How to determine if a major remodel is worth it?
July 13, 2016 12:53 PM Subscribe
We've lived in our house for about a year and are trying to prioritize what projects need done. The kitchen and bath are in major need of a remodel but I'm not sure how to prioritize this with everything else. The other factor is we are not sure how long we are going to stay in the house - it could be 30 years, it could be 5.
Long story short, the previous owner (maybe 2) did a reno and added an extra bedroom at the cost of shortening the kitchen and bathroom. To put it in perspective, I've had a larger kitchen and bathroom in one bedroom apartments then I have in my current home. In addition, it's also horribly outdated and is really showing it's age. The kitchen In order to get the kitchen back to an acceptable size, the bedroom would need to be removed and I would take a larger kitchen, bathroom, and a decent sized pantry. My current home is 4 bedrooms, so this would move it down to 3 in 1900 square feet (one being smaller, most likely a nursery or small office for other owners - we don't have kids).
However, in addition to that, we will eventually need new windows, need to stain/repair the wooden siding, shore up the deck, get a new retaining wall, eventually replace fencing, new hot water heater, new HVAC, etc.
Long story short - my question is, how do I determine the order of improvements and if the cost is worth it meaning it helps the resale value?
Also a contributing factor, my gut feeling is my job is moving to a much more remote position which would allow us much more land but I don't know if that's in 2 years or 10
Long story short, the previous owner (maybe 2) did a reno and added an extra bedroom at the cost of shortening the kitchen and bathroom. To put it in perspective, I've had a larger kitchen and bathroom in one bedroom apartments then I have in my current home. In addition, it's also horribly outdated and is really showing it's age. The kitchen In order to get the kitchen back to an acceptable size, the bedroom would need to be removed and I would take a larger kitchen, bathroom, and a decent sized pantry. My current home is 4 bedrooms, so this would move it down to 3 in 1900 square feet (one being smaller, most likely a nursery or small office for other owners - we don't have kids).
However, in addition to that, we will eventually need new windows, need to stain/repair the wooden siding, shore up the deck, get a new retaining wall, eventually replace fencing, new hot water heater, new HVAC, etc.
Long story short - my question is, how do I determine the order of improvements and if the cost is worth it meaning it helps the resale value?
Also a contributing factor, my gut feeling is my job is moving to a much more remote position which would allow us much more land but I don't know if that's in 2 years or 10
Going down to a three bedroom could very possibly hurt your resale.
posted by cooker girl at 1:17 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by cooker girl at 1:17 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
If you like and trust the agent that helped you buy the house, ask them to come over and talk about how the proposed remodel would impact the selling price of the house. Take the answer and round down (agents tend to be optimistic) but at least you can get some good advice on whether an extra bedroom adds more value than a larger kitchen. (It will depend on the market and price range - a more upscale market or higher end house might have buyers that prefer larger kitchens over a fourth bedroom while other markets might tend to count a fourth bedroom much more than enhancements to a minimal but functional kitchen)
posted by metahawk at 1:33 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by metahawk at 1:33 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Safety/ potential disasters: shore up the deck, retaining wall, hot water heater
Energy impact: new windows, HVAC
stain/repair the wooden siding - if it rots, would be expensive
replace fencing
Make the house livable; it's your home. Use sketch-up or some other tool, take lots of measurements and make up a house plan. Take a bunch of pictures. Work with a kitchen designer or other professional to get ideas. Once you have even a rough idea of your plan, you can prioritize.
posted by theora55 at 1:42 PM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
Energy impact: new windows, HVAC
stain/repair the wooden siding - if it rots, would be expensive
replace fencing
Make the house livable; it's your home. Use sketch-up or some other tool, take lots of measurements and make up a house plan. Take a bunch of pictures. Work with a kitchen designer or other professional to get ideas. Once you have even a rough idea of your plan, you can prioritize.
posted by theora55 at 1:42 PM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
Best answer: If resale value is an issue (and it sounds like it is) you may want to take a look at Remodeling Magazine's 2015 Cost vs. Value Report. It will tell you, for your region of the country, what the average RoI is for various types of common remodeling projects. Well worth a look.
As far as a specific answer, that's kinda tough. The real answer is to talk to some design-build contractors, and get the advice of some experienced salespeople who can come to your home, talk to you about what you want to have done, advise you on what your priorities should be based on your specific house, needs, and wants, and then draw up a master plan—possibly involving multiple phases—for getting your house to where tou want it to be. That's the kind of thing my company does, and the specifics vary tremendously from house to house. There's no one right answer for your situation, it would depend on a multitude of factors specific to your house and household.
In general, it's usually easiest and most cost effective to do this stuff all at once. That is to say, the most cost-effective thing to do would be to put your stuff in storage, move out for a few months, and let the contractors have their way with your house. Then they can get all your walls opened up and start moving things around, redoing wiring and plumbing and such as necessary while it's all relatively easy. It costs less that way because the logistics are simplified and there are a lot of synergies in remodeling where if you're doing Thing A it also makes sense to do Thing B at the same time rather than trying to do Thing B further down the road. There's a lot of variation from house to house, though.
Most people aren't willing to deal with that level of disruption and don't want to move out during their renovation, though. (I'd think very hard about this though—is it really less disruptive to live in half a house for three times as long, with workers coming through every day and literally ripping out and replacing chunks of your house all around you?) In that case, it becomes partly a matter of triage and partly a matter of trying to maintain a mostly-functional home tgroughout the renovation. Usually you want to get the building envelope (roof, siding, windows, exterior doors, etc.) squared away in Phase 1 because if you have problems there they're likely to bite you in the ass down the road unless you take care of them at the beginning. Structural issues get fixed early also, if at all possible. Then usually you'll do the kitchen, one bathroom, and one bedroom at a minimum (often at the same time as the exterior) so that they'll be available for use during Phase 2. Then Phase 2 is whatever didn't get done during Phase 1.
