Quick Remodeling an Unrealistic Idea

Quick Remodeling an Unrealistic Idea

Quick remodeling an unrealistic idea

In the era of instant messaging, overnight delivery and five-hour transcontinental flights, it can be difficult to accept that home improvement takes time. But most people don’t move into a house they find perfect in every way and certainly don’t have the wherewithal to turn it overnight into the house of their dreams.

You would think that the myriad home-improvement shows on TV might try to at least hint at the reality of remodeling. Instead, we see Ty and his blow-dried crew reconstruct a 100-year-old farmhouse in one week on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” while in real life it’s standard to wait six times that long for special-order floorboards. Or we watch an ugly room transformed in 48 hours, when we know it takes that long for painters to return a phone call.

The cold, hard truth is that getting from fixer-upper to fixed up requires planning, vision and patience. The good news, however, is that home renovation may be one of the few activities left in our fast-forward culture that rewards a slower approach. People who take their sweet time to redo their homes report that it’s easier on their pocketbooks, less disruptive of their lifestyles and – because decisions are made in less haste and under less pressure – more likely to yield satisfying results.

“I grew up in the sort of house where we did all of our own stuff,” says Steve Gately of Washington. “My dad never hired anyone to come and do anything.”

Genetically predisposed toward doing it himself, Gately is not the type to sacrifice his control over a project on the altar of expediency. Since he and his wife, Lisa Dewey, bought their 1925 Dutch Colonial revival house in 2001, they’ve been turning it into the place they’ve always wanted, spreading the enterprise out over the years so that their renovation plan reads like a doodler’s paper placemat at a restaurant.

For Gately and Dewey, 2002 was the Year of the White Picket Fence. “It took two days to put it in and three months to paint it,” Gately says. “I primed it and got a third of the way through with the first coat using a sprayer before giving up and calling for professional help.”

Next came the Year of Basement Transformation.

--More on Remodeling--

Posted on November 29, 2005 15:11 | Remodeling
comment? |