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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Would you put your family through a home renovation?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Theresa is on vacation today. Keith Still is filling in.
When we moved into our house eight years ago, I should have known that the beautiful, two-storey great room wouldn’t last. Open, airy rooms were a selling point for most people at the time, but I could never wrap my head around the idea of all that wasted space.
I began sketching plans for the empty air above my sofas before the first mortgage payment even cleared. Imagine all the things we could do if we just put a floor up there? A few beams, a subfloor, a bit of drywall and voila - usable space! We didn’t need more room at the time, so I eventually put the sketchbook away.
Then our third daughter was born. Two years later, she grew out of diapers and joined her sisters in the “big girl” bathroom. The idea of three stair-step girls jockeying for position in one (very small) bathroom was about as scary as watching The Shining. We now had a reason to renovate - and to do it before puberty hit our house like a bad case of chicken pox.
My “simple” renovations turned into a radical reconstruction that resulted in a new bathroom and loft upstairs for the kids and an improved great room downstairs for all. The results are amazing. Our contractors were creative, detail-oriented and very considerate of the fact that we were living in this mess throughout the demolition and rebuilding phases. (Translation: they worked like mad to minimize the number of weeks we had a big orange dumpster in the driveway, sawdust everywhere, plastic dangling from the ceilings and a gaping hole in our bedroom wall.)
But, there are a few things I would do differently. Mainly, I would have taken our contractor’s advice and moved out during the renovations. It was impossible to maintain normal family life during the process. Nearly every room was affected in some way. During the day, plastic sheets covered all of the furniture. Workers were everywhere. When the kids came home from school, we would head out to find a quiet place for them to do their homework. We couldn’t eat at home because the kitchen was the workers’ headquarters — and there was no place to sit anyway. So we would stay out until everyone left (usually 7:30-8:00 p.m.), then rush the kids home to get ready for bed.
It was stressful; it was majorly disruptive; but in the end, the renovations were worth it. And anything was better than putting our house on the market, looking for a new one and packing/unpacking.
Given today’s market, more and more people who would have just moved house a couple of years ago to get that extra bathroom (or bedroom or more spacious kitchen) are looking closer to their own home for solutions.
Have you ever renovated your house? Was it a major or minor disruption for the family? Did you move out or live amongst the drywall dust? Why did you choose renovating over moving? What advice would you offer families considering going through a renovation? Are you happy you renovated? Or would moving have been easier?
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