Hellobee Boards

Have you ever done a major renovation or remodel? My parents did.

What kind of renovation did you do? Completely gutted house (everything was original to 1950s) and added 1,000 square feet.

How did you find your designer/contractor/architect? Found several architects (word of mouth) and interviewed them - all the architects had in-house designers. Then the architect drew out the plans and then they got bids.

How long did it take vs the estimate? Double the time exactly.

How was the cost vs. the estimate? Predictably over budget, but there were some additional complexities that caused unexpected expenses. They were working with a really old house and HGTV style some unexpected things came out as necessary due to the age of the home.

How did you finance it? They paid cash.

Any regrets? During construction, they had huge regrets. It was a horrible builder (he was an asshole and verbally abusive) and started to think it just wasn't worth it. One year out they are SO glad they did it and live in their dream home.

What kind of renovation did you do? We added a hallway within a bedroom (to get to the addition), a new bedroom, a dining room, and a covered deck. We also did a kitchen remodel (new cabinets and countertops. floors and appliances mostly stayed the same)

How did you find your designer/contractor/architect?
A recommendation from a friend.

How long did it take vs the estimate?
It took a lot longer than we expected, but that was largely due to DH doing some of the work himself and that taking longer than we thought. Our contractor kept on schedule. There was a lot of waiting time during the kitchen part, but we expected it going in.

How was the cost vs. the estimate?
Cost ended up being higher, but because we decided to replace the entire roof so that the new roof would match better. Ours was almost due for replacement anyway.

How did you finance it?
We used cash we had saved and also took out a home equity loan. After the construction was finished we refinanced our mortgage to include the home equity loan so that we only had one payment.

Any regrets?
None! Well, I take that back. I wish I hadn't had a 18 month old and been pregnant at the same time. But we wanted it done before baby 2 was born, so that was unavoidable. But keeping an active 18 month old out of the way when tools are his favorite thing was a PITA. We sold our home this fall and it sold on the first day on the market for way over our asking price. It was definitely a good move.

@T.H.O.U.: It's hard to know because there weren't a ton of true "comps" in our neighborhood, but we are pretty confident that we got all of our money back out. Our selling price was about 2.5 times what DH bought the house for in 2003. Some of that was just general increase over time, but the addition itself cost us about 75% of the original purchase price. (This is hard to talk about without revealing actual numbers hahaha)

@Mrs. Lion: I think I got you!

So if the house was purchased for 100k, you put in an additional 75k but sold for 250k!

What kind of renovation did you do? We gutted the first floor entirely, opened up 2 walls, cosmetics in bedrooms, complete bathroom overhauls and one wall opened upstairs.

How did you find your designer/contractor/architect? No designer or architect. Our GC was someone we had used for minor work before. When we found this house we asked him to come on a tour of it and give us an estimate.
How long did it take vs the estimate? The whole project was scheduled to take 6 weeks, it ended up taking 8-9 weeks.

How was the cost vs. the estimate? Initial estimate was $50K; we ended up spending $60Kish - however the biggest piece of that variance ($8K) was that when the snow all melted (we bought in Feb in Michigan) we discovered the roof needed replacing. Our other overages were about $2K in upgrades we decided to do after we agreed on a budget and about $2K in issues we uncovered. For a 60 year old house we were very grateful we did not uncover more!

How did you finance it? Cash. We had made nearly $100K gross profit on our previous home - so we used cash for the renovation. We then refinanced to take the cash back out of the house and pay off high interest student loans DH was carrying from law school. We also then refinanced again (with no cost) to reset the slightly higher rate we had from doing an initial cash out refi.

Any regrets? Some regrets. 1) We wish we would have used higher end finishes in our master bathroom and figured out a way to get a tub in. It would have been expensive, probably $7-8K more but now we'll probably just re-do the whole thing for $15K down the road. 2) We wish we would have just had them paint/fix up the garage while they were all here. At the end of our project we were strapped for cash - so we had to cut some corners in the quality of the products we chose...

Not really a regret but we do plan to do another major renovation. It was simply not in the budget the first go around so we will fix some cosmetic things at that time (adding built ins to the office, adding more crown moulding, etc)

ETA: We are so glad we went this route. We got a great deal on the house and still are well under what others have in to homes in our neighborhood that are not nearly as updated. Even with our planned reno down the road we still feel comfortable that we will be able to get our investment back out!

We bought a fixer upper so we completely gutted the whole house and re-did every, single, thing.

Contractor was an old friend of DH's... He does more commercial stuff usually but did our house for us as a favor.

