How to solve X in a renovation budget? Buy a floor.

(18 days to possession)

See ya later, shag. We bought a floor this weekend. Trying to start our renovation budget – how could we solve X when we don’t know the rest of the alphabet in this scary budgeting equation? Exactly. So we solved for X.

We bought a floor. Went to the suburbs, found a flooring shop called Nucasa, fell in love with a floor. Bought a floor for an apartment we’ve seen twice (yup, gate-crashed the inspection). Bought a floor for an apartment for which we’ve got no measurements besides a shoddily drawn, thrice-photocopied floor-plan.

How to start a renovation budget?

I’m sure I’m tackling our reno budget from totally the wrong end. I jumped from the high-dive, straight into a crazy pool of details. That’s the ridiculous thing about renovating everything for the first time:

1. You have no idea what you’re doing;
2. You have no idea what (and how much of it) you don’t know;
3. You don’t know what you like, OR;
4. You don’t know how to match what you do like with other things that match;
5. You don’t know what you can afford;
6. You don’t know how much it’ll end up costing, regardless.

Buying the floor, though, marks proper progress. And it’s glorious. We love it so much we’ve even taken turns standing on the little square of sample: just to see what our feet look like on it. (Hey! No judgy! You don’t know true love ‘til you’ve met our ugly baby). Best of all, it’s ours.

I have serious possession issues, don’t I? I swear my parents taught me how to share.

Now I can love the floor just as much as I hate popcorn ceilings. It balances out, right?

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Full photo credit to Abby Lanes, back_garage and bradleyolin via Flickr Creative Commons. (Hope you didn’t have to touch the carpet during photography. Nasty).