For the Love of Renovating: Tips, Tricks & Inspiration for Creating Your Dream Home

PART I

Getting Started

01 Buying a Fixer-Upper

02 Let the Renovation Begin

03 Develop a Design

Our living room didn’t always look this open or bright, but with a fixer-upper, you can unveil and elevate existing features, like the original wood window and door moulding.

01

Buying a Fixer-Upper

Older homes can have so much character. Even in this one shot, you’ll see historic woodwork, wall accents, an original stair post, and antique vent grates.

The rest of the chapters in this book will walk you through designing and renovating every part of your home. But we are dedicating this first chapter to those of you who are interested in or intent on buying a fixer-upper.

Most of our clients reach out to us when they decide that the only way to create a home that’s truly theirs—exactly what they want in every way—while still keeping everything in budget is to find a house that needs love. (Sometimes tough love.) So we thought we would start here. If you are spending your weekends scouring the real estate listings and looking at houses that need their fair share of attention, then you might have found that choosing the right one to renovate is just as important as how you renovate it. How do you know if a house can be your dream home when it’s finished? How much work is too much? Is the purchase price plus the cost of the renovation in your budget? Which professionals should you bring to look at the house for an opinion on scope and cost? We find that most people have a lot of questions about the process, and one of the biggest is whether they should renovate or buy a move-in-ready home. Let’s take each question one at a time.

Should you buy a fixer-upper and pour your heart and soul into a renovation—or just buy a move-in-ready home?

That’s the big question, but we’ll make it easy for you. If you bought this book and are reading this now, then you should probably renovate! Some people have the desire to create something that they can call their own. They care greatly about all the details, and they want to take part in the process. If that’s you (heck, you already bought a book about it!), then you might not ever be satisfied with all of the details someone else chose, possibly years ago, or even worse for some of us, things a developer chose! (Scream and wince here.)

As we’re sure you already know, there is a whole lot more to it! Yes, creating your own home can be one of the most meaningful things you’ll do in your life, and you’ll tell stories (good and bad) for years, but there will be stress and anxiety and as many low points as high points along the way, so you should know what you are getting into.

Overall the most important thing is that you have to be motivated to do it. You need to have at least a little bit of a burning desire to create this masterpiece you’ve been dreaming of. Just like anything that takes time and is hard, to go through the entire process you must want to do it! And that brings us back to the fact that you picked up this book. So congrats on taking a very big step in what will be an exciting journey!

Before

After

In this fixer-upper, we focused on the core elements of this original room: natural light and a beautiful fireplace, to envision how we could renovate the space.

Here, we have two different tones in the original woodwork, providing a subtle contrast. When restoring them we left them that way to emphasize the detail in both designs.

Pros and Cons of Buying a Fixer-Upper

THE GOOD

Customizing every fixture, finish, and detail in your home.

Having a home that truly reflects who you are.

Having a very special connection to your home as you’ll be intimately familiar with every detail, with stories to tell about how it got to where it is.

Potentially getting a much nicer house: bigger, better, preferred location, and more custom at a lower cost.

Creating a layout that’s cohesive with your lifestyle.

Experiencing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to renovate a house. (But never say never! You may want to do it again.)

Creating value in your home that you can use in several ways, such as reselling it for a profit, pulling out equity, or creating a family heirloom to pass down to the generations!

THE BAD

It can be a stressful experience dealing with surprises, working with contractors, ordering materials, and making mistakes along the way.

It will be months before you can move in—or, if you choose to move in during the renovation, you’ll be living in a construction site.

It can be time-consuming going through the process of building the design, choosing the finishes, working with the construction crews, and troubleshooting along the way.

You have to be up for surprises, twists, and turns, many of which are expensive and time-consuming.

You will likely need to make compromises.

How do you know if a house can be your dream home when it’s finished?

What you view as your dream home is up to you! It’s your dream. It can be overwhelming comparing properties. Each will have pros and cons. None of the houses you see will tick every box. The trick is to find the one that ticks the most boxes of your top priorities. So make a list! Here is a list of ten potential priorities, in no particular order because it’s up to you to sort them or to add others to the list.

