I imagine once you finally have ALL your rooms done well then you start over as by then you will want something different LOL

Renayy has it right. According to my folks a house is never finished.

In my own home, I still haven't finished the initial furnishing. I need some shelving for the living room, and maybe a buffet, so I can get rid of old junk that was meant to be "temporary" but is still standing. Just before the remodel I finally found light fixtures for the powder room, and during I found a mirror, so now I just need to do the painting in there. I want to change the furniture in another room as well. Nothing needs actual remodeling though. The next project is the garden which needs a minor makeover.

I/we (DH counts too) am/are on my 13th year of remodeling which started right before we married so we could get married in our back yard! We have poured way TOO much money into the house over the years! When we are done, there will be very little left of the orginal 1951 house except a few sticks of framing and roof joists which have become partial floor joists for the floor above!
I think it would have been much easier (even cost less) to build a new house.... We are only 2 miles from downtown with views, easy access to freeway etc, and there are no lots to be had around here, however. Many around here ends up doing the total house remodel. Some do it all at once. Some like us, do it in multiple spurts.

From the very beginning, we knew that the total house needed makeover. We are just doing it in phases. Redoing the 20 year old kitchen for us is the very last part of the remodel.

Unlike you, I am actually at the end of the cycle. I need to get some nice furnture when we are done, however.

Yes, now that I've made the pass thru window to the computer room bigger, that room needs to be painted, the carpet stretched, and the window covering changed. And since the window is 13' x 5', it's going to involve some $$$. And then the dining room, since we took that wall out as well . . . .

It is contagious! We ended up repainting the entire downstairs at the end of the kitchen remodel. Some outside trimwork got repainted, after all next to the new windows in the kitchen, I could not redo them.
Then, upstairs, the office looked a little shabby, so I repainted and refinished some of the woodwork and updated in there. Now, I'm eyeing the mastersuite next to the office, could use a redo. . .
and it doesn't end there. DH is outside in the backyard and before you know it we are refinishing the deck (abused during the remodel), the spa needed maintance and oh, let's finally finish that area near the vegetable garden that needs to be replanted. . .

You know that if you ever get to a point where you are satisfied with your own house, the neighborhood will start to look shabby. Before you know it, you're having to move because the neighbors won't let you fix up their yards.

LOL at jsweenc! We bought our rural home in 1987. It was built in 1974. For only being 13 years old, the decor was incredibly outdated and the kids who lived here were very rough on the inside. All of the woodwork was damaged. All of the carpeting was stretched and needed replacing.

We have the nicest home on our 5 mile country road. The local plumbing contracter built it himself. It would be the nicest even if we hadn't touched anything. There are many run down, manufactured and 'fort' looking houses on our road. We bought it for the property which has a view of Lake Erie across the entire North side which is 7 miles away, Canada on the other side of the lake, vineyards and a 1 acre pond in the back yard with a gorgeous view of it from the 30x 15 screened in back porch. It also came with a large 3 room barn with 3 horse stalls, a bathroom, an adorable 1 bdr rental apartment and 2 poultry coops.It's a lovely park-like setting and only 6 miles from work.

We started on the most demaged rooms that had wallpaper. Our decorating jobs alternated with window and door replacements, metal roof install, new septic, new well pump. We paved the driveway, sided the trim, added a Trinity heater and tankless water system, replaced the water damaged ceilings throughout the house. We added a full water filitration plant in the basement. We did major drainage work, added 3 pastures for our horses, rebuilt the dock on the pond and tore down the dilapidated inground pool and turned it into a large fenced in vegetable garden in the summer and a skating/hockey rink in the winter. The idea that they had this gorgeous inground pool that they destroyed in only 13 years still gets to me. We would have had to recreate the entire pool, save for the ground leveling. But we're hockey parents, so it did work out lol. I digress..

Our first gutting of a room was the master bath. They had vented the shower inside the shower walls so all the studs rotted. We ripped that out and added a steam shower unit. The steam unti was 'only an extra $1k' but ended up adding $4k to the project due to all the specialty products and people required to install it. Then we finished the basement as our next major room remodel. In between, we ripped up carpets to uncover gorgeous wood floors and painted walls, added window treatments, bought rugs, furniture, etc. The kitchen is our third major remodel. We have another bathroom that is slowly crumbling that will be next.

The only 're-dos' I foresee are the rooms such as my son's room and our den/office where we just painted and didn't have the money back then to add closet doors (not one closet door came with the entire house!). Our mudroom was the last 'untouched' room. The porch needs a new door and the cement pad is dingy. We need to stain that or hire someone to add textured concrete. DH would like to add sliding doors all around the porch, but I'm not liking the idea of cleaning that much glass and the addition of glass would only add a few weeks to the cold season.

Our basement is only halfway in the ground. DH is considering adding on a greenhouse lean-to with sliding doors out of the basement. We'd really use such a room. The door to the outside would be very convenient to our 'pool' garden.

The other thing that some of you might relate to is the cashflow. In 1987 we made about 1/3 of the income we now enjoy. Having money does help this process along. My 'tastes' change since I can now afford to look at products I didn't let myself see before. Time is more of a problem now since we haven't launched into hiring anyone to do anything we are perfectly able to do ourselves, such as painting.

I added a link that shows our two main rooms - kitchen/dining and living room. You can see a hint of white formica in the bottom left corner of the first picture. That's from our kitchen. I'm going to add some more photos later this week - the 'before' picts of the kitchen and mudroom.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Home

I made the mistake of saying the other day to my husband, "Now that the kitchen is done, the downstairs bathroom looks so shabby. We need to gut it and redo the whole thing." He said, "Uh, no, that can't happen! Not if we're going to go see the kids this summer, and try to replace the money out of the savings fund we used on the kitchen remodel." So....I guess I needed a reality check. But I am just dying to pick out the granite for the bathroom, and the new flooring, and so on. Oh, well!

Yup & not just in the house either... now that we are in & loving the kitchen - - we noticed how shabby the back yard was looking, so we replaced the fence & are putting in new landscaping. I always say that by the time everything is finished, the rooms we started with will be outdated!

Yep! I had been planning a desk but decided not to try to fit it in because we are extending the family room a little instead by moving the back door. Since the half bath is off the hall way and we are doing the floor in there at the same time, I decided to take the money from the desk we aren't doing to purchase a new vanity instead. Then of course, all the carpeting will need to be replaced! My next big project will be the master bathroom, but I am resisting a major redo right away and just repainting for now.