To Renovate or Not To Renovate

The decision to renovate our kitchen was long overdue. We were hesitant to put time and money into a renovation that we thought may not last very long. There were many reasons for this, starting with the age of our home.

When we purchased our home, our intention was to gut and renovate the entire thing, top to bottom, along with building an addition – we wanted to do this immediately. We knew we were going to hire an architect and start the process the right way. So, it didn’t make sense for us to put time or money into renovating anything. Our house does not have forced heating or air – we have radiator and baseboard heat with window unit air conditioning (ugh). So, anything that we did to any room in the house, would have later been ripped apart to put duct work through the house, and knowing that I wanted millwork and wallpaper in just about every room, I couldn’t make sense of starting anything until we were sure what our plans were.

As we began the process, it turned out to be much more time consuming and costly than we had imagined, a learning experience. We hired our dream architect and spent two entire years saving and planning for our renovations. When our drawings were complete, we realized we had bitten off more than we could chew, and so we decided to slow down and take the renovation one step at a time.

The first thing that needs to be done before we move forward with anything else is installing an updated heating and air system. We priced out several different heating and air companies only to find that the cost was DOUBLE what we had budgeted for. We were devastated to find out how much this would hold us up in renovations, so we went back to the drawing board again. We did some investigating and found that with the help of friends, Sweet James will be able to tackle this project on his own. The project will be more time consuming as a result, but it will be about 1/3 of the cost and will end up being done more thorough than if we hired someone. That is only because many things need to be moved around in order to install the ducts in unobtrusive ways, such as moving electric, plumbing, and walls. We could never expect that from traditional HVAC guys (especially within our budget), and so that project has begun as of recently.

In the meantime, we have been living with a neon yellow kitchen amongst many other design choices that don’t fit with our taste. So, we decided to implement budgeted renovations wherever we can for the duration of the heating and air installation for two reasons: one is to keep me busy while I impatiently await major renovations and two so our house starts to begin feeling like ours.

The reason we chose to renovate the kitchen first is because it was more involved than the other first floor rooms, which will mostly just involve painting, and also because it is likely one of the last things we will touch once major renovations begin. So, the renovation will not go to waste because we will end up enjoying the fruits of our labor for 2-3 years before we relocate the kitchen (yes, I said relocate).

If you’re interested in our plans for the rest of the house, then stick around to see our renovations escalate from budgeted DIY renovations to large-scale planning, building, and relocating. Perhaps I’ll share our construction plans next.