Renovation Poll
What are the top 5 awful things to have work done on while you are living in your home? Top 5 things it doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference? For the poll, let’s assume weather is mild.
What are the top 5 awful things to have work done on while you are living in your home?
Top 5 things it doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference?
For the poll, let’s assume weather is mild.
The top 5 awful things to have work done on during my reno (should be phrased “that the reno worked on”) were:
1) my bank account
2) my sanity
3) my marriage (that bit the dust — make that lead dust — as a result of the first 2)
4) all my OTHER relationships
5) did I mention my bank account?
Everything else was a breeze 🙂
Oh, please! Living in a one bathroom house and having that bathroom redone. Hands down. 2 nights without toilet, 2 weeks without shower. Awful.
Looks like not everything though mopar – but most of the big stuff. Curious about roof? Why is roof bad? Does the old roof generally come off? I replaced the EPDM flat roof on my old house and it took 1-2 guys a couple of hours, with nothing in the living space disturbed whatsoever. Is it atypical to go over the old roof when installing a new one? Seems like a good idea to layer to lower heat loss and save the landfill space.
Repairing the roof is pretty bad though. I lived in a rental with a full on hole in the ceiling straight out the top of the building for several weeks…collected a couple of gallons of rain water in buckets.
Any further details on roof installation horrors, witchdoctor?
So, basically, everything.
1. Kitchen reno. i had to live without my kitchen for just a week to have the floor redone, and it was brutal. Can’t imagine what a full kitchen reno would have been like.
2. Any kind of excavation in the basement/cellar: The mess! The noise! The irate neighbors!
3. Totally agree on chimney work. Disgusting filthy ugh.
4. Refinishing floors: you might as well move out and then back in, it would be less mess and disruption.
Agree with all above with one exception: if your replacement windows require going down to the brick (ie. opening the wall cavity to install new frames) the dust can be very nasty. But chimney work probably takes the biscuit when it comes to generating nightmarish qtys of black dust and/or soot. We refinished all the woodwork on our parlor floor one fall and it was a surprisingly easy project to live through — and one the results of which we are still thrilled by daily.
As witchdoctor said,, basically anything involving major walls and floor work is a misery to live through. The dust and debris is a nightmare, not to mention moving furniture like crazy (I lived through my kitchen being gutted/re-configured. Dust was everywhere for months).
5 things that don’t make a difference?
1. Painting (with mild patching) – just through a drop cloth down and open the windows.
2. Replacing windows. We did 30+ over 2 days in Sept. With good weather it’s just the inconveniences of moving furniture away from the windows and minor dust.
3. Changing a bathroom vanity or toilet. As long as you’re just swapping out a new one for an old one, not moving pipes, its pretty painless.
4. Updating a kitchen. As long as you are keeping the footprint and utilities as is, it’s just a matter of tearing out and replacing cabinets, counters, and appliances. When you start changing the physical set-up, opening/moving walls , re-routing utilities, etc (as I did), that is where the awfulness comes in.
5. New light fixtures. Not so much “renovation” but you can really change the look of a room by swapping out the $5basic globe for something nicer, and it rarely requires more than a screw driver.
1. electrical work since they have to open the walls
2. plumbing work since they have to open the walls
3. any type of sheetrocking or plaster work, because of the sanding which gets all over everything
4. sanding the floors
5. installing a new roof