Remodeling - 14 Houses Later | |
With the clearest of hindsight, we can see the mistakes we've made and how they've changed the way we work on a house today. Where we used to plunge head first into a task and learn by doing, today we're likely to spend almost as much time planning a project as we do working on it. We used to think "do-it-yourself" meant doing all of it ourselves. Now we consider doing some of it, none of it or all of it. Our revised strategy combines doing it ourselves with working with professionals or hiring contractors to do the entire job. The house we live in is a little Victorian built in the late 1800s, making it the oldest house we've ever owned (most of the 13 others were built in the 1920s). Our restoration goals are long-range because we plan to live here forever. We've been here for 2 years, and when friends ask when we will be finished we answer quite honestly, "sometime in the year 2000." Here's an example of how we approach a project. It's one we're planning right now: adding a half-bath in the hall beneath the staircase. We've been talking about this project for months and have changed our mind more than once. The joke is we're talking about a space barely 3 ft. square, so you wouldn't think there'd be too many decisions. There's only one place to put the toilet, but we've made a federal case deciding where the door will go, what kind of door it should be, what to do with the hall wall, how to re-run heating lines in the hall wall into the bathroom, whether the sink will be a small corner fixture or a pedestal, should we refinish the floor or cover it etc., etc. When those decisions are finally made, we'll spend considerable time shopping for materials and fixtures so we have a handle on fixed costs. Then we'll get some estimates from a plumber and an electrician for the rough-in plumbing and electrical work. . One would think that after 25 years of doing this we'd have our act together, but there are always two sides to every project. Sometimes Gene feels a job is so small and simple that he can do the work easily. Katie doesn't sanction homeowner electrical work and prefers leaving it to a licensed tradesman, no matter how small the job. Doing the Menial Work How do we know when to do it ourselves vs. hire a pro? There isn't a simple answer. Basically, we decide only after we've taken a good hard look at the project. We make a job sheet that breaks down the work into phases so we have a list of the basic steps or techniques required. The list is nothing more than a legal pad on a clipboard where we keep a running tab of notations; the list changes as our ideas evolve. Committing to paper the steps involved in a project forces us to spend time nit-picking details that pose questions before we even lift a hammer. We talk it to death, "what-iffing" a project to hash out the options and approaches we might take. Most of the time we end up working on at least part of the project. The minimum usually is preparing a room or space or whatever it is, so when a tradesman or a team of them arrive, they can get right to their job. We like to pay the pros for performing their skill, not for work we can easily do ourselves. On the job sheet of every project, there's menial work that requires little in the way of tools and talent, but it's work that's got to be done. We call it grunt work - jobs like removing old carpeting from a room, caulking up windows or scraping siding before painting, steaming off wallpaper or demolishing a wall. We've never found contractors specializing in these fields, so that tells us no one wants to do it. If years of experience count for anything, we've earned our master's in grunt work and it's saved us a lot of money. For example, it's hard to remember a house where we didn't do interior painting. The skill is easily mastered and the tools required are minimal. And there's a tremendous sense of instant gratification as you see a room improve as the paint rolls onto the walls. For exterior painting, on the other hand, we might consider hiring a contractor, especially if it's a two-story house with a high, pitched roof that neither one of us wants to tackle. In one instance, we hired a contractor to do all the second-story work and we did the lower section of the house. A decorating project like hanging wall covering has its pros and cons. We'd definitely hire a professional to hang wallpaper in a hallway or stairwell or wherever scaffolding is needed. And if the wall covering is expensive, we'd hire a pro because we wouldn't want to risk ruining it and subsequently having to buy more and hire someone to redo our botched job (that hurts). But to decorate a bedroom with a paper with a simple repeat pattern, we'd definitely get out the adhesive and wallpaper brush. We always do various repair jobs that are too small for a contractor to be bothered with. Things like patching damaged drywall, fixing a sagging gutter, mending a broken window pane or torn screen, or fixing the hinge on a broken fence gate are jobs that require more time and patience than expertise. Replacing an appliance, such as an old dishwasher or a broken garbage disposal, is decided based on a dollar-for-dollar price comparison. Sometimes we're surprised to find that a local dealer will remove a rusty old water heater and replace it with a new one for $30 more than the cost of a new one. If you've ever tried to find someone to haul away the old piece of junk, you know it's worth it. Cost-Effective Use of Pros We hire electricians and plumbers and other licensed professionals because they know what's required to meet local building codes. And that translates to dollars and time saved when you're working to get a job done right and on time. We've learned a lot from working alongside them and looking over their shoulders. In particular, we've seen that they rent special-use tools that make a job easier to complete and produce a better-looking result. On our first visit to a rental store, we discovered tools and equipment that we didn't know existed. We've rented a heavy-duty, right-angle electric drill for $12 a day that makes short work of boring 2/2-in. holes through floor joists. This drill makes installing plumbing lines and electrical wires easy. Renting beats paying $250 to buy it. For $16 a week, we rent a rolling tower scaffold that's ideal for repairing and painting a 10-ft. ceiling. Neither of us has a background in design, but early on we developed a high regard for the training. Consequently, we've never regretted any money spent on professional designers. How a remodeled room looks, functions, and blends with an existing house is important. Designers' input has spared us from creating bad floorplans for room additions; and they've suggested clever and inexpensive ways to incorporate useful storage space. A landscape architect saved us money by laying out a long-term plan for all the plantings and shrubbery needed for a house. We then purchased and planted the shrubs and trees as our budget allowed. After a couple of years we had a well-planned yard. We've found it's a good bet to buy materials from suppliers who offer expert design advice along with their products. We've learned tricks about where to place recessed lights from a lighting retailer and the relative spacing of closet shelves from a closet shop retailer; these are design details that make a difference. Sometimes the design advice is free. Sometimes it's offered at a reduced fee when we purchase the materials. We've always thought it was money well spent. For most of our projects, labor has run about half the total job cost. But in some instances that's not the issue. The cost of the materials is more important. We're likely to hire a professional to install expensive materials such as hand-painted tiles rather than risk damaging them. A couple of wrong cuts and the savings is history. When it comes to a major remodeling job, we try to hire a contractor who doesn't mind our participation. For example, we recently hired a carpenter to install a folding attic stair in the ceiling of a bedroom and then lay down 4-x-8 sheets of plywood in the attic for flooring. He did those jobs and we added the insulation and trimmed out the opening. The Half-Bath Plan For our new half-bath, we'll get the space ready for the professionals we hire. We've measured, surveyed, and sketched out where we envision fixtures and service lines will run. But we'll listen to what the pros suggest if it differs from our idea. Our part of the job involves cutting a new opening into the wall for the door and removing the plaster and debris. A plumber will rough-in a new drain line and vent for a toilet and vanity, and someone - yet to be decided - will run electrical lines for lighting, heating, and a fan. When that work is completed and the building inspector has given it his stamp of approval, we'll begin the second phase of our involvement. We'll hang and finish the wallboard, trim out the woodwork, hang the door, finish the floor, install the fixtures, hook up lighting, heating and fan, and decorate the walls. We've gotten better at estimating the cost of a project because we itemize on the job sheet. But in any project there's always the element of the unknown. A simple job of replacing a bathroom vanity once became a financial nightmare when the plumbing line behind the wall broke. We're prone to be cynics and budget more than we think it will take. Time seems to be our stumbling block. You'd think we'd be better at knowing how long a project takes, but if truth be told, we're still rookies. We can look back at past jobs for an idea of the hours involved, but we usually fly by Katie's golden rule - triple the time Gene estimates. Copyright HouseNet, Inc. |