My Smartest, Dumbest, Hardest, and Most-Frugal Home Improvement Project(s)

Kyle over at Rather Be Shop­ping is run­ning his first con­test.  The prize is a brand new Crafts­man cord­less drill.

I’ve always wanted a cord­less drill (though, to be hon­est, I do have a very nice Black & Decker corded drill) and I love talk­ing about my remod­el­ing projects so I thought I’d throw my hat into the con­test ring.

~ o o o O o o o ~

We’ve owned our home for 5 years now and, like most houses — espe­cially aging ones – we’ve had to put quite a bit of time and money into improve­ments and upgrades.  I had a whole slew of projects to choose from for this post and each project comes with its own sto­ries whether it’s the 6-week kitchen remodel that took 13 months or the instal­la­tion of a sim­ple win­dow lock in which I prob­a­bly broke a finger.

Because I sim­ply couldn’t choose, I’ve decided to include two projects.

The first project qual­i­fies as my most fru­gal home improve­ment project though, tech­ni­cally, maybe it’s more of a home dec­o­rat­ing project.  That line can get a lit­tle blurry.

My Most Fru­gal Project: Fam­ily Com­mand Center

All par­ents know that fam­ily life with pre-teens/teens can become a sched­ul­ing night­mare.  Our fam­ily is no excep­tion.  To com­pli­cate an already com­pli­cated fam­ily life, three years ago I suf­fered a series of TIAs (mini strokes).  As a result, my short-term mem­ory, never all that great to begin with, became, at best, a fam­ily joke and, at worst, an annoy­ing lia­bil­ity.  There were months where the best I could hope for was to remem­ber what month and year it was.  Remem­ber­ing an event or appoint­ment was com­pletely out of the question.

I’d always loved the idea of a fam­ily infor­ma­tion cen­ter.  I’ve been known to drool over cat­a­logs from The Con­tainer Store and Pot­tery Barn.  But the idea of spend­ing that kind of money on orga­ni­za­tion equip­ment makes me queasy.  Besides, that kind of stuff always looks much bet­ter in the cat­a­log than it does in my house.  Still, a solu­tion had to be found.

We have a lit­tle alcove/nook/corner off the kitchen next to the din­ing area.  It’s actu­ally the land­ing for the stairs lead­ing into the base­ment.  This is the area I chose for our Fam­ily Com­mand Cen­ter because it was dead space any­way and because it’s right off the kitchen and we all know that the kitchen is the heart of a home, right?

On the right side is the refrig­er­a­tor — every square inch of which is cov­ered with fun mag­nets, notes, and lists.  Here I placed a sim­ple large, generic desk cal­en­dar from the local office sup­ply store (~$10).  The cal­en­dar attaches to the fridge through the use of two mag­netic bull­dog clips (free — I already owned them).

It took a few weeks of train­ing but even­tu­ally every­one got the hang of using the cal­en­dar.  Every sched­uled event, from school pick­ups to Dr. appointments, goes onto the cal­en­dar and if it isn’t on the cal­en­dar, it doesn’t happen.

We keep a set of col­ored felt-tip pens handy for record­ing events as they come up and we devel­oped a basic color cod­ing sys­tem of red for spe­cial one-time events, green for weekly or peri­od­i­cally recur­ring events, and blue for very reg­u­lar events that any nor­mal per­son would remem­ber with­out help – but maybe not Mom.

The oppos­ing (left) wall is the source of my fru­gal homemaker’s pride, though.  The series of three wooden bins is one of a set I pur­chased about 10 years ago from Costco (~$30.).  In ear­lier years, we used the bins to store the children’s music books, etc. Now they’re per­fect for stor­ing local rec cen­ter class cat­a­logs, com­mu­nity cen­ter per­for­mance cat­a­logs, school papers, etc.

To the left of the bins is my mag­netic board — my fru­gal mas­ter­piece.  One day as I was perus­ing the aisles in Home Depot (a favorite, but often expen­sive pas­time activ­ity), I wan­dered into the sheet metal aisle.  And there they were – glo­ri­ous and inex­pen­sive 2′ x 3′ pieces of sheet metal.

At first I wor­ried about pierc­ing the cor­ners so I could attach the sheet to my wall but quickly dis­cov­ered that any reg­u­lar drill bit will do the job.  One side hap­pened to align with a wall stud.  For the other side, I sim­ply used plas­tic sheetrock anchors.  Like the refrig­er­a­tor, I acces­sorized the mag­netic board with fun mag­nets from places like Michael’s and Old Navy.  I can’t remem­ber where I picked up the five clear-topped tins but I do remem­ber that I found them on sale for a fab­u­lous price.  They’re so handy!  We keep stashes of paper clips, rub­ber bands, small alli­ga­tor clips, and small yel­low sticky pads in them.  On the board we keep the trash recy­cling sched­ule, busi­ness cards, and other odds ‘n ends stuff.

