Should I renovate an old home?

We offered a couple thoughts about evaluating a home before you buy it in our last post, and now we offer a couple more about whether you should embark on a renovation of an old home. Before we get there, we need to define what we mean when we say renovation. The key to understanding the term renovation is to think about a substantial improvement to the home, often involving multiple building trades and a significant investment in resources. Neither cosmetic changes nor major repairs are renovations, although they are frequently rolled into renovation work.

Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell recently addressed this topic and recommended that a homeowner live in the house for a while before deciding what to do. This is sound advice. Experience in the house is one reliable guide to forming the list of renovation priorities.

We disagree with her next piece of advice, however, which is to find the point of no return: 

So where do we draw the line between what we should and should not get rid of? What is and is not historically important? My personal litmus test is one question: Is what I want to get rid of irreversible or irreplaceable? This may seem straightforward, but it’s actually rather nuanced.

Yes, nuanced would be one way to describe this approach. Impractical is another, if you ask us. Homes are things, and things can be replaced. It might cost a small fortune, require special expertise, involve plenty of antacid, and take years . . . but nearly everything can be replaced or reversed if you have ample resources. We believe Wagner is really saying that you should leave it alone if you don't have money, the stomach, or time. Fine. Some clients like historic details and want to preserve them, while others pursue a different vision. Thumbs up to the preservationists if the budget and schedule allow for it. But some wide-scale improvements (such as modern plumbing or electrical work) necessarily include demolition: the plaster walls and those built-in cabinets from 1930 might not survive, and that’s a trade-off we make for comfort and safety. The same goes for items that linger for sentimental reasons but are no longer serviceable. It’s not an architectural crime to replace the warped and cracked wood front door from grandpa’s era, no matter how handsome it once was.

In fact, most of the older homes we visit have undergone one or more waves of changes over the last decades. Legacy decisions can make changes more difficult today. Some of these changes were ill-conceived or poorly executed. Others have deferred maintenance for so long, replacement is the best (and maybe only) choice.

A minority of older homes we see can be fairly described as above-average. An even smaller fraction of homes were sensitively improved, with an eye toward preserving the historic notes of the original structure. You might find one of these unicorns. But the odds are good that an old Chicago-area home fits the profile we described a couple years ago in "I Love Old Homes and Other Myths" 

This last point bears repeating: only a small number of old homes we see in this area remain in good condition because they were constructed well and thoughtfully improved/maintained over the last few decades. Some folks fall head-over-heels for these homes and marvel at their longevity. Surely these old homes were built better than the post-war flimsy stuff! Modern construction does not compare, they say.

Well, not really. This is a classic case of survivorship bias. People who form their opinions about the superiority of old construction are looking at homes that endured because they were skillfully built and carefully kept up by successive owners—but they are overlooking hundreds of decrepit examples battered by time and neglect before they were finally razed to the ground and promptly forgotten.

Knowing what kind of old home you have is the starting point to deciding what sort of renovation plan makes sense. Give us a shout if you are thinking about renovating your old home. There’s lots to talk about, and we’d be happy to discuss it with you.     

Evaluating a home before you buy it

The typical pre-purchase challenges to buying a home are well known. For one, we're making an important decision in a few weeks or months while looking at a subset of housing options that are available at the specific time we happen to be searching. We have to navigate money, emotions, and family issues. On top of that, we have to make this big decision based upon incomplete information. Even the information about ourselves, the stuff we are supposed to have a good grip on, ought to be double-checked.    

• Self-knowledge: am I really going to add 20 minutes to my commute? Do I favor this home because the prior dozen we toured didn't appeal to me? Sure, the furnace in the new house is feeble, but we have grandma's handmade blankets to keep us warm at night.
• Partner-knowledge: We're in this together. I might want to scream at you in a pillow  in our new basement, but at least we now have a basement. I just wish we didn't have to store all the useless junk your grandma wanted you to have. I also wish you had the #@!% courage to donate it, sweetie.

