Oops. That doesn’t look right

Once you realize you’ve made a mistake on your remodel, you have three options: Change it, live with it or live with it for a while and then change it.

Barbara and Gene Noller chose the third option after a $12,000 remodel in 1998 that transformed the attached garage of their Whittier home into a cozy family room.

Initially, the couple couldn’t have been happier with the way the family room turned out, with its parquet and tile floor, custom bookshelves and picture windows. But access to the room -- a roundabout path from the kitchen through the laundry room -- seemed increasingly awkward.

“It was off-putting,” said Gene, a retired aerospace engineer, of how it felt to walk past the washer and dryer every time he wanted to read, watch TV or entertain guests.

The reason for creating the family room was to make space for their seven visiting grandkids, but the lack of direct connection between the family room and the kitchen left Barbara alone and isolated with her cooking duties while the others watched TV. “It wasn’t the feeling I wanted,” she said. “There wasn’t any interaction.”

So the couple spent $7,200 earlier this year to remove a bank of cabinets in the kitchen, break through the wall to create a doorway directly into the family room and build a new pantry to make up for the lost storage space.

“We should have done it years ago,” Barbara said, “but we didn’t have the vision.”

In 1998, the reasons for not connecting the two rooms seemed well-founded: The couple had just updated the kitchen with new tile counters and tile floors, which they were loath to tear up to create the new passageway. Gene was worried that the electrical wiring in the wall would be too complex to deal with. Moreover, a supporting beam above the ceiling, which could not be moved, would limit the passageway to a width of 40 inches, which Gene thought would be too narrow.

Still, after a few years of living with the layout, Barbara started pressing Gene to correct it. Each year, Barbara recalled, Gene would ask: “Would you rather do that or go on a trip?” The trip won out year after year.

“So we’ve been to a lot of interesting places,” Gene said: Turkey, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary.

Eventually, Barbara hit on a line of reasoning that resonated with Gene. The odd layout could hurt resale value. According to local real estate agents Barbara spoke with, the main drawbacks with the upscale neighborhood’s 1950s-era homes, many still owned by the original buyers, were the dated and inadequate kitchens. Even with their updated kitchen, having to traverse the laundry room to get to the family room, Barbara argued, “would be a hindrance” when it came time to sell.

Gene finally capitulated one day late last year when he saw a favorite contractor’s truck across the street and walked over to discuss the doorway.

“On the spur of the moment I said, ‘I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to change my ways,’ ” Gene said. “It takes me about five years to acquiesce to the better idea.”

That contractor was too busy to take the job and didn’t get back with the Nollers right away, which made Barbara fear that Gene might change his mind. But with a referral to another contractor, George Nikolas, the project began to go forward.

The main tasks would be removing two sections of cabinets and the countertop to make way for the new passageway; taking down the section of non-load-bearing wall; rerouting the electrical wires; finishing the side of the remaining cabinets and countertop; finishing the floor and ceiling to flow seamlessly from one room to the other; and building a new pantry.

As it turned out, rerouting the electrical wiring was not a problem. However, finishing the side of the cabinets to Gene’s detail-oriented satisfaction took more skilled carpentry than anyone anticipated. As with most older homes, the walls and existing cabinets were not square and level. The extra work caused the price to rise, but the couple thought the added cost was fair.

The estimated time frame also grew, from three weeks to 10, as the contractor got tied up with emergency work during last winter’s heavy rains.

Other elements of the remodel went smoother than expected. For instance, finding matching tiles to finish off the newly created countertop edge was helped by Gene’s packrat tendencies. He had saved a number of tiles from the 1998 remodel. The contractor found the other few edge tiles required at a store that specializes in discontinued tiles.

The existing ceramic floor tiles had also been discontinued, but similar tiles are still made by the manufacturer in porcelain, and those did the trick.

The doorway was finished off with moldings, baseboards and paint.

The last issue was the new pantry. Barbara’s idea was to sacrifice the doorway from the kitchen into the laundry room (she could easily get to the laundry room through the family room) and build pantry shelves in its place. There was already a sliding pocket door, which would serve perfectly as the door to the pantry shelves.

However, the cabinetmaker had a different idea -- take out the pocket door and doorjamb and build a new pantry cabinet with hinged doors that swung out. Because this area was near the new passageway into the family room, Barbara envisioned herself having to close the pantry doors every time someone walked by. She nixed that idea.

She prevailed and the shelves were built into the existing space, with large drawers for pots and pans, and the pocket door remained.

“I’m extremely happy with the pantry,” Barbara said.

To finance the project, the couple skipped their vacation this year but are planning for next year’s adventure, perhaps to St. Petersburg, Russia.

Or Barbara might come up with another remodeling project.

Although Barbara said she tends to declare, “We’re done,” after each project, there always seems to be one more.

“I guess we may never give it up,” she said.

Kathy Price-Robinson has written about remodeling for 15 years. She can be reached at www.kathyprice.com. If you would like to have your remodel considered for use in Pardon Our Dust, please send before-and-after images and a brief description of the project to Real Estate Editor, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.

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Project at a glance

Project: Create passageway from kitchen to family room

Area: Whittier

Contractor: George Nikolas Construction Co., La Habra Heights, California Contractors License No. 587327

Duration: 10 weeks

Cost: $7,200

-- KATHY PRICE-ROBINSON