I like to watch HGTV, and I know it's all sensationalized, but it seems like every time they are doing a big renovation, there is some big surprise problem that screws up the Reno and adds a lot of time or cost. Curious how common that really is (especially as we are thinking about buying a house soon!).
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Last month we had the roof of our rental house (from the 60's) reroofed. Which I would not consider a major Renovation (but that's how I voted...) and the roofer fell through the roof into the bedroom. Turns out whoever did the roof last didn't put down an underlay, so the plywood was rotting. It cost a little more than we were quoted and wasn't the end of the world overall, but, in general, that's been our experience. We have a couple stories.
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Lots and lots of home renovations, almost always major time consuming, costly problems. lol... sometimes things go smooth, but mostly there's obstacles.
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We added on a bedroom and dining room, knocked out a wall, and completely renovated our kitchen. All went smoothly, but i was in my first trimester with my second pregnancy and was a SAHM with an 18 month old. I voted that it went as expected, but it was a very looooong process for me. Im glad we did it though!
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We've gutted both the kitchen and finished basement. Both projects went about 10% over the original quote, but we'd set money aside planning on that. They did take a bit longer than originally quoted too. I think my expectations were low though after watching so much hgtv.
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I voted as expected but I will say that every time we do a project it ends up costing more than we anticipated! There are always little things that we don't anticipate that add up.
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We did a full on Property Brothers style reno - main floor down to studs with structural work. Second floor...mostly cosmetic.
Expected Issues:
-Whole houses needed electrical wiring (identified in inspection)
-Structural needs to open things up/take down walls
-Improper materials used in bathrooms; we were replacing anywaysUnexpected Issues:
-Roof needed replacing (we bought in winter, no way of inspecting the roof)
-Structural Issues were all easier than planned for (all openings had proper structure to be opened...requiring no additional headers/beams
-Kitchen Flooring needed additional subflooring to be even with the rest of the houseI get so annoyed when I see these people act shocked (the flippers mostly but sometimes property brothers) that electrical or plumbing needs replacing. These are 100% items that would be discussed during inspection!!!!
ETA: We ended up 15% over our initial budget of $55K...this was almost entirely due to the roof, offset by some minor savings we found.
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We renovated our bathroom and it went as expected. There was a hole and rotting wood beams due to a water leak years ago (prior to us buying the house). We also replaced our roof and it was covered by our insurance because of hail damage.
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We have done some major gut renovations in our current home and old house. I voted went worse than expected but it's just that there are always surprises when you do a gut job. Where you just shake your head and go what kind of hack contractor/electrician/plumber did this crap. But then DH has a dad that's in HVAC, brother that was a great plumber, uncle/cousin that are certified electricians and I'm an architect. So.....our standards are higher than the average homeowner.
But eventually 3/4 of our house will be gutted down to the studs. So far we've done the living, dining and kitchen where we demoed two walls to open up the space. The kitchen was completely relaid out. Everything on that level was also changed from low voltage to a current system. DH moved gas pipes and plumbing lines etc. we've done almost everything ourselves minus electrical work.
Every single room has been repainted, tons of wallpaper stripped, new flooring throughout. And by we, I mean mostly DH since I was heavily pregnant and home with a NB during most of this.
Looking forward to being a physical part of future gut renos in our home!This year we're concentrating more on the outside. There's some wood siding that's rotting so we need to replace that and might bite the bullet and repaint the whole house this summer.
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@regberadaisy: in an alternate world i would love to do a major overhaul like that! But we are not handy, don't have any relatives or friends in the business, and don't have any great creative ideas- I'm the person on property brothers who can't picture their suggestions u til they see the mock up.
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As a civil engineer I see a lot of renovations and we greatly prefer new builds. If we do a rehabilitation (remodel) there is always more problems due to the unknown and variability in an existing structure. Even if we built the structure 40 years ago we don't know the exact specifics of how it was maintained.
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@regberadaisy: We have some handy people in my family, but you may have us beat lol. I feel like we could have lots of fun DIY projects if we weren't so far apart.
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Yes! We have a 1910 home and had two full gut job bathroom remodels. Unfortunately the non staining grout has stained which will be expensive to repair. We also had 1000 sq ft of original wood floors finished- that went smoothly.
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@Foodnerd81: yes - DH is super handy and has done almost everything himself! We called in some help with the electrical because our whole house is a low voltage system which was popular in the 50s. But it sucks and has been a nightmare to rewire! Our house is a major fixer upper and I don't think anything has been updated since it was built.
