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Our house was built in 1923, and most of it is in wonderful shape. We love our house… except for the kitchen and one of the bathrooms. They’re both extremely tiny, which I could deal with, but the linoleum is just hideous. It’s not quite the same in both rooms, but it’s pretty similar: a perfectly pee-yellow background with a brown design etched in. The brown is just the right shade to make it look like there’s always dirt in the crevices of our floors. Our friends must think we’re disgusting. And there’s a point to mentioning the pee-yellow color too. You might remember that we have three dogs. Most of the time they’re pretty good about going outside, but when they pee on the kitchen floor, you really have no warning that it’s there until you step in it with your bare feet. It’s disgusting.
Anyway, ’tis the season for tax returns, so we finally decided it’s time to spruce up the ugly bathroom. Isn’t it funny how quickly home improvement projects can get out of control?
It started out fairly simple – we thought we’d replace the tile on the walls. The tile that came with the house was ivory and just looked dingy all of the time. Well… if we’re replacing dingy ivory, we might as well replace the toilet and the vanity, because they’re both ivory too. It would look funny to have white and ivory in the same bathroom. Oh, and also, the bathtub is ivory. So, we tore out everything and bought a bathtub and a toilet this weekend (nothing says ‘I’m a homeowner now’ like buying a toilet and getting excited about it). Well, while we have everything out of the bathroom, it might be a good time to go ahead and replace the ugly linoleum on the floor. So yesterday we started scraping that up. We got through ugly yellow linoleum, subfloor, ugly faux-marble linoleum, subfloor and a nice layer of glue before we discovered pretty hardwood floors underneath like the rest of the house has. That’s quickly motivated us to skip the tile and restore the floors to their original splendor.
Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all of this, my husband decided that he would go ahead and replace plaster in the older part of the bathroom with drywall.
So, needless to say, this is what our bathroom looks like as of yesterday:
Actually, that’s a lie. Since then, that little wall that juts out on the right has been removed and the old bathtub in the picture now resides in our backyard with the old toilet (yeah, we’re THAT house now…).
On the plus side, at least we have another bathroom in the house to use. We have some friends who remodeled their bathroom and had to walk across the street to the gas station to use their restrooms for an entire weekend.
Please tell me this has happened to you - you planned some small little improvement to your house/condo/apartment that quickly spiraled out of control. Please tell me this… and tell me that you eventually completed your project and it turned out awesome and was so totally worth it.
…OK, and tell me if it was a complete disaster, too. I guess it’s best that I’m prepared for the worst.
Your post gives me chills. My wife and I will soon be moving into a haouse that needs work and She is just the type to want to change everything when she gets the chance. I can feel the back pain now!
posted by Gilbert on 2-4-2008 at 11:22 am
Cursed typos!!
posted by Gilbert on 2-4-2008 at 11:22 am
Home construction and improvement is most certainly an exercise in “for only a few dollars more” economics. Painful in more ways than one, but very satisfying after the smoke clears. And very educational.
I like hardwood floors, but they don’t play well with water, dogs, or dogdrizzle. Good luck!
posted by Tom on 2-4-2008 at 11:37 am
Yeah…remodels somehow spiral out of control really quickly. By the time you realize it, it’s 7 months later and you have the entire house torn apart, no heat, no hot water, no floor,…but there’s paint on the new drywall!
WooHoo!
posted by Bob Jones, Esq. on 2-4-2008 at 11:38 am
There are two immutable rules of home improvement (and auto repair/used car purchase)
1. It will always cost more than you think it will.
2. It will always take longer than you think it will.
posted by Anthony on 2-4-2008 at 11:40 am
Oh you are scaring me! I have the world’s smallest bathroom in my house (and it’s the only one) and I have been trying to plan some improvements. I was going to remove the horrendous tile down and put up subway tile, but realized I could take the adjacent closet and add it to the bathroom which means new floor, move pipes, drywall over closet door, etc. Went from $$ to $$$$ real quick. Haven’t started……..
posted by JaneM on 2-4-2008 at 11:40 am
A few months ago you had a post about archaic advertisement from the 50’s and 60’s. One of them had a video of an old commercial for linoleum that had asbestos in it. I bring this up because the linoleum you described sounds like the one in the video. I remember because I grew up in a house with that kind of linoleum. I also played with mercury as a child, so I guess I’m immune to the asbestos. Hope you are too.
posted by Harold on 2-4-2008 at 11:42 am
My husband and I moved into our house a year and a half ago. It has one official bathroom, and a pipe that sticks out of the wall with a shower head on it out in open air in the cement-walled basement.
