vs. Fayetteville July,” or “fluffy insulation vs. nest-hunting mama raccoon.” Those are the types of things that you don’t account for when you add photos of marbled kitchens and Italian-tiled bathrooms to your “dream home” Pinterest board. And that’s just the money part of it.

Another thing it takes to renovate a 30-year-old home is time. I’m not sure where the past decade went, but I do know that in the hustle and bustle of having a second child and everything else that ensues as those two children grow up, we’ve been too busy to devote much attention to home improvement and decor. We’ve existed just fine with baskets of laundry adorning every corner, kids’ artwork push-pinned into the walls, cheap couches that sometimes double as trampolines, and a hodgepodge of kitchenware that we’ve held onto from college apartments, received as wedding gifts, and inherited from family members. We are not fancy people and we don’t require fancy things.

But recently, we began to notice impossible-to-ignore structural failings in our home like cracking tile in the bathroom shower, dips in the original kitchen floor that’s begging to be replaced, and drawer brackets that have begun to break from years of wear and tear, among other concerning issues. Problems with fixes that will require more than a Saturday morning DIY YouTube tutorial.

And so, we are biting the proverbial bullet. We’re finally putting the plans that we made 10 years ago into motion and starting with renovating our dusty rose bathroom and our Brat Pack era kitchen. We’ve found a creative and adaptable contractor who indulges us with chuckles when my husband asks questions like, “How much would it cost to just skip the bathroom reno and keep the construction site porta potty rental instead?”

I’ve realized that we may have to sell our plasma for what some refrigerators cost these days.

I’m trying to wrap my mind around sharing a bathroom for months on end with a 7-year-old little boy who sometimes forgets, “If you happen to sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.”

I’ve unsuccessfully scoured our house for a spare corner where a temporary makeshift kitchen could be erected, and deduced that DoorDash might just be our new best friend. I’ve heard that gray is “out” and bold color is “in,” which is unfortunate considering that the one thing we did manage to accomplish all those years ago was painting the vast majority of our walls gray.

I’ve taken an online quiz to try to determine my interior design “aesthetic,” and learned that my tastes fall somewhere in the realm of mid-century-modern-traditonal-contemporary-transitional-farmhouse-Scandinavian-minimalist-maximalist-industrial-bohemian-rustic-glam-coastal-mountain-cottage-French country-Mediterranean-shabby chic, if that makes sense.

We’re choosing functional over fancy and have accepted the reality that no renovation project comes without a few “unexpecteds” along the way.

We are all excited to bring two of the most used rooms of our home into modern times. Well, maybe, all of us except my 10-year-old daughter who wistfully admitted, “I’m really going to miss the pink bathroom. It’s just so beautiful.”

Claire Mullen can be reached at clairejlmullen@gmail.com, especially if you are an interior designer who specializes in the style described above.

Read CityView Magazine’s “Fall in Fayetteville” September 2024 e-edition here.