What could possibly go wrong?

We're glad you asked. The main source of post-closing dissatisfaction arises from renovation expenses. Some of these might be unknown expenses, and others might be poorly understood by the homeowner. How well buyers guard against the prospect of dissatisfaction influences their long-term enjoyment of the property.   

Owners dream about making improvements to the layout, kitchen, bathrooms, basement, etc. before they receive the keys. They have spent hours on Houzz, Pintrest, and HGTV programming. They have a report from their home inspector. They are ready start to interviewing contractors and architects. When does demolition start?

We recently renovated a home with a two-story addition and modern master bathroom. It features a Madeli floating vanity, Robern medicine cabinets, and black basalt tile on the wet wall.

We found sheets of old newspaper Inside the walls of this renovation project, including this Chicago Daily Tribune advertisement from 1927 for jaunty new felts. Suffice to say that the house was not "Tip-Top" when we started.  

In reality:

1. There are months of planning and construction in front of our clients. It's a deliberate process when done right. The surest way to drive yourself and your builder to tears is to rush ahead without careful planning. Everybody wants to finish the work. Patience is key, especially near the end when project fatigue sets in.
2. The unglamorous work of improving the structural, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and insulation values of a home are usually major items. We understand why many people do not want to touch these until they fail. The problem with waiting until failure is that the homeowner is now seeking fast corrective action. This is the difference between fixing a problem today and planning improvement to the home for years of enjoyment.     
3. Buyers would do well not to place too much reliance on home inspection reports. One risk is that the homeowner is now informed just enough to be dangerous. Another risk is that while some inspectors are more thorough than others, all of them are trained to comply with their own more stringent insurance policies. In fact, inspection reports are now specifically written with eye towards limiting liability to homeowners following the 2008-2009 housing crisis. Describing "cascading effects" or including excessive detail is disfavored. For example, inspectors might dedicate a sentence to galvanized steel pipes without the crucial information about the expected replacement cost; thus it's easy for a buyer to read that note without comprehending the scope of work or money involved in upgrading it. What a surprise when the buyer receives plumbing estimates and timelines! Then there is the drywall repair, painting, and replacement of a corroded tub drain . . . the home inspector shrugs and says "I noted the galvanized steel plumbing lines in paragraph D on page 27." This is an example of the homeowner having some information and simultaneously being woefully uninformed.                    

What should a prospective home buyer do? The answer to this question depends partly on who you are. If you are the type of person who is not interested in house projects at this stage of your life, then it's best to find a newer home or one that has already been substantially upgraded. The main value of new construction/substantially upgraded homes is peace of mind; that the prospect of major home improvement expenses has been put to rest for the foreseeable future. If you are the type of person who likes the idea of improving an older home, then we recommend purchasing one that is 20% or more below your financial capacity so that you have dry powder to handle planned improvements and urgent repairs. 

More project news coming. We hope everybody has a good Labor Day break!

Where do we Lego? In the formal dining room, of course.

Back when we were young and utterly foolish (now not so young and clinging to the cliff of sanity), we purchased a good quality dining room table and chairs for Thanksgiving dinner and other grownup events. Adult life was just around the corner. We were very imaginative. Then kids arrived, followed by capitulation to reality. We probably should have bought an extra garage door and attached legs to it.

Today our dining table is covered in several birthday gifts worth of Lego, an abandoned snowman art project that will surely survive another snowfall because a child is "still working on it", an eternal unicorn project that apparently has no season, and markers. Four dozen markers? Five? Ah, the elegance of it all. We can pretend it's Thanksgiving while we pass turkey sandwiches and nouveau beaujolais to each other as long as you can reach across the popsicle stick forest. At least we purchased table pads. Hope springs eternal.

All of which got us thinking about how we use the space in our homes, and the ways in which old homes were built according to a mostly outdated way of living. Consider the Colonial style home, for example. Take a walk through one and you will see the elongated formal living room with a fireplace on one side, the formal dining room on the other, traditional center staircase, and something like a den, all laid out in a familiar format. Predictably, the small kitchen is closed off from the rest of the living space in the back of the house.

