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Consider Your Partner's Home Improvement Personality

Boy oh boy, could I relate to our home improvement focus this month, especially Ellen Hastings’ insightful piece on how to decide if you should remodel or sell your house and buy something bigger when you need more room. As someone who has lived in an ongoing remodel project for three years, I can tell you with some authority that you should have some really good reasons for going that route. In my case it was all about location. We loved where our house was and moved in knowing we had a lot of work to do.

Of course, reality is always worse. And it’s not even that I have particularly high standards beyond a need for cleanliness. I can do old and outdated; even tacky doesn’t bother me much — and since our house was built in the seventies, we had plenty of that. Our house couldn’t decide if it was a California ski condo or Asian-influenced Northwest- style bungalow. At least we had a lot of decorating options.

We moved ourselves, two kids, two dogs and one bird into a two-bedroom house. What were we thinking? We were thinking that when my stepson graduated from high school in two years that the house would fit just fine. Also there was the possibility of adding a room or fixing up an old existing structure on the property. In the meantime, my husband and I moved our bedroom into the dining room (at least it had doors) and gave the kids the upstairs bedrooms. (I can tell you that getting my 9-year-old out of the master suite last summer was not an easy task.) So for two years we lived with the sound of the refrigerator icemaker going off and on all night and my stepson rummaging (none too quietly) in the kitchen for midnight snacks -- that is until we put up a sign announcing that the kitchen closed at 10.

And we started the remodel by ripping carpet out of the bathrooms (yuck!) and putting in tile. A slow progression of projects followed, and this brings me to a very important tip. When considering a remodel or buying a “fixer upper,” you might want to consider your spouse or partner’s (or maybe simply your own) home improvement personality. Are they the type who doesn’t mind spending the money to hire the right people to make sure the work gets done well and in a somewhat timely fashion (taking into account contractor schedules these days)? Or is he or she a project person, the kind who likes to do the work themselves? That would be my husband, the Dutchman — literally. He figures he can make the changes as well as the next guy, and for much less money — and if he doesn’t know how to do it, he’ll learn. The problem is that with our work and travel schedules, not to mention budget concerns, progress is slow and occurs in piecemeal fashion, although I gotta say he does a good job.

I have friends who have moved out of their houses or waited to move in while a team of workers scurried like ants around the place and got everything done all at once. And when the family moved in, they had a brand new house. I know. That scenario is not without its headaches either: like dealing with contractors and deadlines that aren’t met. And there are all kinds of guys to keep track of -- the tile guy, the cabinet guy, etc. But I wonder what it would be like to live without having another project waiting just around the corner.

Happy Hammering,

Karen Matthee
Co-founder and Editor

©May 2007 Caliope Publishing Company