Purchasing Laika Land and Our First Project

I'll admit it: I had(have...let's be realistic) a serious Zillow problem.

It was an addiction. I swiped and zoomed in at my new home's listing five times a day until I saw it in person.  When I pulled up to the house and went inside I looked like a 5 year-old going to the circus. It was perfectly imperfect. The good things were great and the bad things could easily be fixed. I went under contract two days later and haven't looked back.

And then I made the list.

I think I overwhelmed my boyfriend because "the list" was completed by the end of the night. I'm not even sure if the house was mine yet at the time, but that obviously doesn't matter now. Some projects on the list are expensive. Some projects are easy, some are important, some not so much.  Should half of the ideas even be on the list during our first year? Absolutely not, but I wrote the list in pen.

Prioritizing our projects was the MOST IMPORTANT concept. Helped me budget, plan, and coordinate with moving all my stuff in and time off work. In my delirious mind I was going to finish everything on that list in a week.

The SMARTEST thing we did is start with the garage. Oh my God I can't even begin to tell you how freaking genius that was. Not that we're a dumb couple or anything- Tim has a Master's Degree so clearly he was Master of putting down that floor. And I have my Doctor of Pharmacy-which means I can...mix things and over-analyze everything..not the point.

The first project we (Tim) completed was epoxying the garage floor. He swept and cleaned it while I sterilized everything inside our house, and it took him probably 6 hours to complete.  We went with the Valspar brand epoxy and bought two for our two-car garage.

Here is why this project should be your first:

We left all of our belongings at my parent's house/garage.  We didn't even think about moving in until the floor was down. Then we U-Hauled our stuff from my parent's garage to our garage and ba-zinga, we had everything at our house and had no NEED to move anything if it wasn't necessary. And then we could move to other projects while still having all our stuff here, but not everywhere.

When you buy a miter saw and start doing your real projects and get wood and saw dust EVERYWHERE in said garage you will be so grateful you put down that indestructible floor.


Did I mention it's blue? It's blue!

Follow the instructions. This one was easy, and nobody fights.

Mandy