Or of course you could try to do things piecemeal, but I'd recommend against it if you can afford to do it in big chunks instead. The result is likely to be less coherent, you'll end up dupilicating some work (and therefore duplicating the expense) and it will take much longer. If you are in need of a whole-house renovation (and it sounds like you are, though perhaps there are a few rooms you can ignore indefinitely) it's better to treat the house as a unified system and renovate it under a master plan, rather than a collection of rooms that can be dealt with as a series of discrete tasks.
Seriously though, this is a question for a contractor. It's a bit like a medical question, in that we here can't know all the pertinent information, and you probably don't even know all the questions that a contractor would want to ask of your house. Get some experts in there and start making plans. A good contractor will work with you, take your priorities and your budget into account, and be able to explain to you why their plan for your house is what it is so that you can make an informed decision about how and whether to tackle the projects you have in mind. We really can't do that from this remove.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:07 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
As far as a specific answer, that's kinda tough. The real answer is to talk to some design-build contractors, and get the advice of some experienced salespeople who can come to your home, talk to you about what you want to have done, advise you on what your priorities should be based on your specific house, needs, and wants, and then draw up a master plan—possibly involving multiple phases—for getting your house to where tou want it to be. That's the kind of thing my company does, and the specifics vary tremendously from house to house. There's no one right answer for your situation, it would depend on a multitude of factors specific to your house and household.
In general, it's usually easiest and most cost effective to do this stuff all at once. That is to say, the most cost-effective thing to do would be to put your stuff in storage, move out for a few months, and let the contractors have their way with your house. Then they can get all your walls opened up and start moving things around, redoing wiring and plumbing and such as necessary while it's all relatively easy. It costs less that way because the logistics are simplified and there are a lot of synergies in remodeling where if you're doing Thing A it also makes sense to do Thing B at the same time rather than trying to do Thing B further down the road. There's a lot of variation from house to house, though.
Most people aren't willing to deal with that level of disruption and don't want to move out during their renovation, though. (I'd think very hard about this though—is it really less disruptive to live in half a house for three times as long, with workers coming through every day and literally ripping out and replacing chunks of your house all around you?) In that case, it becomes partly a matter of triage and partly a matter of trying to maintain a mostly-functional home tgroughout the renovation. Usually you want to get the building envelope (roof, siding, windows, exterior doors, etc.) squared away in Phase 1 because if you have problems there they're likely to bite you in the ass down the road unless you take care of them at the beginning. Structural issues get fixed early also, if at all possible. Then usually you'll do the kitchen, one bathroom, and one bedroom at a minimum (often at the same time as the exterior) so that they'll be available for use during Phase 2. Then Phase 2 is whatever didn't get done during Phase 1.
Or of course you could try to do things piecemeal, but I'd recommend against it if you can afford to do it in big chunks instead. The result is likely to be less coherent, you'll end up dupilicating some work (and therefore duplicating the expense) and it will take much longer. If you are in need of a whole-house renovation (and it sounds like you are, though perhaps there are a few rooms you can ignore indefinitely) it's better to treat the house as a unified system and renovate it under a master plan, rather than a collection of rooms that can be dealt with as a series of discrete tasks.
Seriously though, this is a question for a contractor. It's a bit like a medical question, in that we here can't know all the pertinent information, and you probably don't even know all the questions that a contractor would want to ask of your house. Get some experts in there and start making plans. A good contractor will work with you, take your priorities and your budget into account, and be able to explain to you why their plan for your house is what it is so that you can make an informed decision about how and whether to tackle the projects you have in mind. We really can't do that from this remove.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:07 PM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
(As mentioned, the water heater, HVAC, and retaining wall should be done before anything else).
Money is a thing here. Don't do the kitchen/bath remodel if your cash-flow is tight and you're scraping and have to go into debt. You should do it you can afford to.
posted by ovvl at 3:55 PM on July 13, 2016
Money is a thing here. Don't do the kitchen/bath remodel if your cash-flow is tight and you're scraping and have to go into debt. You should do it you can afford to.
posted by ovvl at 3:55 PM on July 13, 2016
Everybody's correct about the order of priority here. Also consider what you can do yourself; there's a huge sense of satisfaction to be gained from e.g. redoing the fence/staining things yourself, and neither of those are beyond the skills of an amateur if you do a little ground research ahead of time.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:00 AM on July 14, 2016
posted by aspersioncast at 8:00 AM on July 14, 2016
I definitely think a remodel is worth it. It's so important to replace a deck every 20 years, so if yours has reached that age, it's time to replace it. I just had my deck replaced by BNW Builders and I love it They really do great work. Here's their site: http://www.bnwbuilders.com/. Hope this helps!
posted by June Adams at 7:09 AM on July 18, 2016
posted by June Adams at 7:09 AM on July 18, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
Do the least expensive stuff first, which will give you time to really think through how much you want to throw at the bigger stuff. The way that you have described it, unless you got this house for a steal and it's nearly paid off, you would come out better just moving. It sounds like a lot of work.
If you are staying, save up and do the bathroom, kitchen, and windows all at once, with the same contractor. You can test out contractors on the smaller things, leading up to the big commitment. Choose ready made as much as possible for a quicker fit. Keep things sort of generic so that you don't hurt the resale value. Check with your mortgage and make sure that you are allowed to go from a four bedroom to a three bedroom.
posted by myselfasme at 1:07 PM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]