True essence of Home Improvement

Home improvement can mean a whole lot of different things.  It can be as simple as painting a room or replacing some hardware on cabinets.  It could be redoing a bathroom with new plumbing, tile, and fixtures.  It could be adding a security system or incorporating solar into heating water.  Home improvement could be repairing or replacing flooring.  It could be removing a wall, adding a skylight, or even adding a room.  Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia does a decent job talking about all the various facets of this that you can check out by clicking on HOME IMPROVEMENT.

For me, home improvement that I talk about here is a complete renovation.  We kept the footprint of our house.  The foundation was good.  But we moved walls, completely replaced the plumbing, replaced everything related to heating and air, knocked out some walls, added skylights, replaced floors, windows, cabinets, and doors.  We added a room, added a pool, added an outdoor deck and pergola.  It was a lot and it was a mess.  And we had never done anything quite to this extent before only for home improvement.

So, up front we hired an architect to spec out everything.  We got it just like we wanted it on paper because we'd heard about "change order" disasters to the budget.  Then we searched for a general contractor because we were working and already thoroughly occupied with raising our kids.  They came highly recommended from friends that had bigger houses in better neighborhoods.  We thought we were fine.   Contracts signed.  Work started.

The first "if I had it to do over again" is that I would have fired the general contractor at the first sign of trouble....the first shortcut we discovered that varied from the blueprints they bid from and agreed to follow to the letter.  But no.  We had spent way too much time finding the right one already.  We allowed them to talk us down, so to speak, and that was the biggest mistake we made in the whole process.

With the benefit of hindsight, we would act as our own general contractor if we had to do this over again.  After all, that's essentially the way it ended up.  We were not satisfied with their painter, so we found our own.  We were not satisfied with their floor people, so we found our own.  We were not satisfied with their pool bids or contractors, so we found our own.  One of us was having to visit our house daily (we'd moved out for all the extensive home improvements), so we were pretty close to actually functioning as the general contractor anyway.

Taking chances with Home Improvement

Another "if I had it to do over again" item is to set it in my mind that it's going to take a lot longer to complete than the longest time I thought it would.  Clearly, the typical scenario is not the 1 week time frame we see on "Extreme Makeover."  Had we set ourselves up to think this way from the get-go, I don't think we'd have been so disappointed with every setback of the completion date....and there were several.  Riding this roller coaster with our children just added to our challenges of the home improvement that was going to create the living place of our dreams.

The end result was what we desired.  The house was beautiful, at least to us.  It came out like we hoped and dreamed.  But getting through the home improvement and to this end result was a rough experience on our marriage and family.  Surely, there's an easier way!

Home Improvement: Tool Time Part 1