Our bathroom was tiny, had a toilet, vanity, and tub — but no tile around the tub and no shower head… just a tub spout.
He decided to “Surprise!” me for my birthday by hauling in his entire family and some of mine to rip apart our bathroom. They stayed for three days. It was just enough time to rip down all the walls, the plaster, and the ceiling. (SURPRISE!!!! NO MORE BATHROOM) Thankfully they left the toilet in place.
It took him 3 months to complete it. 3 months of showering 6 feet away from power tools and saws, watched by voyeur spiders and the-mold-that-wouldn’t-die. 3 months of “Honey, I need to go to the bathroom… so could you stop hammering for a minute and leave?”
He did the electric work, the plumbing, replaced the toilet, tiling, dry-walling, spackling, sealing, sanding, and painting all by himself.
I love him, but he’s certainly learned that, in the future, it’d be better for everyone if he ran big remodel ideas by me first… before ’surprising’ me with them.
posted by Megan on 2-4-2008 at 11:45 am
We tend to steer toward the fixer-uppers also, and I still can’t explain it. I see the potential in a house, and I’m reasonably handy, so the thought is, how difficult could it be? Keep telling yourself, “It’ll be great when it’s done!”
Our problem is that I’m reasonably handy, and both my wife and I are unreasonably cheap. We always start out getting contractor bids on the work, then we look at the prices, we both think, “That’s a lot of money. I could do that for a lot less myself.” What I don’t account for is the frustration of not knowing exactly what I’m doing most of the time, and not knowing how long a particular stage is going to take.
Two years ago we did a major re-do of our kitchen & eating area. We planned it out pretty well, but getting the wiring completed took about a week longer than I had anticipated (working evenings and weekends; too busy at work to take the time off). We had started the project with an eye toward having it done for my daughter’s graduation party, and I was still working on some stuff the morning of. Yikes.
Oh, and then there was the basement bathroom remodel that took two years (actually, it still isn’t complete). I got a lot done in the first few weeks (in 2001), but the day after laying the floor tile I fell & broke my ankle — surgery, screws & plates. I tried doing some of the grouting a week or so after coming home from the hospital, but couldn’t do it. Finally hired a pro to come in & finish the tile. I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was about 18 months from the time we started on that until all fixtures were in place and working. I actually spent some time on the trim in that room this last weekend.
It’ll be great when it’s done. It’ll be great when it’s done. It’ll be great when it’s done. It’ll be great when it’s done. It’ll be great when it’s done.
posted by Dave on 2-4-2008 at 12:14 pm
we moved into the flat last month. I have been trying to plan some improvements in the bathroom. and don’t know what to do.
posted by karina on 2-4-2008 at 12:30 pm
Okay - here is my horror story.
House was owned by my husband before I met him. He was renting it out to make some money. Last renters were 4 months behind in the rent so we kicked them out. They had 4 little dogs living inside that I don’t think ever saw the outside and they were very heavy chain smokers.
So to make it inhabitable for us to live in it, work was needed – the majority of the floors were taken down to the 2X4 cross members (did you know concentrated dog pee removes linoleum from the floor and buckles plywood). All walls were washed with bleach and then painted to get rid of the nicotine stains (Magic Erasers work wonders). Since we had to pull up the floors we decided to remodel the kitchen which involved swapping its location with the dining room which required all new plumbing to be run. Both bathrooms were gutted due to a leaking toilet and a broken shower surround.
All this work was done by us on nights and weekends – oh and my husband was working the night shift and getting about 4 hours of sleep a day. I was lucky we were living in an apartment while the majority of this was happening (about 5 months) but because of timing we moved in without a working shower. I spent the next 2 months taking showers at my sisters house on my way to work. I cried tears of joy the first time I took a shower at my own home.
