I worked with a client who ended up doing a teardown of the house that they had lived in for 15 years because the extent of the renovation would have cost almost as much as a new house, but the new construction would have been worth more than the old house renovated. (They are post war splits and ranches and the splits in particular do not take additions well: they look awkward, and are still a small house with a big addition.) The turning point for them was that bids were coming in for hundreds of thousands, and the builders were saying that it would be more cost effective to demolish and start over. HOWEVER, the real estate market has dropped, the homeowners got divorced and in their particular part of the neighborhood no one else has done a teardown yet. The wife is trying to sell and although there is a lot of interest, no one wants to have the biggest/nicest house in the immediate neighborhood. You have to decide whether you will be overimproving for the neighborhood as well. At the time, there was a lot of discussion that they were doing this but there were other people planning to do this, and they thought well, in 15 years if we sell, the neighborhood will have caught up. Well, two years later they were divorced and the economy has prevented anyone else from going this route. In an interesting turn of events the wife bought the house next door from an estate, its the twin of what she tore down. The house was considered "worthless", it is the land that had the value. However, she is not tearing this one down, she is doing a gut reno of the same footprint. The other thing you should consider is if you should sell the property and invest in a house that is closer to what you want.

new construction versus remodeling. There are certain aspects of remodeling where you will not get the level of contruction that "a new well contructed" home will give you even if you spend alot of money. I give a caveat that the new construction has be well built. Obviously, there are shabby new construction. You can build a brand new house that looks as if it has been standing there for a 100 years. It only costs money! There are many new houses in my city that has been built that way. They are extremely popular and hugely expensive. 1. Foundation: older foundation has no steel rebars in the concrete. Concrete has a finite life time. It can start to crumble and leak water like crazy when nearing 100 years old. Rehabbed foundation is no where as "strong" or "water tight" as new foundation, IMHO. 2. Shear strength to wind and earth quake; new contruction is built to code that makes sure that house can withstand certain amount of wind and shear motion during earthquake. (I live in an earthquake zone.) I spent tens of thousands of $ to do very technically up to date earthquake retrofit. Even so, the house is not nearly as strong as what could be built to the new standards. 3. Tightness/insulation for energy conservation. No need for explanation. Again, unless you tear everything out to the stud and remodel, you cannot get this degree of tightness. I hate old drafty houses. Life is too short for that at this point in my life. I have lived in enough old houses with leaky windows to know that I will not do it again. At a certain point, certain types of remodeling is not really a "remodel" but a "rebuild" on an older foundation. (re: issues regarding foundation above.) 4. When remodeling, there are issues that are inherant in the house that becomes obstables to a good floor plan/house, ie terrible design flaws already in the old house. Sometimes, these are WAY too expensive to fix, ie ceiling height, not enough windows, location of the stairs etc. Maybe the house is not sited well on a lot, for example. These are obstacles that can be thought through and remedied when building new. 5. If you are rebuilding new on an old foundation, it is more expensive than tearing down and starting over. Been there and done that and that's how I know. After having spent all that money, because of the stupid things that you inherit from the house, you still have many things that are not quite right. I will not do it again. Next time, if I do it again, I will identify a house that I can tear down for the lot that I want.

Hmmm, so I fuss over "girl" AND "guy" stuff. When it came time to have our electrical box upgraded from the old 100 amp service to the 200 amp service...I was the one asking the questions to the electrician. When our electrician was here this weekend to replace an old light switch that sizzled and fried (littlerally...black smoke coming out and everything!), I was right there, asking him about it. And I LOVE that he explained it to me as a human and not as "okay, little lady, here's what's up with it." When we were getting ready to build a house a few years ago...it was me that fussed over the dual zone heating. And me that fussed over the geothermal heat pump. And me that was asking about the relative advantages and disadvantages of Superior Walls vs. standard foundations. My husband came along for the ride on most of that. In our house, in many cases, I do the research (be it "male" or "female" based. Narrow down the choices to what I find acceptable. Present findings to DH and then we work on finding a decision. But, me, heck yeah, I'm going to be SO excited (seriously!) when it comes time for us to have the HVAC people in to replace our old furnace. But, I'm a little odd like that.

We are currently remodeling our bathroom and thinking through the design of our next one (this is a temporary home, we already own land to build on but a mortgage was cheaper than rent here ;) ). Features I am installing here that I have used in other bathrooms - LIT MEDICINE CABINETS! Oh my these are wonderful. Great ring of light for makeup and smart storage of toiletries, easily accessible. BOTTOM OF LINEN CLOSET IN BATHROOM SIZED TO HOLD A LAUNDRY BASKET. Keeping it tucked away inside the storage cabinet by the sink streamlines the flow. PLUGS IN THE CABINET AND A DRAWER OR TWO. I know we aren’t the only people with electric toothbrushes, curling irons, electric razors, etc. I had my husband install a plug on the middle shelf of the aforementioned linen cabinet and a bank of plugs inside a drawer on each side of the vanity for charging these things safely and keeping the countertop uncluttered. Remember that bathroom plugs need to be arc fault protected GFCI, and that goes for the ones in furniture, too. TIMER ON THE BATHROOM FAN. I love love love having the timer option on my fans so I can set them for awhile, leave the room, and let them exhaust without running for hours on end. Simple and convenient. **** Now as you can see none of these is particularly costly. They just make the bathrooms live well, and smartly, without requiring excess space or even fancy materials. I used several of these features in the kids bath of this house already and they add so much custom home convenience without some weird premium. And since this house is small and has a ton of people (we have seven kids), every inch of space needs to work hard for us. These upgrades are ones worthwhile. Sure, at the next place we’ll also have radiant heat throughout, a bathroom that is fully accessible and easily cleaned, bigger closets, etc. But it is these little things that make the most difference between a drywall palace mass produced tract home and a true custom job. The thoughtfulness and usefulness.