Well, we closed in March, and needed to move in by end of May, so they rushed like crazy for us! We were able to move in, but they were still in the house finishing up for a few weeks (we just made sure upstairs was done, bathroom & kitchen was done and left basement/outside till after we moved in)

I would say final costs stayed pretty true to what we estimated... I had a spreadsheet going that I was constantly updating, not too many surprises.

We borrowed money from my parents and his parents gifted us some money (all part of buying the house & renovating it)

No regrets at all. Looking at houses that were re-done in our town, they were so expensive... And half the time it's not even done the way I like it but I would never spend money re-doing it. We finally found a house that had good layout/structure and we could afford dumping more money fixing it. I'm so anal about stuff and have specific tastes, so I am SO happy we pretty much got like 90% of what we want.

Since the contractor was a friend we really trusted him and didn't need to be at the house all the time. All the workers were great. Not to say it was prefect, but I think for such a huge job it turned out pretty well! I have pretty boring but specific tastes, so DH and contractor could usually make decisions without me knowing what I'd pick. Of course, in hindsight there were a few things I'd change, but overall we are so happy. So important to get a good contractor.. He made so many great suggestions and helped us changed some ideas for the better and surprised us with some things that were better than what we had thought of!

@Anagram: great thread! We will probably have to make a decision soon about remodeling our house. It's tiny with a pretty large lot, so so we have space. Even though houses in the area have gained a ton in value, I feel like we are still priced out of an upgraded size wise home. The market is so competitive. So we consider our options.

@mediagirl: I need to do the kitchen only and the kitchen flooring. How did you act as middle man specifically?

@teawithpaloma: I found all of the workers. I booked the cabinet people, the countertop people and the backsplash guy. We didn't do floor but I would have found the flooring people, as well. Then, I talked to all three about when each part of the job should be done. They are the experts. They have done their jobs forever. They know who comes first. Example: the countertop people told us that once we had an install date for the cabinets, we could call them and schedule our tentative onsite date. Once the cabinets were in, they would come out and measure, then cut and then come back out a few days later to install.

We did our own demo, as well. I would guess in your case, you would demo, then do floors, then cabinets, then counters.

What kind of renovation did you do?
we did a whole house gut renovation. we were naive, and bought our house which was a 1920's home owned by basically one Italian family since the 40's, that liked to fix things themselves (I love Italians, but I have been to italy - to me it spoke volumes!). when we bought it we first thought we would be able to live in it with minor clean up for a while, maybe just knock down one wall to open up the kitchen. ha! that one wall turned into the whole house.. the electrical was the old knob and tube wiring, there was no central air, bathrooms had major mold and broken shower pans - it was a MESS!

How did you find your designer/contractor/architect? through my mom - which till this day causes friction between her and I. We didn't really have a contractor - just this do it all guy who did the framing work, painting/windows/plumbing/tile work/appliance installation/etc. then I hired out all the sub contractors (floor guy, hvac people, countertop guy, kitchen cabinet guy, electrician)

How long did it take vs the estimate?
Estimate was 8 weeks + whatever timeline kitchen cabinets took.
It took 3.5 months - with the last bathroom not getting finished until the 5th month - AFTER I came home from the hospital with a newborn baby and basically had a breakdown with the contractor that he had to finish!

How was the cost vs. the estimate? HA! well we started thinking we were just gonna take out a wall, and update electrical - original estimate for that was 17k.. by the time we were done it was 115k..

How did you finance it? I really don't know how! My husband had about 35k in savings we dipped into (we had more - and it was VERY hard to not go beyond that into our savings) My parents paid for the electrical (12k) And I think his parents gifted us the HVAC (6k) We were also pregnant and getting married at the time. My parents had given me 25k to plan my wedding - we only spent about 5k of that (eloped in hawaii with small group of friends and family - NO frills, on the beach - not even flowers - no cake - nothing! it was amazing!) So we used about 20k of that.. Then I was busting my ass freelancing, taking on all the extra work I could - wrapping up my last job the day my water broke! So that's how we came up with the rest.

Any regrets? LOTS!

Not starting off with a formal budget

Not finishing.. We never did our kitchen backsplash because "you can easily do it later" We never painted our house, so it looks awful on the outside still. We didn't finish out our basement because "it could be done later"

Not adding easier access to our backyard

I easily could saved about 6-10k in silly upgrades and used that towards painting the exterior (my kitchen faucet for example.. I HAD to have this Newport Brass faucet - its was $850!!! I HAD to have a rain shower and a handheld shower head (never use the rain shower) I HAD to have a nice tile inlay in my shower($750+ labor)

Not planning space better - we had 3 bedrooms and we planned to use one for an office.. Well three years later we need that for baby number two - and I could have done a built in office in my kitchen, but instead I used the space for a breakfast nook (which we never use!)