My Smartest, Dumb­est, and Hard­est Project:  The Mas­ter Bath remodel

First, let’s be clear here.  The Hus­band doesn’t know one end of the ham­mer from another.  And I was a handy per­son — in my pre-Fibro, pre-Stroke days.  In other words, we’ve come to the point in our lives where a home-remodeling projects always involves some­one else doing the remodeling.

What expe­ri­ence has taught me, how­ever, is that just because some­one else is doing the labor doesn’t mean there’s no work left for the homeowner.

Our mas­ter bath remodel qual­i­fies as my smartest, dumb­est, and hard­est project so far.

It was smartest because it’s a huge improve­ment over what we had before and because the quality-of-life return we’ve seen on this project far exceeds any­thing else we’ve done to the house.  The dumb­est because I did make a few dumb mis­takes and because, when it’s all said and done, I might have spent more than we’d ever see returned on the project were we to sell the house.  The hard­est because, well, it was the hard­est in terms of time, stress, labor, and inconvenience.

There were sev­eral smart steps I took that ended up mak­ing both of our bath­room remod­els ulti­mately suc­cess­ful.  First, I spent an incred­i­ble amount of time doing research before even talk­ing to con­trac­tors.  I looked at mate­ri­als; I inspected every bath­room I could find — pri­vate and pub­lic; I read do-it-yourself books; I poured over mag­a­zines; and I talked to home improve­ment and bath­room remod­el­ing employ­ees.  Sec­ond, I took my time inter­view­ing prospec­tive con­trac­tors.  Third, I played the role of gen­eral con­trac­tor which means I took respon­si­bil­ity for design­ing the bath­rooms and procur­ing the mate­ri­als.  I hired the con­trac­tor sim­ply for labor and and exper­tise.  And, fourth, I worked hard to find high-quality mate­ri­als at bar­gain prices.

Because I’d done my research, I was able to elim­i­nate many of the bid­ding con­trac­tors sim­ply on the way they talked about the project.  One con­trac­tor, for instance, planned to use ply­wood as a sub­floor under the tile (that’s a no-no).  Another con­trac­tor balked when I said I wanted cement board behind the shower area instead of green board.  An added ben­e­fit of tak­ing bids from so many con­trac­tors was that I was able to get my first-choice con­trac­tor to come down on his bid to be more com­pet­i­tive with my second-choice contractor.

The biggest mis­take I made with the mas­ter bath­room was in not real­iz­ing the extra expense that my non-standard sink/cabinet would incur.  The phys­i­cal size of the room made it impos­si­ble to spec a standard-sized cab­i­net — I had to stick with the same size as the orig­i­nal cab­i­net.  But a smaller cab­i­net requires a smaller coun­ter­top.  It wasn’t until I was in too deep to change direc­tions that I real­ized that I couldn’t pur­chase a pre-fab gran­ite coun­ter­top and sink in this smaller non-standard size.  So I had to have a cus­tom coun­ter­top made which ended up cost­ing me over twice the price of a larger pre-fab unit.

Only time will tell, but my con­trac­tor and his employee both ques­tioned the deci­sions I made in design­ing the mas­ter bath.  Their posi­tion was that it was too fancy for the type and loca­tion of the house — and for the size of the bath­room.  Ulti­mately, I designed the bath­room I wanted and spec’ed the mate­ri­als I wanted (mar­ble shower walls; porce­lain tile floors; wood, not par­ti­cle board cab­i­net; hand-hammered cop­per sink; Cherry wood trim; 3/8″ solid glass shower enclo­sure) and didn’t worry about the resale value of the bath­room.  I could have had a nice bath­room for less.  On the other hand, I paid a lot less for a first-class bath­room than you’d think.

Although play­ing the role of gen­eral con­trac­tor is a ton of work, respon­si­bil­ity, and stress, I’ll never embark on another home remod­el­ing project in any other capac­ity.  Nat­u­rally, my expe­ri­ence with DIY home improve­ment projects helps as does my apti­tude for mechan­i­cal and tech­ni­cal mat­ters.  Being able to imag­ine the project step-by-step, fore­see com­pli­ca­tions, and trou­bleshoot solu­tions proved an invalu­able asset.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the expe­ri­ence but it’s not some­thing I’d want to do again real soon. 

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