A preferred neighborhood

Walking distance to restaurants, cafes, and bars

Outdoor space

Historic original features

Amount of square footage (if you’re not open to adding on)

Type of house (brick, wood, brownstone, etc.)

Style of house (historic, Victorian, craftsman, ranch, Cape Cod, bungalow, modern, etc.)

Number of bedrooms and/or bathrooms (unless you have enough square footage to add additional rooms, or you’re up for building on to the home)

Scope of project. Some houses are huge projects, others need a lighter touch. Are you okay tackling a huge one, or would you rather just do some cosmetic upgrades and move in?

Budget. The larger and more expensive the renovation, the lower the purchase price will need to be.

There are so many more possibilities, so you should also think hard about the top priority or priorities specific to you. For instance, we wanted a historic Brooklyn brownstone. There are a lot of houses around that are not brownstones, but it’s been our dream to restore one for years. So that was our priority, and everything else moved down in the list.

The last two items on the list above are big ones. So let’s now talk more about those.

This old junk shop was a former carriage house! We had to stretch our imagination to rethink this entire property. See how it turned out on pages 200–201.

HOW MUCH WORK IS TOO MUCH?

This goes hand in hand with the next question. The three factors you need to consider when evaluating the scope of a project are money, time, and motivation.

Money.First, consider what your all-in budget is, then think about how much of that budget you want or are willing to spend on renovation. If you look at a house that’s close to the top of your budget and it needs a total gut renovation, it might not be the house for you. If you see a house that’s perfect except for the kitchen and it’s close to the top of your budget, it might be a contender. The bigger the renovation is, the more money you’ll need to reserve, which requires a lower purchase price.

Time.One of the things you need to think about is how much time you are willing to wait before moving in or, if you are planning on renovating while living there (may the force be with you), how long you are willing to live in a construction site. The bigger the project, the longer it will take. Many people spend a year working on a full gut renovation, while the cosmetic upgrade to a kitchen as mentioned above might be only a couple of months and easier (yet still inconvenient) to live through.

Motivation.Renovating a house can be a lot of fun! We love it and can’t get enough. You might even find your inner designer along the way, as we did. But you have to be prepared for twists, turns, ups, downs, lows, and highs. We always tell our clients it is a roller- coaster ride. There are moments of excitement, moments of despair, moments of relief, and moments of joy. You’ll cry. You’ll laugh. You might beat your head against a wall. Daily. So consider how much you are up for it emotionally!

What are the factors that tell you how big a project is? When we initially look at a house, one of the first things we notice is not necessarily how awful it might look but rather how close the configuration is to what we want. If the kitchen is in the wrong place, walls need to move, bathrooms relocated, bedrooms reconfigured, and we have a full gut renovation on our hands no matter how good or bad the house looks. That many configuration changes will likely require almost all new plumbing, electrical, flooring, and other details. If all of the rooms are in the right places, then we’ll look at the condition of the flooring, electrical, plumbing, and plaster.

We work mostly in historical homes built in the late 1800s; many times even if the original floors are in decent shape, years of settling have caused them to slant in every direction. That immediately tells us that not only do these floors need to come up so that we can level everything, install new subfloor, and put in new flooring, but also there will be a lot of fallout from that work. For instance, much if not all of the trim and doors will need to be replaced or removed and reinstalled (as the height of the floors is adjusted). It’s a big job. (See chapter 9.)

Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) are your other big-ticket items. Look at the main electrical panel. Does it look older than about fifteen years? If so, there have likely been dozens of electrical code upgrades since, and when an electrician starts doing any work, everything will need to be brought up to code. Even if the electrical has been upgraded, it is likely a hodgepodge of old and new and won’t fly when inspected. Also, almost none of our projects have air-conditioning built into the home. So we know HVAC will need to be added, and—surprise—integrating that into an old home comes with a lot of additional electrical, plumbing, and building work.

