Almost a year ago, we embarked on the journey to transform our house into a home. It has been an interesting journey, to say the least. I’ve learned a lot about myself and a lot about the process. While I love our house and I consider it down, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that I never want to do this again! Why would I say this? Remodeling a house requires you to make hundreds and hundreds of decisions ranging from what faucets to get to what color paint to put on the wall. We had a general contractor who handled all the sub contractors. Dealing with the general contractor was easy and he was quite responsive.
We had an architect do the design and my dad who was in construction inspection his entire career offered to act as the project manager, per se. Man dad was at the house a few times a week and paid attention to all the details along the way helping mitigate problems that arose and guiding us on what we should do. By getting up early every day and working from 5:45 am to 2:30 pm, I was able to goto the house everyday and see what was going on with the house. Inevitably there was some problem I had to deal with or some decision to make.
Just to give you an idea of the decisions we had to make:
- What faucets to buy
- What countertop to get in the bathroom
- What countertop to get in the kitchen
- What light fixtures to buy throughout the house
- What outdoor light fixtures to get
- What floor to get
- What color paint for all the rooms
- What color paint for the outside of the house
- What kinds of toilets to get
- What towel bars to get
- What kinds of windows to get (I was very specific on the type of lock I wanted)
- What sliding glass doors to get
- What tile to get
- What fireplace to get
- What tile to go around the fireplace
- What color stain for the cabinets
- What ceiling fans to buy
- What track lights to get
- What thermostat to get
- What furnace to get
- What garage door to get
- What garage door opener to get
- What shelving units to get
- What closet organizers to get
- What sinks to get
- What vanity to get
- What doors to get
- What door hardware to get
- What speakers to get
- What appliances to get (refrigerator, microwave, washer, dryer, range, dishwasher)
etc.
I tried to keep ahead of the contract and to make things as easy as possible for my wife, I tried to only present a few decisions to her at a time.
On top of the decisions, issues came up with just about every sub contractor. Some issues were easily resolved, some were a bit more complex. One of the most memorable problems was the day we moved in (the house wasn’t done, but enough so that we could move in), I smelled gas in the attic, so I shut off the valve to the furnace. The next morning, I went up again and still smelled gas. The shutoff valve wasn’t properly connected so I had to shutoff the gas to the house. The contractor got the sub contractor out to fix it right away, but that kind of workmanship is pretty unacceptable as it was a safety concern.
This really wore on me and caused me an immense amount of stress. Our house is now really a home and I’m very pleased with the outcome; the process, however, is one that I could have done without.
You might enjoy the now old but still relevant “House” by Tracy Kidder (The Soul of a New Machine).