I bought my house 6 years ago, not as an investment but as a rescue. When I was looking at it, I saw floors that needed to be refinished, garage door that needed replacing, an old decaying roof soon in need of repair, nasty kitchen that needed new floor and facelifted cabinets, disgusting paint jobs that required three coats of primer, 100% window replacement required, insulation that needed to be added, boiler, water heater, fridge, and stove that needed to go, and a chimney that needed to be rebuilt. When I made it to the bathroom, I gave a sigh of relief. It was recently redone, diy by previous owners, and all modernized and functional. It was a hideous color and looked like a peach birthday cake icing’s revenge nightmare, but it worked. No leaks, no chips, no cracks, no gaps, no old and busted. Just new, functional, and ugly.
One week of taking showers in my new bathroom and the paint started cracking. The texture started peeling. My bithday cake icing bathroom walls and ceiling had leperosy (aka DIYosis). Top it off with the fact that I’d noticed that every single fixture and useful object had been installed off center (and off center relative to each other as well), and I wanted to cry. I think I did, but I’m not sure – in self defense I’ve blocked my memories of that painful day. Since then, every shower, every flush, every morning and every evening, I walk in to the leperous room and scowl at the walls, occasionally stifling a scream and picking a paint and drywall compound scab off in a fit of aggravation.
I have made it almost all the way through the rest of the house with all the repairs and improvements it needed. Attic fan, floors, paint, patching, electrical work, garage door, steps, almost everything is done. But I kept putting off the bathroom. I didn’t want to rent the sander, and spackle the ceiling, and patch and paint – at least a week’s worth of effort and a couple hundred dollars. But I’ve got momentum now. And a recommended plasterer who doesn’t work high as a kite (sordid story there). So we emptied our bathroom – we took down the mirror that was 2 feet too high to be useful. We removed the medicine cabinet that was mounted such that washing one’s face was an exercise in self inflicted frontal lobotomy. We removed the tiny beaded sconces mounted behind said medicine cabinet, illuminating the cardboard backing of the garish, oversized, lobotomizing mirror. We removed the picture of the naked rock climbing man that I put up in a misdirected fit of athletic artsiness. We removed the towel rack and TP holders, both installed in the worst possible locations precluding their use. We removed the worst of the bathroom offenses.
All going to charity. I’m not in a hurry to replace them. When the plasterers are done, we’ll put some things back, but not all, and definitely not in the same places. I really just want to see what it looks like first. I can’t imagine the space without the birthday cake icing leperocy walls. I have high hopes for some second hand cabinetry and a counter top that will allow removal of the “What The Hell Were They Thinking Add-On Linen Closet” from the most awkward position possible in the hall, but we’ll see when we get there.
What have I learned from this is that if you can identify a DIY job, it’s a bad job and will need to be repaired no matter what it looks like on the (currently smooth) surface. If something needs to be repaired, putting it off for 6 years without finding out how easy and fast it is for a professional to fix is a stupid thing to do. And if the slumlord who tried to pick you up across the campfire from his girlfriend recommends a plasterer, that isn’t “normal” and is not a data point to include in one’s decision-making criteria.
You have a picture of a naked guy rock-climbing? At some point each of you independently said to yourself “this is a good idea”? I question your judgement, I have to question his sanity.
With that out of the way we can move on to identifying Stevens’ fifth law: “Every former homeowner is an idiot.” It’s an indisputable law. As much as I try to make my work as good as I can reasonably make it, I know that someday someone will remove a section of the work I did, getting a look at what was hidden behind a marginal paint job and say, “What in the Hell was he thinking?”
That’s because no matter how difficult the job looks before you start , you can be sure that by tackling the problem in small bits and working carefully and using the best techniques and materials you can easily double the scope and complexity with no effort whatsoever. That leads directly to Stevens’ sixth law: “inside every problem there’s an ever bigger problem just waiting to get out.”
Although you did provide a potential seventh law (i.e. “Never hire a plasterer recommended by a guy who tries to pick you up while sitting next to his girlfriend”) I’m afraid it may be a little too specific to be generally usable. Useful advice in certain bizarre circumstances to be sure, but probably not widely applicable.
Ok, the naked guy rock climbing was a commercially available photograph of Ed Shockley leading (naked) a climb called “Shockley’s Roof” or something like that. It wasn’t the first time he’d climbed it, but he did do it naked when he set the line for the very first time. He was a member of an informal group called the Vulgarists or something, they were a rowdy and raunchy bunch of climbers in the 80s that set most of the climbs in the ‘Gunks back before anybody had ever climbed there. He was sort of a rock star of the climbing world. I bought it because it reminded me that even when doing things that are only marginally acceptable by society (rock climbing), there are ways to push the envelope further (doing it naked). A reminder that I suppose I don’t really need. And Hubby hates it.
I believe the seventh law should be “Never hire anybody that Mike didn’t recommend.” Your single recommendation of hiring Mike to help me fix my house has resulted in a tremendous amount of extremely professional, attractive, and functional repairs by an assortment of highly qualified and trustworthy craftsmen. You saved me from a downward DIY spiral that surely would have resulted in me sitting atop a crumpled heap of splinters and plaster dust, twirly paint-filled hair around calloused and bruised fingers, babbling incoherently a mantra of little use, “lefty loosey, righty tighty…. lefty loosey, righty tighty…”
After estimating any project, I understand that I can either double the budget and triple the schedule, or triple the schedule and double the budget. I then triple both, and plan accordingly. Which is why it took so long to hire the plasterers. I’ll leave the estimating to the pros now