Budget $10K – Actual money spent – more like $20K but we found a lot of things broken (like the bathrooms) that we didn’t plan on.
My contribution to the project – all the tile work, all painting and some of the drywall. I’ve become a regular handy woman.
posted by Beth on 2-4-2008 at 12:31 pm
also want to change everything in my flat/ the first will be kitchen
posted by carina on 2-4-2008 at 12:33 pm
My aunt once told me “Home improvement is an on-going project- you’re never really “done” with your house.”
My hubby and I decided to put down a gorgeous laminate cherry floor. We hired a contrator to do it, and he said it would take 2 days. When they pulled up the carpet, the previous owners had dogs….we didn’t know this until we saw the huge stinky stains on the subfloor. The previous posters are correct- dog pee is like acid. Had to replace parts of the subfloor and then the contractors started but couldn’t get finished until 2 weeks later. We could not go into our kitchen/living room for a long time. And oh- I had a 15 month old baby and was 8 months preg trying to walk around all this crap on the floor- nails, dust, hammers, planks,and cords. It only cost us $3600 but it was such a pain having to do everything in our bedroom. It was like we were exiled. We ate, slept, played, watched TV, and paid bills in our little bedroom.
posted by lizhot on 2-4-2008 at 12:47 pm
I’m presently in the middle of something similar…. We bought our first house a little over a month ago and have been working at it ever sense… Literally if I’m not at my day job I’m there working… My coworkers now take great delight in trying to figure out what I’m working on by looking at my elbows and fingernails for remnants that I couldn’t remove.
Most of our work has been on the cosmetic side (lots of paint, new light fixtures, etc). But we’ve done our fair share of large projects as well (replaced countertop / backsplash, painted our entry foyer which I can now say with confidence is just under 21ft high and required me to spend ~45 minutes walking on a 16″ catwalk over certain annihilation).
I like to think that so far I’ve done a pretty good job estimating the costs ahead of time. But there are a few new shiny things that I hadn’t exactly planned upon (new range/oven/microwave, new TV).
The key though though is this… Whenever trying to do anything other than a complete do-over always consider how your given change will look in context. I’ve saved myself considerably by not going for the stainless steel appliances (when the others are all black) and not allowing myself to introduce new elements that, while nice in there own right, will stand out and drive you to wanting to continue changes.
And yes, I can finally see the light… I only have one more multi-day painting project left and a few small things that can be estimated in hours instead of days….
…But then again spring is around the corner…
posted by brick_city_man on 2-4-2008 at 12:57 pm
At least you put the old toilet in your BACK yard. Thank you.
In our case, it all started with the old carpet and ended up with the master bathroom being unusable for 6 months. And we hired a contractor!! I finally asked him if everything had to take as long as it did. His answer — “i didn’t want to inconvenience y’all with everything happening at once.” sigh…
posted by larriann on 2-4-2008 at 1:10 pm
tiny 1 story 1950’s house. Tiny tiny bedroom with kids’ toys in it. Tiny master bedroom. Solution: rip off roof and add 2nd story. What happened: did this on New Year’s day in a northern state and had a flash HEAVY thunderstorm- water damage in every room of the house. OK…onward. Bust out wall of tiniest bedroom and merge with living room. Cut staircase hole in ceiling of former bedroom. Inspector doesn’t like 1st staircase- do it again. Onward. Addition is ready to side and paint- in a semi-historic neighborhood- let’s do it nice. Hire out the sanding and repainting of old siding and paint whole house at one time. Painters won’t say just when they’re coming- but soon. Fine. Nice day. Go away for afternoon- leave all windows open to air the house. Painters show up and sand half of house. Come home…house, of course, completely full of paint dust. Two days later, painters haven’t returned and husband suddenly thinks: Yikes, I’ll bet that’s lead-based paint. Check- yup. Whole house contaminated. Costs more to decon the furniture than it’s worth- lose all cloth covered furniture plus a bunch of laundry that got coated. AND- test entire family for lead poisoning- fortunately, no one is toxic, but levels are elevated… Move in with nearby family. Project is now finished and family is happily living there- but it was truly the project that exploded…
posted by ann on 2-4-2008 at 1:11 pm
Our house was also built in 1923. It’s been in my family since 1924.
