Love it or change it – the old house…

The house is almost 14 years old. The kitchen cupboards of pressed board and laminate overlay are starting to show signs of wear. When the built-in fridge began leaking last August it caused irreparable damage to the cupboards surrounding it. The backsplash has always been someone else’s idea of style, but to us a bad joke.

Note hideous backsplash.  The tile ends at the cupboard base, it was put in after the particle board cupboards that are falling apart.

This wardrobe has outlived its usefulness as a pantry.

There is no built-in pantry, so we have had a wardrobe doing pantry duty for 10 years, the doors only close now with a fist bump while one’s head is tilted at a certain angle. The master shower is all white, square tiles, the rest of the bathroom is lovely granite. The shower is slippery when wet, and oh so white in an otherwise earth-tone bathroom. It has leaked out the door where the water barrier fell off and damaged the baseboard near it. The walls in the house are full of marks from careless cleaning folk and even holes from the various dog gates over the years. The colors are outdated. The baseboards are falling off and being carried to secret hiding spots by the cats. Our investments are making no increase at the bank.

We decided it’s time to R-E-N-O-V-A-T-E!!

The search for a contractor began with the thought

 that it would be three separate requests: one for the kitchen, one for the bathroom, and one to paint the whole house and replace all the baseboards. An inquiry on a Home Renovation Contractor website solicited dozens and dozens of responses from a variety of trades. Sears Home Improvement was the most insistent of them all. Most of the bathroom suggestions were for those one-piece fiberglass inserts – YUCK! A lot of the kitchen trades wanted to just reskin our existing cheap cupboards and didn’t have the ability to build us a pantry, so that would be a fourth supplier. The painters all sounded more flaky than the paint on our walls.

One day as I was sorting through the plethora of flyers and coupons in our mail I came across one of those little books with beautiful pictures of renovated homes and properties. There were of course the usual suspects included that also advertise on local TV, and one smaller company that caught my eye that did both kitchens and bathrooms.

I arranged appointments for both the smaller company and the TV stars to come and provide estimates for the work we wanted done. I read their YELP reviews. The lesser-known company had 48 five star reviews – must be a good sign – right? As expected, the TV star company’s quote came in about $20k over the smaller company. The GC who came to give us an estimate from the smaller company was darling, and Israeli who fell immediately in love with all the fur kids, especially Rolo (no surprise there, everybody loves Rolo).

To do everything was more than we had guessed, of course, so we thought about foregoing some of the renos for this year. We could just do the master shower – that, after all, was the first thing we thought of changing. But, that kitchen… the island could be more useful a little wider, that backsplash is hideous, the cupboards are falling apart, still no functional built-in pantry, dishwasher is about to die…so maybe just the shower and the kitchen. But, the walls, the color is old and dated, dark and marked up. What the hell, let’s just do it ALL! It’s an investment in the value of the house, right? If we have to sell, it will be much more saleable. Until we have to sell we can enjoy the newness, functionality, and modern feel of the renos.

We chose the smaller company with the darling GC. We are excited to begin!

...pdride