As renovators we watch the home improvement shows. And we nearly always talk about them while we watch. One huge common thread we have noticed is that most home owners never allow enough time for the renovation project that they’re undertaking. I’ve seen people talk about one week for gutting the kitchen down to the studs and rebuilding it. Or a few days for gutting and rebuilding a bathroom.
A few days isn’t enough TIME TO gut AND rebuild a closet. Let’s be honest. When you renovate a kitchen or a bath, you are going to encounter things you didn’t expect. If you’re not highly skilled, handing plubming, electrical or structural issues can be very time consuming. Once that’s done, you have flooring, drywall AND TRIM TO deal WITH. Those ARE things that really have TO be done correctly IN order TO look RIGHT. If you don’t want to reduce the value of your house, the visible parts of your reno have to look right.
I wonder sometimes if these “crasher” shows don’t do MORE harm than good. It’s one thing to “crash” a house with a few dozen contractors and finish a big project in a few days. It’s another matter entirely TO have two adults working ON a renovation by themselves. FIRST, the contractors do this stuff ALL the TIME so they WORK a lot faster than the average DIY home owner. Secondly the team OF contractors has 20 times the NUMBER OF man-hours available.
Let’s use the Old Blue House’s kitchen AS an example. It’s about 10 feet by 18 feet right now. If we were to start demolition tomorrow, I would estimate that it would take us 3 or 4 days bare minimum to get everything removed and haul off the debris.
One – we plan to recycle the icky kitchen cabinets into the garage where they will be quite useful for wall storage. We don’t plan TO bust them up AND ADD TO the debris that we’re removing from the site. We plan to take them down and carry them to the garage for eventual mounting in their new home.
Two – That 3 to 4 day time line assumes that both of us are able-bodied which is now NOT the case.
The Life and Times of the Little Blue House 