I’m going to let you in on a little secret about how I like to spend my Sundays. In my pj’s, in my basement watching home renovating shows. Oddly, the basement is the cleanest area of the house and tends to stay that way because we rarely use it. The other aspects of the house are used every other day of the week, but Sundays are basement times.

As we don’t have cable, I’ve had to learn to rely on HGTV for my shows. Have to say, I love the fact there are very few commercials and I can watch whatever I want. Must say I wasn’t sure what to think about not having cable but this is pretty nice.I don’t know if this is just a bi-product of being older, but I absolutely love house hunting shows and real estate shows.

Until we bought our townhouse, I was a Property Virgin. I had gone house shopping with my sister when she was looking, but her price range, and my price range was completely different. Plus she and her husband were more willing to take on areas of a house that needed work. My husband and I, well we just aren’t that handy. Also, my sister’s budget was about $200,000 more than mine so I really couldn’t gauge anything by what she and her husband were looking for.

After a few years of living with my husband, we decided that the time was right to get a place together. That started the whole process of us really sitting down to figure out what we could afford and mutually decide what we liked. We set ourselves a wishlist and kept getting distracted by different things. We even contemplated real pieces of work because the price was right. We could see the value in it – but we also lost sight of our goal.

And that’s where shows like Property Virgins come in handy. Sandra (the shows host) really helps put things in perspective and draws people back to where they wanted to be in the beginning. She asks questions, gives options and helps you to narrow down the right property. Our agent Mary was really good in this respect too – but as our tastes changed near daily when we were out with her, she kept showing us anything that was in our price range in our preferred neighbourhoods.

It’s amazing that we’ve made it on this journey and I have to thank HGTV for bringing the kind of programming needed to newbies like my husband and I were on the property ladder. They have continued through multiple other shows, such as Agent vs Agent, to help people buying or selling what to look out for and how to stay on target. I also have to thank HGTV for putting their awesome shows online for the rest of us without cable to catch up on the latest and greatest.

And now back to my regular Sunday programming.