I’m not the only one. The entire family came with me. Why? Because we’re remodeling.
When we bought our current home in 2006, we had plans to remodel right away. The house was in serious need of some updates; when giving people directions to my place I usually say: “When you get to my street, you’ll see two lovely brick homes on the left. Mine is the house that looks like it belongs to the Brady Bunch in the middle.”
I may live in a Brady Bunch house, but my wife insists that there is no way Alice would have ever considered cooking in our cramped and seriously outdated galley kitchen. Eight years after moving in, we’re finally tackling the remodeling. Creating the more spacious, functional kitchen we desire has necessitated rethinking our entire floor plan. This includes knocking down walls, which meant that my wife, our two kids and I would have to move into an apartment for the next several weeks.
Thankfully, I have complete trust and faith in my contractor. Not only has he done work for me before, he’s a friend–we even play in the same band on the weekends. Construction is a tough job. It involves detailed planning, strong know-how and careful coordination. But as I mentioned last week, even the best plans can go awry.
As far as I know, there have been no mistakes back at the homestead thus far, but that didn’t stop me from googling “epic remodeling fails” at our temporary apartment one sleepless night. My quick search yielded more than a million results–yikes! Here are a few winners. If only the people hiring these contractors had followed this wise rule of thumb: “You might have the wrong contractor, if the magnetic sign on his pickup truck is upside down…”
Think it through this weekend,
~Bob
