The Real Meaning of ‘House of Tomorrow’
Living through remodeling has given new meaning to the old phrase “Live in the house of tomorrow--today.”
I live in the house of tomorrow.
Tomorrow (or sometime thereafter), my living room lamps will plug directly into sockets instead of into heavy-duty extension cords that snake under area rugs to distant walls.
Tomorrow, there will be doors on my home’s five clothes closets, two water-heater closets and one laundry room.
And tomorrow, my stove will be vented, every room will have baseboards and the powder room will be a place where guests will powder instead of where I’m hiding the kids’ Christmas gifts--which says a lot about how early I do my Christmas shopping and how far away I think tomorrow may be.
Race to Finish
Remodeling is usually a race to see which will be finished first: your house, your sanity or your money.
The house always runs dead last.
My husband and I decided to concede our sanity almost from the start in hopes of finishing our house before we finish our money.
We decided to do the work ourselves.
This probably sounds a little rash. Actually, it’s a lot rash.
Even under the best of circumstances remodeling requires infinite patience, a high tolerance level for disorder and dust and, ideally, a healthy appreciation of the absurd.
Knowing the Trades
When you happen to be married to your contractor, your electrician, your plumber, your framer, your painter and your finish carpenter, deciding you can’t stand the people doing your remodel can have serious consequences.
Moreover, there are the sheer mechanics of the undertaking--knowing a dozen trades well enough to live with how you execute them, assembling the tools you need for the job, finding the time to get it all done in less than a lifetime.
Before we conceded our sanity, my husband, Don, and I understood all these realities perfectly. We were just another typical California couple sitting on a bundle of equity that wouldn’t fit into our microscopic master closet, figuring that a good architect and contractor could do for us what the fairy godmother had done for Cinderella and in only slightly more time.
We had rejected moving. The same price spiral that had generated our equity bundle guaranteed that, if we sold our house, we could take the money and buy another one just like it. No reason to break a few more pieces of china in a move for that.
Expensive Professionals
So all we had to do was hire the right people and leave it to them to enlarge our 1950s ranch-style La Jolla home by 2,000 square feet (adding family, breakfast, powder and laundry rooms), to relocate our kitchen, to replace a mind-boggling trapezoidal fourth bedroom and to give us a master bedroom worthy of the name.
Only when we learned the going rate for fairy godmothers in hard hats did we embark on a different course.
The architect wanted $40,000 of our $200,000 budget, and the contractor expected about the same. Altogether, these services were going to consume 40% of the funds we had hoped would last not only through construction but through landscaping and redecorating as well. Either we upped the ante or settled for less.
Neither alternative was appealing, so my husband--a Jack-of-all-trades and master of just about everything he puts his head or mind to--bought a drafting table and resurrected drafting skills learned in his youth. From his detailed work, a draftsman completed the drawings and obtained our first permits for $5,000.
Then we put the demolition and framing out to bid, committed to simply subbing the job out ourselves. The bid: $25,000, plus materials. My husband ambled down to Home Depot, just out of curiosity (so he said), to price lumber for the framing. It was $3,000.
Ordered Load of Lumber
A computer scientist by training, a high-tech chief executive by profession, Don was at a juncture in his career when it was possible to drop out of the executive suite for a spell. Moreover, (unbeknown to me) he had always dreamed of building his own home.
He ordered our first load of lumber, and the house of tomorrow was under way.
From the framing, he went on to do the plumbing ($1,500 in materials versus the $10,000 bid) and the wiring (by which time we weren’t even bothering to get bids).
He moved the kitchen and put in all new appliances, installed 17 French doors, three dozen windows and three garage doors, replaced all the plumbing and wiring, all the closets, all the woodwork. No room was untouched.
We did hire a handful of subcontractors for jobs Don disliked or couldn’t manage single-handedly--the roof, the ceramic tile, the drywall, finishing the concrete, some cabinetry.
Savings Enormous
Our experience with our subs in every case was either without flaw (when we had bothered to check references) or a disaster (when we didn’t). We learned the hard way that instinct alone is not the best indicator of who will get the job done well and on time.
But even subbing out some of the work, our savings were enormous--so we expanded our original plans to include upgrades of every room in the existing house plus a second story with an office and a fifth bedroom and bath. In the end, we built 3,000 square feet.
Our new old home is now (or will be tomorrow) what one friend calls a Beaver Cleaver house: a traditional home with hardwood floors, raised-panel wainscoting, serious baseboards, crown moldings, true divided-light windows, solid-brass fixtures, top-notch appliances--finishing touches not provided for in the original contractor estimates.
Our overall cost: about $40 a square foot--roughly one-third the cost of turning the job over to someone else.
Under Construction
Of course, nearly two years after we started, the dining and powder rooms are still under construction, the office and fifth bedroom await woodwork, and a bald light bulb dangles outside our battered pre-remodel front door.
Sometimes we have homicidal impulses when people ask when the house will be finished. (Sometimes my husband has homicidal impulses when I ask when the house will be finished.) And our home features a few (very few, my husband is grousing in the background) little, er, eccentricities it might not have acquired in the hands of someone who does this for a living.
Besides learning to investigate our subs, we took some tough on-the-job lessons about the necessity of scheduling (“What? We can’t have the windows for five weeks? But the plasterer is due the week after next”) and budgeting.
You think that you’ve covered everything when you’ve anticipated the cost of lumber, wiring, piping, windows, doors and concrete. But a remodel is full of items you don’t think of at first: doorknobs, mirrors, lighting, new electrical service, to name a few.
Probably the most sane thing we did was to hire a multi-talented interior designer, Earline Tanner, who was capable of acting not only as our decorator but as an in-lieu architect and on-site mediator.
Decorator-Adviser
We never argued once over a construction item (priorities, yes; construction items, no). We just called Earline. We’d both present our views. By mutual agreement, whatever she said, went. This move alone saved thousands on marriage counseling.
By purchasing in volume, we were able to negotiate professional discounts with most of the wholesale trade suppliers and even some home-improvement retailers, another cost saver.
But, best of all, we got everything we wanted and may yet finish with the house before we finish with the money, and there’s nothing crazy about that at all.
