Forum Archive

Apologies, this is a bit long.

My sister and I inherited a house a couple of years ago when my mother passed away. In the early stages of dealing with her estate, I had a guy come in to draw up some plans for renovating the kitchen and upstairs bathroom. In the process of that, the scope of the work increased dramatically – he believed a formerly load-bearing wall no longer was. That said, any changes made were done during renovations in the early 1980s, and nothing’s moved much since – ergo there’s no immediate fear. Part of this is also motivated by the fact that the upstairs bathroom once held a big clawfoot tub, and now is just a shower (amazingly, I met someone who used to live here).

Given all that news, and the chaos going on in my life at the time, I punted on everything. I’m now starting to re-examine the situation.

I’m facing a number of large repairs:
* Window replacement (a must)
* Stoop resurfacing (it’s a mess, but not critical)
* Aforementioned kitchen & bathroom
* Potential structural repair.

If I had my druthers and an unlimited budget, of course I’d say to just fix everything. But I can’t do that.

I feel like I need a combination architect/GC/mentor on all of this. I’m still pretty overwhelmed by it all, and I need someone I can trust on this to give me some sense of perspective on this work, especially with regards to the scope of it, how expensive it would be, and how long it would take.

I’ve taken to heart the whole “Good/Fast/Cheap – choose 2″ mantra, but I could really use some help & advice.

Thank you for any advice & recommendations, and please ask any questions that would help clarify things.