When we bought our house, we knew it needed some renovation. The previous home owners did a good job making the inside of the house look like something out of HGTV, but didn't do squat to the outside. They also closed in the garage and converted to 2 bedrooms to make it a 5/2.5 house on an acre lot in Keller. We looked at it and didn't think much of the work that needed to be done on the outside.
2.5 years later, we're still fixing stuff. To date, we've fixed the non-permitted garage conversion, replaced all the siding, all the trim, all the fascia and even some of the sub-fascia. Replaced all the wood in the front entryway, built a front porch, replaced the columns on the back porch, installed cedar railing. We also took the electric underground, poured a new driveway and built a detached garage after a VERY long ordeal with the city and a contractor that stole nearly $20k for a project....not to mention the legal costs trying to go after him just to not be able to collect.
We're finally to a point that we aren't working on the house every weekend, but we still put in a decent amount of work in upkeep. An acre takes a lot more time to maintain than a tenth of an acre like most people seem to have in our area.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't do it again. In fact, I probably will. There's nothing pansie about what we have done with this house, and it did get me a lot more tools than I had before. (Also, carrying tools from the back half of the acre to wherever we were working each day and putting it up each night got old fast.) However, with how much money we've put into making this house the way we want it, I could have just spent a little more up front and been done with it. Had everything I wanted and gotten to spend more time with my wife and daughter. Oh, and on that note, nothing like having your pregnant wife up on a ladder to help replace siding in 110* weather in July/August. Our daughter was born in September.
