Author Topic: Avoiding Major Reconstruction in Remodel  (Read 1669 times)

aneel

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Avoiding Major Reconstruction in Remodel
« on: November 11, 2014, 01:51:55 PM »
My husband and I purchased our first home in the South Shore area of Massachusetts in February 2013.  It's a very old house built in the 1830s.  The previous owners did quite a bit of cosmetic updating (but left the knob and tube for some maddening reason).  The only room in the entire house left mostly untouched was the laundry room/closet.  It has home made shelves and cabinets and terrible wood paneling.
We started off thinking we'd tear everything down, put up some drywall, and hang some new cabinets.  We quickly realized doing drywall would take more skill then we had.
Then we thought we'd find out how much it would be to get someone to drywall for us, but every contractor we contacted either didn't get back to us (too small of a job?) or was really only willing to do the whole thing....for $4000 <-- we do NOT want a $4000 laundry room!
So there we were staring at our ugly laundry room last night when I finally realized we could leave most of it intact, and just re-panel the areas that had bad paneling (tons of little pieces), and paint over the paneling (as has been done in other rooms in the house).  I'm very pleased we've come up with a middle ground between a highend laundry room remodel and a "don't fix it if it ain't broken" attitude.
If you see any holes in this plan (other than the ones in my walls), let me know!

deborah

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Re: Avoiding Major Reconstruction in Remodel
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2014, 02:18:56 PM »
Sounds good

Exflyboy

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Re: Avoiding Major Reconstruction in Remodel
« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2014, 11:54:35 PM »
or get a book on framing and drywall.. and get stuck in. My first drywall project was doubling the size of our house and every square inch of drywall was ripped out,, wiring replaced, put back up, taped and mudded.

Use your laundry room to learn. It just isn't that complicated.

Frank

Greg

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Re: Avoiding Major Reconstruction in Remodel
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2014, 09:24:55 AM »
First, hanging and repairing drywall isn't rocket science and you should be able to do it yourself if you are physically able and can read books or watch videos on how-to.

If the laundry room has an exterior wall, I'd reconsider not tearing it all out so that you can insulate if needed.  At a minimum I'd run new plumbing and wiring so that it's up-to date.

aneel

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Re: Avoiding Major Reconstruction in Remodel
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2014, 07:31:14 AM »
Thanks everyone.  For us, the balance of happiness gained vs effort invested comes down sharply on the side of not dealing with drywall ourselves.  We have a radiator to work around, and plenty of electrical and plumbing in that room.  In the end the project is much less a true remodel, and more of a cleaning up / brightening the room.  We also don't plan on living there for more than 3-5 more years, so that has influenced our decision as well.  If this was our "forever" home, we'd look at it a bit differently.