A Lofty Idea for an Addition
Who are these people writing to the Real Estate section about their remodeling nightmares? I don’t know anyone who can go 100% over their $100,000-plus budget.
When remodelers start writing about adding another $200,000 to their modest little homes, well, as Roseanne Barr would say, “It makes me want to puke.” Time for a reality check.
Now that I’ve gotten the hostility and envy out of my system, I can write about our true-to-life remodel. The total cost will be under $1,500 and will add about 100 square feet of space to our 1,550-square-foot tract house.
We’re adding a loft that will serve as a library, computer room, place for a second television and home-work/project area.
As with most families with children (other than families of doctors, lawyers and movie chiefs), our house is not palatial. Fifteen hundred square feet is entirely adequate compared to what most of the inhabitants of this planet have to live in.
People who are miserable because they can’t have that fourth bedroom or a three-car garage have delusions of poverty that are making them miserable. But then, everyone wants more space. It’s the American dream.
The American dream has a different price tag depending on whether you do the work yourself or pay someone else for labor. Our remodeling costs are limited to materials. The rough lumber was $300; finish lumber and moldings, $250: extra wire, electrical outlets and light fixtures, $125; hand rail, $250; parquet-wood floor, $300, and $75 for paint. We are not sure of the cost of the office furniture yet. We might build the desks ourselves, using file cabinets for support, with white Formica top work areas.
The cost of labor is more difficult to figure since the work was going on at night and on weekends. My husband, Morris, figures that he worked at least 80 hours. Contractors would charge around $40 per hour, which would amount to $3,200 in wages. Most contractors would not do the job for just labor and materials, though. They would charge at least $5,000 for the job, since it is so small.
The total for the materials, $1,300, combined with the $3,200 hourly wages adds up to $4,450 as a starting figure. It is impossible to suggest the cost of other loft additions, since each living room is built differently and would require different sizes of wood to be structurally sound. Most people would want someone good with design and construction to help them figure out how to integrate and build a loft into their high-ceilinged living space.
Our living room had an existing “plant-shelf.” To make our loft, all we had to do was expand this useless space and provide access to it without going through another room. Other houses might require a complete balcony structure across the living room to gain a loft. The materials needed to build such a balcony would, of course, be more expensive, since a greater span would require more rough lumber.
Adding a loft to most homes would cost much more than $1,000, but because it was a do-it-yourself project for us, we kept the costs down. Other than the drywall texture and wrought-iron railing welding, we did all the work ourselves.
I say “we,” even though my husband gets all the credit for building the loft. But our two boys and I were involved and affected by the construction project. You cannot live in a torn-up house and not be impacted. The dust and noise alone is baptism by fire. It affects you even when you insist that it won’t.
At this point, the only thing not completed on the remodel is a little paint and the flooring. The building of the bookcases and the work areas don’t really count because life can be somewhat normal with that project going on. Normal to me means that the drop-cloths are gone, the furniture is back in place, and the need to dust and vacuum goes back to once or twice a week instead of hourly.
Why did we decide to go through the hell of remodeling?
We coveted the unused space above the high vaulted ceiling in our living and dining rooms. With a loft workroom, we wouldn’t have to clear the school projects off the dining room table when it was time to eat.
But it’s a bad idea to have to walk through one room to get to another, and we wondered how we could utilize the loft without having to cut a door in the upstairs master-bedroom to get to it.
One day, Morris came home and said he had figured out a solution to the loft access problem.
His idea also would solve the bookcase shortage in our house. It called for a stretch of wall, 15 feet long, that would be floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Since every available flat surface of our house is covered with books, and library books end up in stacks on the floor, the idea of extensive bookshelves was appealing. I would get to have more books, and Morris would have a cleaner, less cluttered house.
The plan called for taking out the laundry closet at the second-floor landing that was just to the left of the open stairwell. The laundry closet could easily be relocated and an open walkway would be constructed that hugged the wall and wrapped its way around to the living room and eventually to a loft over the dining room.
The new second-story hallway would have floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Two work stations and a computer setup were to be nestled in the loft. Total square footage gained would be the 3-by-15-foot hall and the 5-by-18-foot loft, equaling 135 square feet of extra living space in our three-bedroom house.
Morris promised that the work would be done in 30 days. He would have kept to the time limit too, but we decided to repaint the living room and put better-quality moldings around the doors.
I am writing this so that other “regular folks” (i.e., not rich) might be inclined to add a loft in their unused vaulted-ceiling areas that are common to homes built in the past 10 years.
There is another reason, too. People are less inclined to move if they have a remodeling option.
Of the 10 homes in our 3-year-old cul-de-sac in north San Diego County, only four are still owned by the original buyers. Most of the neighbors “took the money and ran” because of the rapid growth in equity. These were modest homes, and people wanted to trade up to bigger homes.
Now the market has slowed down and people cannot move around as easily. A solution to a too-small house is to find some space inside and use it more efficiently. Changing a roof or a foundation is usually too expensive to be undertaken lightly.
In addition to the financial stress inherent in remodeling, the emotional stresses cannot be underestimated. I would rather remodel than have to move, but I haven’t lived through a kitchen remodel. That might be as much of a nightmare as moving.
One way we tried to lessen the stress was by having a deadline of six weeks. Time and money can dribble by endlessly if limits are not set.
Toward the end of the project, two conflicting emotions seem to set in: lethargy and elation. “Almost done” means less mess, but it also means that the motivation to finish the job sometimes needs an extra nudge. Motivation may be provided by planning a party to show off the remodel. It is amazing how willing the family is to put in late nights working on the job if they know that 50 friends are coming over to look at the project next weekend.
Deadlines help get things done, especially remodeling jobs. Otherwise, remodeling can be endless. What a purgatory. Living in an unfinished house, forever. But remember the Winchester widow who believed that as long as she was remodeling her house she would live forever?
Sometimes I feel as if our marriage thrives on one or two well-conceived building projects a year. We have had the exciting planning stage, the stress of the working stage and the elation of the finished stage many times in our 14-year marriage. So far, it’s worked for us.
I would not recommend remodeling projects to anyone with a crummy relationship, though. It’s similar to having kids to save a shaky marriage. What a disaster. But if the marriage is good, it’s unrelenting work, anyway.
