So you think you’ve heard all the stories about home renovation — of being awakened by power tools on a Saturday morning, putting up with the noise of demolition, clearing off dust each night to prepare dinner — assuming, of course, that your kitchen still functions.
Well, here’s one you may not have heard — about a family that remained in its Philadelphia rowhouse after the facade was removed.
“It was quite an adventure to have the whole front of the house off,” recalled Susan Hagen, an artist, writer and woodworker. “It was like living in a doll house with the outdoors just inches away.”
Susan’s architect husband, Tom Buck, assured her that with the dust partition he built — a wood structure inside the house with plastic over it, and, in rain, an extra tarp outside — the family would be just fine.
“We do this all the time” at work, he told her. But for Hagen, the nearly three weeks it took for masons to rebuild the facade were disconcerting.
“We still ate at the dining room table,” she said. “We just waved at people as they would go by.”
Adventures like this are putting Americans to the test, as home renovations grow ever more ambitious.
Last year, a record $142.9 billion was spent on home improvement and repair, a leap of 7 percent over the previous year, the Census Bureau reports. During the same period, the average cost of a professional renovation rose 9 percent, to $42,370, although the median remained at $22,000, a National Association of Home Builders survey shows.
“We cannot say all people are doing bigger jobs, but there are more bigger jobs,” said Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research for the home builders.
Have aspirations for our homes, and the money to realize them, been on a growth spurt?
“The size of projects has gotten enormous, and it has to do with expendable income,” said Paul Deffenbaugh, editor-in-chief of Remodeling magazine.
“Competition for the remodeling market is not food and clothing. It’s a European vacation, a new car and diamond earrings.
“A couple doing a $75,000 project three years ago is taking on a $200,000 project this year,” he said, noting that jobs have also been funded largely through savings, refinancing and home equity loans.
The Kristals of Wallingford, Pa., just underwent a four-month renovation of their first floor that included the creation of a beautiful 19-by-40 combination kitchen-family room, with an inlaid floor and Arts and Crafts-style cabinetry. The tab for the project was $150,000, which they drew mostly from savings.
Within the next few years, they hope to redo their second floor.
Of course, not everyone takes on that much — and folks such as Hagen and Buck do a lot of the work themselves — but costs can extend beyond the financial.
“It takes an emotional toll,” Hagen noted. “There’s more room for disagreements as a couple.”
The lack of privacy from having workers in your home from the early hours on can also be trying, Mary Kristal said.
And there always seem to be situations that take us back to more primitive living. While the facade was off their town house, Tom Buck would sleep sentry with the dog on the couch near the front door.
“That way I could hear what was going on,” he said.
“It was an insecure situation from the point of view of someone walking in. But we were only exposed on the ground floor a short time — it only took a day to fill in the ground level of brick.
“And you could hear someone if they were climbing the scaffolding,” he added matter-of-factly.
Luckily, there were “no catastrophes of any type,” his wife said, and the couple’s 5-year-old son, Henry, saw the whole experience as “a great adventure.”
“It’s a mixed bag,” Hagen said of renovation, “but there are great rewards when you’re done.”
The greatest reward is coming home to the house you really want — dreams of which are fed by the shelter magazines. From their pages, palatial kitchens and luxurious master suites beckon with the power of guilty pleasures. If you’ve got the money, they’re hard to resist.
Even increases in the interest rate have put only a slight — and Harvard housing expert Kermit Baker believes, temporary — dent in remodeling this year.
Bryan Patchan, director of industry communications for the home builders, sees “confidence among consumers based on job security, the value of homes in many areas rising, and, until a few months ago, on the incredible performance of the stock market.”
“What I hear more about is people having to wait longer for projects to start and of projects taking longer than they should have because of the shortage of skilled labor,” Deffenbaugh said.
Mark Schwemler, who bought a house in Chestnut Hill, Pa., last summer with his wife, Colleen Owsiany, sees residential improvements “happening everywhere.”