It needs major work. We are smart enough to know that we are not talented enough to do it, but we also know we cannot afford to have it done. Which is why there is peeling paint, bulging walls and all sorts of other uglies…If I won the lottery.
posted by beth on 2-4-2008 at 1:15 pm
When we moved in 6 years ago, we found out that the plumbing was shot. Luckily we live next door to a retired professional plumber, who, while he wouldn’t help per say, gave us tons of tips and use of his tools. Hubby has turned out to be a very competent plumber.
We also found out we had 2 curcuits in the house. Stove and everything else. We added enough so the power won’t cut off except in the summer with the AC and/or hair dryer and washer running.
We tore up the carpet to refinish what was supposed to be hardwood underneath…it was wood laminate–pasted down over the sub floor. Not neccesarily a bad thing. We too have an accident prone dog. Our sub floor is fine, so we’re leaving that laminate in place and will eventually re-cover it.
There are one or more family of squirrels in the roof. We’re working on trapping them.
We win the lottery: This whole thing is getting torn down and rebuilt so that all these issues and the ones I didn’t bother mentioning are moot.
posted by Kathy on 2-4-2008 at 2:33 pm
Ugh. We bought a house in October, and learned from the busybody neighbor that the previous owners had taken it down to the studs and re-done the whole inside.
“Well, great!” we thought. OH MY GOD. The previous owners did all the work themselves and IT SHOWS. It drives me insane on a near-hourly basis.
Walls are bowed and curved in weird places, so lightswitch plates don’t sit flush on them. The faucet for the tub spins all the way around and might just come clean out of the wall if I try to pull it out. The white baseboard trim was installed, but the nail holes were never filled in and it wasn’t painted afterwards, so I have roughly six miles of 5.5″ white trim running throughout the house that is studded with black holes.
They also had dogs, and one room of the house has completely different carpeting than the rest of the house. I shudder to think what the floor under it looks like. Thankfully, the carpet is fairly new so I won’t have to find out for at least a few years yet.
The kitchen LOOKS gorgeous, but upon closer inspection, it looks as if they installed the new stainless-steel appliances in 2004 and never ever cleaned them. Ever. The oven is especially gross, and finding out what that same model costs NEW makes me weep hot tears of rage every time I think about how destroyed ours is.
It’s all connected - we want to re-pave the driveway, so we might as well enclose the porch while we’re at it. Which means we should probably re-do the siding.
Inside, the walls desperately need to be painted, starting with the ceiling and the aforementioned baseboard trim. Might as well take down and paint all the doors, too. It never ends……
Eventually, we want to bust out the back wall and add on a couple of rooms but until then, I have to entertain myself with fantasies of finding the previous owners and choking the life out of them.
posted by Rachel on 2-4-2008 at 2:58 pm
Here’s a tip: NEVER, I mean NEVER try to refinish your hardwood floors yourself. I think we spent 14 hours a day for 6 days refinishing about 800 sq. ft. It was the worst home improvement experience of my life and I think we only saved about $400.
posted by Allie on 2-4-2008 at 4:45 pm
One thing I’ve learned in the last ten years of home-ownership (after beating myself in the head on ten separate occasions with “I can do this myself hammer”):
Don’t drive yourself crazy, call a (reliable and referenced) professional. It’s worth the piece of mind.
It’s cost me about $40,000 to find out I know little to nothing about plumbing, carpentry, landscaping, heating systems, and electrical work.
I now have a guideline: If I need to buy a new tool to do the job, I need to be calling a professional.
posted by Ed Hands on 2-4-2008 at 4:59 pm
We bought our first home in 2003. To build up our ’sweat equitity’, we decided to finish the basement with 3/4 bath and an additional bedroom. We began in summer of 2004 with a purging garage sale and framing out the basement began. We were fortunate in that a friend of the family (also a contractor) was willing to work on weekends. However, after 10 months, he had had enough and left us to complete the job. Oh boy! We ended up hiring jobs piecemeal to other contractors to get the job done - After a year and half, our bath was done (with a his/her shower!). Another year passed before we finally got the mudding and taping of the drywall done (we were doing that ourselves and that was the biggest mistake!). Then, I got pregnant - and funny, my husband no longer had motivational issues to finish the job - it was done in just a couple of months. (BTW - we did fill/sand and paint the nail holes in our trim)
Some things we learned was to 1)consider the pain-in-the-arse factor. Some jobs are worth the money to hire professionals; and 2) even after 3 1/2 years, the project _will_ get done if you stick with it. We now joke that we should have gotten pregnant sooner and maybe the basement would have been done even earlier.
