Harold's Renovation Blog: #62: What The New Owners Changed In Our Old Houses

Watching your former homes get altered by their new owners can be tough, and we witnessed a couple of changes that bothered us more than we expected. So this week we’re sharing how we got over those feelings and how to find the silver lining in seeing someone undo your designs. And back at our current house, we took a big step in making our driveway more kid-friendly that was long overdue and surprisingly painless to pull off. We also look at what items you shouldn’t be buying secondhand, why Sherry has been sentenced to more time in “tooth jail,” and how our beach house is having a brush with a true-crime saga.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

Hallelujah, our driveway is paved! Don’t mind the lighter and darker areas in the pic above (it had just rained), but below is a snapshot of how out of control the weed situation was getting at the front of our driveway. Plus the kids longed for a driveway where they could scoot and bike, so we knew it would be an improvement they’d enjoy too.

The crew we hired was super speedy and we all had fun watching their progress throughout the afternoon. If you want to entertain your kids, get your driveway paved.

And since we know you’re all really here to see Sherry’s mouth contraption now that her Invisalign has been extended, here’s a GIF version of a video she posted to Insta-stories recently. She’s just using the dog filter to distract us from the elastics.

What’s Not

Here’s Apartment Therapy’s list of 8 Things You Should Never Buy Used
And here’s Kiplinger’s 12 Things You Should Buy Used that gave me the faker I used in Sherry’s quiz

Listener Question

As always, you can tour our first and second houses if you want to see anything we referenced in those homes.
And Sherry was right – we did talk about our first house being for sale again waaay back in Episode #13. I can’t believe I forgot!
Below is our bedroom as we used it, including the built-in closets on either side that added some much needed storage to the room (you can read more about that project here). We don’t have a photo of what it looked like once the new owners removed it, but it basically looked like our room before we added them (which you can see here).

Below are some glimpses at the fence situation in our first house. On the left is the fence as we had it, which was pretty low-profile and kept the yard and the driveway feeling open to each another. On the right is a picture we took when we were invited back to visit our first house a couple of years ago with the kids (it was so much fun). The new fence is nicely done, but it definitely makes the yard and the driveway feel more separated.

And as Sherry mentioned, we’ve had some second thoughts about how we would arrange our last home’s kitchen if we were to do it again today (namely the opening to the dining room, seen at right below). You can see it’s “P” shape better in this post.

And it turns out I butchered Kristen Bell’s advice to Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, but I captured the spirit of it….sorta…

We’re Digging

American Fire is the book I’m loving lately about a long line of arsons on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, just north of our beach house a few years ago. I’ve gotten deeper into it since recording and IT’S ONLY GETTING BETTER.
The photo above is not from the book – it’s a pretty shot Sherry took earlier this year in the county where all the fires had happened. It’s like some of the abandoned homes that were burned in the arson spree. So sad!
And is Sherry’s new favorite drink slowly and diabolically trying to kill her? Or is it as healthy as they say? Somebody tell her.

If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.

Lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to grove.co/YHLto automatically get $20 off your first order of $40 or more AND to get our favorite natural cleaner, Mrs. Meyer’s All-Purpose Spray, thrown in for free!