“People are spending money on their homes,” the lawyer said.
When he first saw his home, he knew he was in for a big job with the kitchen. A thick, interior stone wall separated the kitchen from a small eating area and bathroom.
The couple have just had the wall demolished to see the total space available and decide how to work in a mudroom element and arrange appliances, food preparation and eating areas — but for now, the demolition has rendered the kitchen all but useless.
“We try not to stay here because of the fallout,” Owsiany said. Her three young children were safely ensconced two rooms away.
“We’ve hooked up the stove but only with one burner.”
How about the microwave?
“No, we’re holding out. We’re pioneers.”
The family uses a sink in the butler’s pantry.
The fridge is out in the dining room.
Schwemler expects to spend $35,000 to $75,000 to have the job done by the end of this month. Until then, “the biggest challenge will be getting [the children] nutritious meals,” his wife said. “Not feeding them junk and not overloading them on fast food.”
In addition to spending more on remodeling, people are much more knowledgeable about all the options, said Diane Menke, a partner in Myers Constructs.
“Ten years ago, we would have gotten a lot of simple upgrades of kitchens. Now … there are more products. And generally, they know about them. They’ve researched them online or gone to distributors, and are well-informed.
“They want quality, beautiful products.”
Evie Cohen, a real estate agent, notices that 6 to 18 months after moving in, home buyers are often “ripping out bathrooms, putting in limestone, putting in the finest grade of materials, whether high-end marble or limestone or slate, and kitchens with top-quality windows — barring absolutely no expense.”
“Granite countertops are a given.”
Spending a bundle to renovate older homes purchased in nice, well-established communities is also something his South Jersey clients do, said Val Nunnenkamp of Prudential Fox & Roach’s Voorhees, N.J., office.
One customer bought a home in Medford Lakes, N.J., for $210,000, just to gut and remodel it for $80,000, he said.
“Five years ago, clients didn’t want to see anything that wasn’t perfect.”
The change reflects a housing shortage in some areas and buyers’ realization that they may not be able to afford what they want in the choicest communities.
For those already in good areas, a desire to keep a number of positives, beginning with a sensible commute, and rework the existing home is a powerful urge.
“People are entrenched in the community,” Cherry Hill contractor Tom Michalik said. “Rather than move into a new home without a lot of the same level of community involvement, they prefer to stay where they are.”
Having room to fall back on has helped ease disruption at the West Mount Airy, Pa., home of Tom Sugrue and Dana Barron. There, Myers Constructs is redoing the kitchen and mudroom, and expanding the playroom into a family room.
“We’ve turned the living room and enclosed front porch into our surrogate kitchen — and moved the fridge out onto the porch,” Sugrue said.
Besides its usual contents, the living room is crammed with 2-year-old Anna’s toys, her large plastic car, and play tent — not to mention rolled-up carpets, a cabinet to stow canned and dried goods, and a kitchen table being used as a counter.
The dining room holds the considerable overflow from the construction areas, along with the family’s dining-room furniture.
“We chose to have the job done while the weather is nice because I like to grill and it’s easier then,” Sugrue said. But even using paper plates, there’s still silverware and dishes to be washed.
They’re done in the powder room.
“It’s not the kitchen sink I would have built,” Sugrue said, opening the door onto a drying rack piled high on a little table next to the sink.
“We tried to time our vacation so they could do some of the demolition while we were away,” he said. But the foyer floors would soon be up for refinishing.
Whether the family will get antsy as the work persists another month or so remains to be seen.
“We help them anticipate what they’ll face and work it through,” Menke said of her clients. But “everyone has a little meltdown phase, and it’s usually on the bigger jobs.”
It usually involves “a big space that they want to use, and they’re waiting and waiting. They’ve saved for several months or years, and been planning and thinking about it.
“And by the time you’re about a week away from the end, they’re crawling the walls.”
