*I have been compensated for this post, however, all ideas are my own.


Growing up, my parents owned the house we lived in. I was in my late teens before I even understood that not everyone owned their home. And I realize how privileged we were to own the house we lived in, even though we were under no circumstances wealthy. My dad owned his own business installing fireplaces and he has a lot of experience in construction work. I actually was able to see some really incredible homes as I was growing up, because I would often go with him on jobs. It was always so exhilarating to wake up early, grab some Hardee's, and head off to some (often newly constructed) house that seemed so far away. Because of my dad's experience, any work we needed done on our home, he and my mom would do it. And it seemed like they were always doing something to update the house. We went from horrible carpet to beautiful hardwoods. Our side porch became an extra room, and then an extension of the living room. The back porch was closed in to use as storage, and another porch was added to the back. My dad could add in a gas stove/fireplace, or fix the plumbing. It honestly to this day feels like he can do absolutely anything to help fix a house, an appliance, or a vehicle. He's so freaking smart in all those ways. But I moved out at 19 to live with now-hubby, and we rented for 10 years (almost to the day) before we bought a house. And boy, who knew how much work actually goes into owning a house?

With renting, if we needed anything, we'd call the landlords. At first, we lived in an apartment - it flooded, so we called the landlords. Literally we'd call for help if our toilet got backed up (it was a toilet paper/plumbing problem, not us an us problem, by the way). Then we moved into a house and had super controlling landlords - they'd cut our grass, do all of our yard work, and even invite themselves into the house whenever. Then we had landlords who didn't want to help us at all if we had issues (like bats, or a leak). And most recently, our landlords were pretty dang perfect. Never bothered us, but would immediately help if we needed anything (like the HVAC fixed or trees cut away from a power line).

So when we signed the papers to close on our home back in March, right as COVID was closing down everything, we realized "Whoa. This is kind of just more responsibility." But regardless, it was exciting and we love our house, you know? Because wow, we are home and land owners - so. freaking. cool. Then we realized there's so much we didn't know about owning a home (it's kind of like having a baby, right?). As a disclaimer: we haven't actually had any issues, but it's just something we've often thought about to make sure we're prepared in any instance. So, here are a few things we never thought about before we were homeowners.



Updates

While updates are more of a preference, and in many instances don't actually add to the livability of the house, they can certainly change the feel of a home. Our house was recently remodeled before our purchase, but there are definitely things we want to do to make it more "ours." For example, one of the first things I did was put together my home library/office space and decorated the wall with wallpaper and another with a gallery wall. We definitely want to paint or wallpaper more areas, and make adjustments to hardware and such to make some of the areas even more perfect for us (for example, I really want to update all of the interior doorknobs to be black, because I think it looks slicker, but it's not something that's necessary to live here). We weren't able to make updates in any of our previous rentals because we didn't want to lose any of our deposits.



Exterior upkeep

I've literally never thought of upkeep for the outside of any house we lived it. Obviously it wasn't necessary for our apartment, since that's one of the appeals of apartment living, but we basically paid to get our grass cut and were done with it each month. We never took care of the front bushes, or really ever cleaned the gutters. Now leaf blowing is a big deal, but the Worx blower options are nice because they're lightweight and won't take up a ton of space. We especially never thought to CLEAN to actual house (even though a white front door gets hella dirty). But apparently that's a thing people do, and many services can actually be grouped together by choosing the right business to help. For gutter cleaning in Dunwoody or the greater Atlanta area, Peach State Pressure Wash offers services for so many home upkeep needs and even provides advice on how often you should have these services done. Did you know you should have your gutters cleaned at least once or twice a year, even if you don't see them presenting any issues? I sure didn't! I also really like that Peach State Pressure Wash is a local business that's veteran-owned and offers living wages for their employees (so damn important!).





Rodents and pests

Okay, this is definitely something we've thought about before - but we didn't know how to take care of it. So, we had exclusion services including in our closing agreement and now we'll know how to take care of it annually (or as needed). Whether you're looking for pest control services in Atlanta or pest control bloomington illinois, having a plan of action to keep pests away is critical.



Lawn care

We previously paid to have our yard cut and driveway leaf-blown, but never really thought about lawn care. The folks would come during the day while we were at work, we'd get an invoice, and that was that. But once we purchased a home, we figured it was time to start taking care of our yard. We purchased lots of lawn care tools, weed killers, and I've even been planning to start a garden. But we never paid attention before (we just paid the bill). I literally had never cut grass in my life until we bought our house, and I actually kind of love it (when it's not 90 degrees outside). We got this electric mower and I am completely obsessed with it.



New utilities

When we moved in, we realized there were no cable ports for internet access. Hubby works remotely normally, but I've also be working from home since we moved into our house, so that was definitely something we needed. I never realized that internet capabilities and access weren't readily available by just calling to get it connected. But we had to actually get the house cabled for internet. Another unique utility that was new to us was gas. We weren't even sure how to light the pilot light, which we had to do on our own due to COVID. Then I panicked for the next few days, thoroughly convinced we did it wrong and had a gas leak (spoiler: we didn't).



I'm sure there are all kinds of other things that have been new to us, and so many more to come but these have seemed most relevant to us over the past few months.