We’ve learned a lot in our first year of homeownership and there’s still a lot on our renovation list, but we finally got to move in a few months ago and it feels like we have more done than we have left to do! To celebrate all of that, I thought I would list just five of the things I’ve learned – it’s certainly not a complete list!

• It doesn’t hurt to doublecheck your escrow account is paying things on time and properly.

Full disclosure, I wouldn’t have an escrow if I could avoid it, but that’s neither here nor there. Since we’re coming on one year of homeownership, it’s also time for our insurance policy to renew, but somehow the insurance renewal information got lost before it reached the mortgage company. Assuming that with escrow I didn’t have to worry about anything, I didn’t think to check that the insurance company had the information until we got a letter (not an email, not a phone call – a letter) in the mail saying that the mortgage company has no evidence of insurance. Because of that, now we started to get letters (again, letters) from the insurance company that payment hasn’t been received. I called and verified that the mortgage company paid the insurance (three whole days before renewal date) so it should, hopefully, be fine – but the stress could have been minimized if I had forwarded my copy of the insurance information to the mortgage (probably).

• Be careful uncovering things like walls or floors – you never know what you’ll find.

There is truly no telling what will be under anything in an old house. Top hits in ours include: a dead rat, water damage, termite damage, black mold, and holes in the floors.

• Uncover things anyway, because you might find treasures.

Top favorite of mine is the second row of upper cabinets in the kitchen hidden behind a soffit, and the runner up is the darling vintage wallpaper in the kitchen behind the paneling. And, we can’t forget the hardwood floors (both a delight and a terror in our house). In of all these cases, my mom was the leading force behind pulling things off the walls/floors to find them. Thanks, Mom!

• Paint is magic

Look, if you don’t like the appearance of a room, I promise paint will work wonders. We redid all our floors and I love them, but I think the paint was the real game changer in most of the rooms. Gungy baseboards? paint them. Outdated paneling on the walls? paint them. Ugly painted fireplace? paint over the ugly paint. Like magic, a new room appears!

• When it comes to renovation, there’s a right way, a bad way, and a good-enough way.

You can do things completely by the books, perfectly as recommended by the experts, and it’ll probably take a thousand hours and tools you don’t currently own.

There’s a bad way – a flipper’s special – where you do the bare minimum to make it look okay at a glance, but it’ll probably fall apart or cause issues later.

Finally, there’s my favorite – the good-enough way. The “you aren’t a professional and don’t have a thousand hours, but you’re planning to live with this work for a few years way“. It’s okay to do things good-enough, but it’s up to you to decide where the good-enough line is (although, it tends to get lower standards the more tired you are).