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| We can make THIS... |
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| ...look like THIS on not much money and time because we've got, you know, vision. |
I love working with buyers. One of the fun parts is zeroing in on "the house," watching my buyers fall cautiously (or in some cases, recklessly) in love with it, and then listening to them make a list of all the things that must be done as soon as they move in. For some reason, buyers get all pie-eyed and see all this happening in a matter of days after closing, often at little to no expense. Ha! I don't fuss, though. I've totally been there. Kevin and I bought our house in October 2008 and before we knew it we had a loooong list of "must dos." Eventually those became "should dos" that over time morphed into "wanna dos" and now I don't even know where that list is. The point is this: yes, you want to settle in, make it your own little nest, and personalize and upgrade it to the hilt (or as far as your budget will allow). But life often takes precedence over your at-home to-do list (did you really think you'd have oodles of time and money now that you're a homeowner?) and over time you'll realize that you never really run out of those "you know, I'd really like to..." moments.
Fast forward to this Spring. We've done a few things here and there (and by we, I mean Kevin), but the biggest and best might just be the project he finished a few weekends ago: Retreading The Stairs. Our house was built in 2002 and was lovingly cared for by a sweet couple with a big dog and a little baby. But their love could not save the carpet on the stairs. It was just gross. So Kevin set about taking up the carpet and putting down wood tread and I couldn't be happier with the results!
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| After! Oh Glorious After! |
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| Blech. |
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| Beautiful! |
A few points here:
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| This is when it started to get ugly... |
- Just about any home-improvement project uncovers something else that must be tackled first and this was no exception. When Kevin pulled up the carpet and started measuring for the treads and kick-boards, he discovered the rise and run were not uniform. (Turns out this is not uncommon; a few contractors told me that when builders set about making a staircase that they know will be carpeted, they make a rough cut for the risers, hence the jankiness.) He had to rebuild the risers on the bottom half (something he didn't anticipate doing that set the time-line back a few weeks), build up the first landing, and build up the treads on the top half by a 1/2 inch or so to make it uniform.
- This ain't a walk in the park and there is a small amount of demo work involved, but Kevin's really handy. He wouldn't dream of telling you how marvelous he is, so I'll do it for him. I'm guessing this ranked about an 8 or 9 on the 1 to 10 scale of Projects That Are Awfully Daunting. I totally trusted him to do it right, to pay attention to detail, and to see the project through to the end. It was rough (see item #4) and at times ridiculously frustrating, but Kevin is no novice. Leave this to the professionals if your idea of DIY is embellished picture frames (not that there's anything wrong with that).
- Kevin estimates the project cost us $700. I've called around and gotten estimates from different contractors and I've heard anything between $1,200 and $4,000! Wowza!
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| That mess under there? The original builder left that! Ugh! |
- While there were monetary savings since we took the DIY route, time was a different issue. Kevin embarked on this stairway to heaven in early April; he disembarked in late August. This was strictly a weekend project but sometimes kids and tennis and vacation and family and other, more pressing opportunities arose and the project just had to wait. Kevin could see the vision; all I could see was dust and tools and an unfinished staircase. It was touch-and-go here and there, but we managed not to mangle each other this summer, so all's well that ends well. The gleaming stairs kind of dull my memory of discontent.
- The best part of all? Increased property value, y'all! (That rhymed!) Whatever projects you tackle at home, consider how it will ultimately affect your home's value. Our staircase is the first thing you see when you open the front door and replacing the old, worn-out, ratty, stained, pox-upon-our-house carpet with some gleaming, warm, sweet-dreams-inducing oak treads made all the difference in the world. That whole first impression thing is no joke, so improvements focused at the entry are usually money well spent.
You know who else loves the new staircase? Bentley. Ain't she cute?
A little sumpin' sumpin' from Kevin:
ReplyDelete"The only other aspect that you might consider mentioning is the fact that during the entire project the stairs still had to be functional on a daily basis (because, you know, all of our stuff is upstairs). This meant that there was break-down and rebuild time every time I worked on the project...and this slowed things down considerably when I ran into surprises. There were several times where I broke things down, made measurements, realized I had to come up with a new plan, and then had to put everything back together so we could have functional stairs while I figured out how to fix what I found."
Electrical Contractor Clearwater Wow, cool post. I'd like to write like this too - taking time and real hard work to make a great article... but I put things off too much and never seem to get started. Thanks though.
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ReplyDelete