What was the overall process like? Even though it was stressful, I actually liked it. I NEVER imagined I'd be designing my own bathrooms or kitchen - so it was super exciting. It was also hard, because man EVERYTHING needs a decision - and without a contractor to make those basic decisions (how thick of baseboard molding, what kind of outlet covers, what kind of grout, what kind of pipes, how high do you want the lip of the shower to go - etc) I was very overwhelmed. I learned so much, and would LOVE to do it again, with my learned knowledge though!

@teawithpaloma: I work full time and am a parent so I figure if I can do it, anyone can. I'd say the toughest parts were taking the time off work to be there and micromanage the workers when they were at the house.

It was technically a full house flip while living in the house. I was 4 weeks pregnant when we moved in and we just sold the house yesterday. So we did it all while having a baby too.

We gutted the kitchen and rebuilt it, painted the whole interior, replaced light fixtures, crown molding and baseboards. We re did two bathrooms and also tiled our large playroom/sunroom and re did the ceilings in there too. We turned an odd room into a large butler pantry, replaced the pool liner and also replaced all the siding on the exterior with hardy board and new shutters and new exterior doors.

We did 80% of the work ourselves. My husband is in insurance and a lot of his clients ended up helping us when needed.

Well the little one made it harder to work on for sure but we had no set timeline. It took us exactly two years.

Ended up costing around 25k which was estimated but seriously a good deal for the amount of changes. DIY is the best way to go.

We paid as we went and did one room at a time. If we couldn't afford it then we had to wait.

Nope!

It was hard. The kitchen was the hardest. Also when we did get help from others we found contractors are extremely unreliable and frustrating.

@Anagram: I hate to stereotype them but we didn't have a single positive experience with one. One was even a "friend" he was the worst!

What kind of renovation did you do? Gutted our condo (new kicthen, took down walls, new floors, new bathroom appliances).
How did you find your designer/contractor/architect? We found our contractor through word of mouth- interviewed 3 and chose one. We did the design/plans ourself.
How long did it take vs the estimate? We were able to move in after 3 months, as planned, but some small things (kitchen backsplash, wallpaper, punchlist stuff) still needed to be done.
How was the cost vs. the estimate? We went 10K over budget.
How did you finance it? Savings for half, loan for the rest.
Any regrets? We should have re-tiled the bathrooms while we were already doing the work.

@Anagram: right. I didn't see your update. I think first step is look at rates. Then move from there. Sounds like a really interesting option!

I'm pretty conservative so with a purchase that big, I would plan to stay in the house through any possible housing bust or boom. That would probably mean expecting to stay 6-10 years.

What kind of renovation did you do? Tore down a porch and built a family room/mudroom in its place

How did you find your designer/contractor/architect? We used an architect and contractor that we knew from our social club

How long did it take vs the estimate? Haha this is why I will never live through construction again. 8-10 weeks turned into almost 7 months.

How was the cost vs. the estimate? We never got an estimate, just gave our builder a budget, and it turned out to be too low (he was losing money) so he put a lot of costs back on us like the purchase of our gas fireplace, bathroom appliances, etc.

How did you finance it? We paid cash but opened up a home equity LOC just in case since we knew there would be extra costs that we hadn't anticipated.

Any regrets? Yes. We were trying to keep the room small so our taxes wouldn't go up too high but I was too focused on this and refused to see the bigger (no pun intended) picture that the room was just too small for a family room. Now we can't change it.

What was the overall process like? Pretty terrible and I love our builder! The worst part was having trucks in teh driveway all the time. This drove me insane. But I felt like there was a lot of downtime then all of a sudden we needed to know paint colors, tile choices, etc. within the next 5 minutes without any warning.

We are discussing this now! Totally saving this thread, thanks for starting it!

@aprild: @pinkarmadillo: I forgot to direct my above questions to you ladies in particular.

My husband and I know nothing about renovations and we are doing such a major remodel (brand new kitchen, complete alteration of master bath, complete gut updates of other baths, new built ins, new loft addition, all new paint) that we would hesitate to act as our own GC. But the worker comp requirement was also a major factor and am curious how others handled that.

I am currently bidding out the project and wasn't sure if every construction firm is essentially a GC with a crew?