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If I Had A Hammer ...The Joys of Home Renovation
By Amelia Newcomb
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Renovating, rather than “moving up,” has become increasingly popular as real estate prices where we live in the San Francisco Bay area skyrocketed through the last decade or two. These days, many people end up in homes that they know will either need to be expanded eventually or are simply in varying states of disrepair.
class=MsoNormal>Renovating can mean simply adding a new coat of paint and some built-in cabinetry, or it can mean updating bathrooms or kitchens and yanking out walls. It can involve paying contractors so that you can just orchestrate their performance, or it can mean learning a lot about plumbing, Sheetrock™, painting, laying floors and the joys of sweat equity.
class=MsoNormal>Your choices will influence your sanity for the duration of whatever you do. From my point of view, it’s not so much the difference between a pleasant and an unpleasant experience as it is maintaining your equanimity and sense of humor doing something that usually lasts too long, costs more than you expected, and results in something slightly different than what you’d imagined. That said, a well-thought-out home improvement can dramatically change the feel of a home and increase your pleasure in living in it.
class=MsoNormal>My husband and I ended up doing major renovations on our home of seven years. We started the day after we moved in and continued in spurts for years – one job often inspiring, or requiring, the next. (One of the truly insidious aspects of renovating part of your home is that the unrenovated parts suddenly look badly in need of an upgrade.) Probably because we did a lot of the work ourselves, every room is 90 percent done. At least once a month, we peruse the walls/ceiling/floor of the room we’re in and speculate how swell it would be if we could make that last 10 percent push. It’s probably not going to happen any time soon.Lessons Learned
class=MsoNormal>In our case, each room is rich in home renovation experiences, a few of which might be helpful in planning a renovation of your own.
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class=MsoNormal>Renovating can mean simply adding a new coat of paint and some built-in cabinetry, or it can mean updating bathrooms or kitchens and yanking out walls. It can involve paying contractors so that you can just orchestrate their performance, or it can mean learning a lot about plumbing, Sheetrock™, painting, laying floors and the joys of sweat equity.
class=MsoNormal>Your choices will influence your sanity for the duration of whatever you do. From my point of view, it’s not so much the difference between a pleasant and an unpleasant experience as it is maintaining your equanimity and sense of humor doing something that usually lasts too long, costs more than you expected, and results in something slightly different than what you’d imagined. That said, a well-thought-out home improvement can dramatically change the feel of a home and increase your pleasure in living in it.
class=MsoNormal>My husband and I ended up doing major renovations on our home of seven years. We started the day after we moved in and continued in spurts for years – one job often inspiring, or requiring, the next. (One of the truly insidious aspects of renovating part of your home is that the unrenovated parts suddenly look badly in need of an upgrade.) Probably because we did a lot of the work ourselves, every room is 90 percent done. At least once a month, we peruse the walls/ceiling/floor of the room we’re in and speculate how swell it would be if we could make that last 10 percent push. It’s probably not going to happen any time soon.Lessons Learned
class=MsoNormal>In our case, each room is rich in home renovation experiences, a few of which might be helpful in planning a renovation of your own.
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