Remodeling ain't as sexy as HGTV makes it out to be.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'm considering building an addition onto my home, and it comes with big pros and cons. I love thinking through the design and picking out fixtures and stuff, but living through the construction is a nightmare. (I've done a complete rehab of my home over the years, so I have real-life experience living amidst construction.) I'm hoping that an addition would be a lot easier than my previous projects, because maybe we could just keep it closed off until it's done, and then have a ceremonial removal of the plastic tarp. I suspect it won't be that easy, though. And now that I think about it, it would also need to involve redoing the space that is currently our kitchen. So yeah, it would be a nightmare.

But wow, it would be so awesome when it's done.

And I would do none of the work myself. If I try to hammer a nail, there are explosions and fires. That stuff is not in my wheelhouse.

We had an addition, larger than the original house, added to ours when it was still our second home before retiring.

The downside was that we were 11 hours away while the work was going on and the highly recommended contractor had a memory shorter than my Johnson. Many things were not done as we specified and he had never heard the saying "the customer is always right." It was a horrible experience even though we love the addition minus his errors.

Just in the past few months, they have cost us over $10,000 to get right. It was hard for me to imagine paying $7200 to have the water heater, water tank and water softener moved to the correct location allowing handicap access. Another $3000 to replace a support beam that had not been properly protected from the weather with metal flashing completely covering it that rotted out.

If the hail storm/tornado hadn't happened to require the siding replacement, we probably wouldn't have known about it until the whole thing came crashing down.