There was matted orange shag carpet, everywhere. SO gross.
To be frank, we could only afford this neighborhood because our house is a fixer upper! LOL So the house was listed to reflect that. Which left us money to do the major renovations on the top of our list. The other stuff like gutting the VERY BLUE main bathroom, put a fence around our property, updated the master bath, etc will be a few years down the line.@Boogs: you move closer!
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I voted as expected.
We've had our roof and furnace replaced, the house insulated, and our electrical updated (removing most of the old knob and tube). We've also refinished our own floors and woodwork (American chestnut that had been painted
), gutted and remodeled our kitchen, converted a 3-season porch to a home office, and done two bath remodels. And various other minor updates. We did maybe 50-75% of the work ourselves and hired the rest. Our house is old, so we generally expect the worst and then are sometimes pleasantly surprised. Also, we've worked with the same couple tradespeople, and they seem to be able to anticipate and address issues well.The only thing that went worse than expected was refinishing the floors. We didn't realize they were shellaced and how hard that was to remove. It took three long days of hard work to figure out a way to get the shellac off, but we finally figured something out. (And now we have beautiful old growth fir floors
)
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We just finished a major rehab of an apartment. We did not do the work ourselves. There were definitely things that popped up but nothing that could completely derail the project or couldn't be fixed. DH took the lead on this stuff, and he has vowed never again.
I said if we we ever do it again for anything, that I'll take the lead.
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We bought a fixer upper so we completely gutted and renovated it. I voted better than expected, I guess b/c I am a pessimist so I was trying to expect the worst haha. Our contractor was amazing and our house turned out great! There were so many things we took his lead and suggestions b/c sometimes we just don't know better, or too exhausted to choose yet another thing. So I think having someone you trust and understand your taste/style is important!
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We bought our house about 2 years ago and have done some minor stuff --- took a wall down between the kitchen & dining room and put in an island (did ourselves)... We need to completely gut & re-do our full bath but I think I'd like to hire someone as it's our only full bath and I want it done fast - but it's totally fine as is for a few years.
Our big plan is to put on an addition in the next few years so that's going to be pretty major. We're definitely going to hire someone as we'd like to add on a mudroom, 2-car garage, and expand one of the bedrooms to be a master suite with a full bath upstairs.... I think we're going to wait until our kids are out of daycare to do that one!
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We put on a 2 story addition.. garage below, kitchen above and renovated our living room.
I voted worse than expected but mainly because our electrician held the entire project up and instead of taking 3 months, it took 8 months. My DH laid the last floor board down the night before we had DS. -
We've gutted a house. There's still a bunch to do but the only big surprise was that the "replaced" knob and tube wasn't actually replaced. It was expensive to fix but it was far less than our contingency.
I'm in the biz so I'm not really phased by the unexpected.
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We finished our basement and it pretty much went as expected. The house is only 10 years old, though, and the basement was totally unfinished so it wasn't like they were going to find anything weird. We also did a minor reno on the kitchen - new sink/counter and refaced the cupboards - and it was a nightmare but because our contractor was terrible, not because of anything house related (3 different days he told us he was coming, we took a day off work, and he called that morning to cancel. What was supposed to be two days of work took three months to totally get finished).
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@regberadaisy: Sigh. Only in my dreams. I would love to move at some point, but impossible with DH's job.
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@Foodnerd81: in the middle of it right now. It will be beautiful when finished but my general conclusion is that home renos are a special kind of hell. Tradespeople consistently lie. They lie about how much things will cost and how long things will take. It's incredibly frustrating! In hindsight we should've hired a general contractor or designer to deal with all the trades.
It's a stressful experience!
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We did a bathroom in our old house and it was a nightmare. After demo-ing the entire shower area, the contractor opened up our special order tile and it was all black. Black walls, black accents, black floors. Clearly, that was not what we had picked out and they had to scramble to find a replacement, which took about 10 days.
We only had 1 full bathroom so it was out of commission for weeks and I was 7 months pregnant. I had to shower at the gym every morning, which was a great motivation to go to the gym, but I wasn't happy. It was a disaster.
Looking forward to being a physical part of future gut renos in our home!
There was matted orange shag carpet, everywhere. SO gross.
), gutted and remodeled our kitchen, converted a 3-season porch to a home office, and done two bath remodels. And various other minor updates. We did maybe 50-75% of the work ourselves and hired the rest. Our house is old, so we generally expect the worst and then are sometimes pleasantly surprised. Also, we've worked with the same couple tradespeople, and they seem to be able to anticipate and address issues well.
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