IS THE PURCHASE PRICE PLUS THE COST OF THE RENOVATION IN YOUR BUDGET?

We have already started to discuss this. It’s a sliding scale. What is your all-in budget? Basically how much do you have to spend even if you stretch yourself to your max? The closer the asking price (or what you feel it will sell for … it could be higher or lower) of the house is to your all-in budget, the less you’ll have for renovations. Hopefully, houses that need more work will be priced less. So that leads us to a very important thing to note: Watch out for the lipstick on a pig out there. Savvy real estate agents can come in and clean things up enough to fool the average buyer into getting a better impression of the home than they should. Fresh paint on the walls could be hiding cracking plaster, clever staging with beautiful furniture can distract you from the condition of the house, new light fixtures might make you feel like it has an updated electrical system, and cleaned-up mechanicals (boiler, hot water heater) might disguise their age, but in reality the home needs all new mechanicals, a full electrical upgrade, extensive plaster repairs, walls and rooms relocated, new floors, a new roof, and a brand-new kitchen and bathrooms. Many buyers walk into those spaces and feel much better about it versus the house they just saw that has old, gross carpet that smells like cat pee, peeling paint, and decaying mechanicals. But both of these homes could need the same amount of work to transform them into your dream home; there is no cost savings during the renovation for the cleaner house when that much work needs to be done. If they are charging more for it, then you might do better with the uglier, smellier one and the lower price tag. It can be tough to spot these lipstick on a pig houses, but if we see fresh paint in a house that obviously needs a ton of work, light fixtures that don’t seem like they belong, or other signs of quick upgrades, we should ask some questions about any recently done work. One of our most memorable examples of this is a house we saw that had a very freshly painted cellar floor. It was so spotless we felt like we needed to take our shoes off to walk on it, while the rest of the house hadn’t been touched in years. It turns out they did a quick paint job before the open house and were hiding a very bad flooding issue that had been a consistent problem.

So we are sure you’re still wondering, How do I know how much the renovation will cost?! We’ve got you in the next chapter!

Who should you bring with you to view the property?

For our clients, us! We often look at potential fixer-uppers with our clients to determine the cost and scope of a property. But if we’re not available, you can also bring a local architect or general contractor. There are even design-build firms that do it all! But you probably won’t be able to enlist any of these folks to come around and look at every house with you, so you’ll need to do a first pass on your own to try to understand the scope and cost of the work, which is what we’ll help you with in the next chapter. If you determine that the home is indeed a possibility, then you can go back to a second showing with the professional of your choice. We recommend choosing that person so they’re ready to go, because real estate markets can be competitive, and securing the home may happen very quickly.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

This can be fun! There may be properties out there that at first glance look like they might not be contenders, but if you keep an open mind, you could find something that can be more uniquely yours than you ever thought possible. What might look too small could potentially be made bigger (depending on local building ordinances); what is ugly can be made beautiful; what is decaying can be restored, heck … you can even tear the place down and start over!

You might even be able to find a home that needs love and is not on the market. If you see a house that looks vacant in a neighborhood you are targeting and you think it has potential, pull over and explore. If you’re brave enough, knock on a neighbor’s door and ask them if they know who owns it. Or just get the address and look it up in your city’s property records. You may be able to get a hold of the owner, who might take you up on your offer to buy it. If you are able to find a house that’s not on the market, you’ll have less (or no) competition from other buyers, and you can avoid brokers’ fees.

While we were a bit terrified of the stained, crumbling floor, we were mesmerized by the stunning skylight in this old carriage house.

Finally—don’t forget to have fun out there! Shopping for a house to renovate can seem overwhelming, but the good news is that, in theory, anything is possible. You can cosmetically upgrade kitchens and bathrooms. You can add rooms or floors to a house. You can redo all of the mechanicals. You can add air-conditioning. You can excavate the cellar to create more living spaces. You can create a roof deck. You can blow a huge hole in the back of the house and put in a moving glass wall to have the indoor/outdoor lifestyle of your dreams. Anything can be done; it just all depends on your budget and how long you are