posted by micx on 2-4-2008 at 5:08 pm
Note to Ann -
That is the worst horror story I’ve ever heard!! Yikes! Glad to hear it’s over.
posted by micx on 2-4-2008 at 5:11 pm
this is so my house. we start one thing and it overtakes EVERYTHING. we put in new ceilings in March and we’ve yet to paint them because we’ve decided to refinish the floors. I still haven’t painted my kitchen because I just DON’T WANT TO. but i did just refinish the bathroom (minus the ceiling, it still needs sanding and painting) we painted, tiled teh floors and put in a new toilet and sink. you couldn’t pay me enough to figure out hwo to remove the tub though…. good luck!
posted by Sarakenobi on 2-4-2008 at 6:20 pm
My fixer-upper was also built in 1923 -at least the original five rooms. I’ve been here 15 years and have worked on it constantly. I’ve spent more on remodeling than I did on the original property, and I did a big part of the work myself. My advice? Never go with the lowest bidder. We had two new rooms built several years ago, and we are STILL repairing what’s wrong with them.
posted by Miss Cellania on 2-4-2008 at 7:57 pm
Never go with the highest bidder, either! My husband and I got five bids to re-roof our 1920’s bungalow. We went with the highest bidder because the other four seemed obscenely low…y’know, like “too good to be true”? Well, the roof leaked the first time it rained…and it rained buckets for a week, so the contractor couldn’t fix it properly. So then he came out to fix it. And it leaked again. So then he came out to fix it - again. And it leaked - again. Anyway, long story short, he came out four times to fix it.
Meanwhile, my kitchen, which was about the only room in the house that I considered “done”, was trashed. The plaster cracked, the original built-in cabinetry swelled, cracking more of the plaster AND the tile around it, the ceiling and walls took on a nasty brown-and-black hue…the list goes on.
Fortunately, our insurance is covering the repairs. The new contractor came out and said almost everything was salvagable…except the tile backsplash. No big deal, I wasn’t in love with it anyway. So I decided to replace it. And hell, as long as I’m replacing the backsplash, let’s replace the formica countertops with granite! And, jeez, since we’re ripping out the walls and ceiling, might as well redo the electrical, too!
Oh, and in the midst of all this, my husband deployed to Afghanistan, leaving me with what’s left of the kitchen, a contractor to deal with, and a fussy toddler who’s upset that he can’t play in the cabinets.
Anyway, the work is JUST ABOUT done. The counters are *supposed* to go in today, the electrical’s done, the backsplash goes in tomorrow…
BTW, a word to the wise: if you have small children and a major room renovation - especially a kitchen or bathroom - try to pawn them off on the grandparents until the work is done. The work hasn’t been limited to the kitchen, so I can’t even imagine what it would be like if my parents hadn’t taken my son away from the power tools, dust, open basement doors, etc.
Good luck with your bathroom! :)
posted by kate on 2-5-2008 at 7:54 am
Stacy — I’ll skip my home improvement horrors to say that as a mom to two dachshunds, I completely understand the utter shock of stepping in weenie wee, although I’m usually in socks when I do it. Yuck. Pee socks.
posted by Jane on 2-5-2008 at 10:11 am
Gotta agree with Anthony in #5. In my family there’s a saying “There is NO 4 hour home improvement job I can’t turn into at least 40 hours of hard labor.”
posted by Fran on 2-5-2008 at 10:44 am
My dad and I tried to install a ceiling fan in the dining room. When we took off the old fixture, charred insulation fell on our heads. We spent three entire days rewiring the whole house.
Home Depot fan: $ 20
Rewiring the house: $3800
A Daddy/Daughter bonding experience: Priceless
It did teach me how to fish wires in about eight seconds flat, though.
posted by Miss Priss on 2-5-2008 at 3:33 pm