Our priorities are different today. The way we use our homes has changed. For one thing, recent research shows something you already knew: families use their kitchen and family room about 70% of the time. These are the true living spaces. The graphic at the end of this post shows where people spend the bulk of their time on the first floor. Formal living rooms and dining rooms see little use. Front porches are essentially decorative. Yard space consumes a fraction of the time spent indoors, despite the premium buyers pay for large lots. 

In other words, most of us are paying dearly for a plenty of real estate that has low utility.

It makes sense to upgrade the spaces where we spend so much of our time. For one client, this meant modifying a traditional Colonial home with an addition to hold a spacious new kitchen. Below are pictures of the original galley kitchen and recently finished kitchen.       

The new 22x14 kitchen with custom cabinetry and a honed Imperial Danby island top.

The original galley 12x8 kitchen at the back of the house, narrow and closed off from the living areas. 

A large kitchen window provides ample natural light and a view of the back yard.

A closer view of the cabinetry finished in Benjamin Moore White Dove and polished nickel hardware. The lift-and-tuck door conceals the microwave. Clever storage is one of the important ways an upgraded kitchen outperforms its predecessors.

When researchers track where people spend time in their homes, a familiar pattern develops. Credit: UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families. 

Where you keep your Lego is up to you, but homeowners are pointed in the right direction when they apply renovation dollars to the spaces they use most often. The kitchen above is an important part of a large-scale renovation project for this client, but the same principle applies where less drastic changes are occurring--see Kitchen Clean Up for an example of an upgrade that did not require an excavator, new cabinets, and new appliances.

More from this home and others coming soon. Good luck with all of your renovation projects, both large and small!

Making the Connection

One downside of new construction homes is that they often have weird space allocations. For example, in an effort to max out the size of the home to command the top sales price, builders carve out an enormous basement that had to be excavated for the home on top of it. What exactly does one put in an enormous basement? You can almost hear the spec home builders thinking to themselves, "let's see, we've got the sport court, wine cellar, Costco room, extra bedroom and bathroom, movie theater, gym, meditation room . . . and we still have 1,300 square feet left over. Aren't fallout shelters making a comeback?" Duck and cover, please. Building out a big basement in large spec homes can lead to some results that are truly bananas.

Weird space allocations aren't just futile attempts to please everybody. Unless you say "this is precisely the wine cellar/meditation room/fallout shelter of my dreams", you know a significant investment is required to make alterations or finish the space later. Not that there's anything wrong with enjoying some vino while meditating in your underground bunker away from your children. Go in peace, friends.

One species of weird space allocations Is the Orphaned Space. These are the architectural oopsies, a misplaced puzzle piece in the overall plan like an appendix in the human body. If you've ever walked through a new construction home in the Northshore and wondered what the room you were standing in was for (or where you were in the house), you have met an Orphaned Space.

Our client asked us to help resolve her Orphaned Space in her new construction home. To begin, imagine standing in her home in a room 12 x 8 feet with one window. It is too large to be a passage, but it connects the living room with the family room. It is not a bedroom. It is not adjacent to the kitchen or mudroom. It is an Orphaned Space.

A view of the family room from the Orphaned Space.

A view of the living room from the Orphaned Space.

Her school-age children needed homework space, and she needed a place to keep her laptop, paperwork, etc. So, we converted the Orphaned Space into an open office. 

Table for two: a dedicated work space with custom cabinetry and built-in electrical for charging all of the electronic devices in the top drawer. Out of sight and organized in one place.

The open office concept allows for organized closed storage and the evolving needs of school work. It is not a focal point of the home or crowded with cabinetry, but it serves an important purpose and isn't a weirdly allocated space any longer. The client made a useful and clean connection of the space between family room and living room. It seems to belong in this home, as if it was supposed to be there from the beginning, and we were happy to help make it work.