We just celebrated our 5th year of home ownership last week. We are a little over halfway done with the house. What a journey this restoration project has been! We often receive questions about buying and restoring an old house. So, on the occasion of our anniversary with homeownership, here goes…

Would we do it again? Hmmmm. Halfway through our restoration I started to have fantasies about building a completely Modern house, something that you would see on the pages of “Dwell” magazine, where everything would be brand spanking new and streamlined. A few months ago I would have said NEVER. EVER. AGAIN. But, you know what they say about never saying never. 

What have we learned from our experiences? If you are going to restore a house with someone, have a conversation or two about how you actually plan to accomplish this before buying the house. When we talked about fixing up the house, I imagined us lovingly working on it together. I had no idea the images floating around David’s head were of us interviewing general contractors…lovingly together. What can I say? We were young, in love and not so focused on the details. It never occurred to me that David wouldn’t “like” working on the house. 

Things will cost so much more than you expect and take much, much longer than you imagine.

Know your limitations. Sometimes it is much cheaper and safer to hire someone than to attempt to do a project for which you have no skill or aptitude. Hire a licensed electrician, plumber, roofer, or foundation contractor.

It is just a house, just a paint color, just a piece of furniture, just a light fixture, or just a kitchen design. Try to keep things in perspective. If only I could have back all those hours spent pouring through magazines, books, and on eBay. I spent way too much time, and probably too much money, on things that seemed important at the time, but really didn’t matter all that much in the bigger picture.

If I could do it all over again.
1. I would spend more money upfront and purchase a house in the best condition that I could afford. We thought we would save ourselves money by purchasing a fixer and we were worried about house payments. We ended up spending MORE money fixing our house up than if we had bought the nicer, more expensive house.

2. You will save yourself so much money and frustration if you find a house with unpainted woodwork, if that is important to you. Stripping paint is a horrible, horrible process. It is not fun, it is not exciting…it is hard and expensive work.

3. Get to know your potential neighbors. We were lucky that we ended up with great neighbors. If I had been smart, I would have knocked on some doors and met my future neighbors before we bought our house. In my neighborhood, there is not much that happens that my neighbors don’t know about. Your potential neighbors can probably give you the lowdown on the owner of the house, the other neighbors, who or what you should watch out for, and probably some history about your future house.

4. I will not live next door to an apartment complex. We saw some really great houses but didn’t make an offer because they were next to 2-3 story apartments. I like to live next to people who own their houses and have more invested in their upkeep. Plus, I don’t want people to be able to look out their windows and have a bird’s eye view of my backyard.

5. Look for homes that still have intact original features such as moldings, beamed ceilings, hardware, original wood doors, light fixtures, wood framed windows with wavy glass, etc. The more original features the better. Yes, all these things can be added back if they are missing but it is costly – especially to put back wood framed windows.

6. Make sure you get a thorough home inspection, but be prepared for surprises. The home inspection won’t turn up all the problems in your house. Until you take a room apart and put it back together again, there are things you just won’t find.

7. Spend time in the area. Drive around and get out and walk. Is this somewhere where you want to live? Do you feel safe? Make sure you like the block before you buy a house on it.

8. Be patient. It takes a long time to fix up an old house and a good amount of money. Try to be realistic, although, if you have never fixed up a house before it is hard to even know what is realistic. Here is a hint, most of what you have seen on tv about fixing up a house is not reality. It occured to me the other day that it took our house almost 100 years to get so run down, so why did I think it would be completely restored in a few months or even a few years?

9. After you buy the house, invest in an alarm system and take the burglar bars off the windows. Alarm window screens are completely worth the money.

10. Nothing will change the look of your house like a good paint job!

It started a several months ago with an email from our realtor asking if we wanted to be on the DIY network? I wrote back telling him maybe, depending on what we would have to do.

This led to discussions with the show’s producer and an in-home visit. Last Friday we learned that our house has been selected to be on a new show for the DIY network called Restoration Realities. We’ll also be on the show doing a project on our house.

I found this description from a “Do It Yourself Network Fact Sheet” posted online:

Restoration Realities
Follow homeowners as they face the step-by-step challenges of restoration and share the beauty and history that make restoring old homes so rewarding.

Restoration Realities travels across the country in search of restore-minded homeowners and their great old homes. One home is featured in each half-hour episode.

I have to confess that we don’t get the DIY network so I’ve never seen the show. Has anyone out there seen it?

Now, if I was going to do a show called Restoration Realities it would be a little different:
1. Show the homeowner leaving to go shower at the gym because that easy do-it-yourself plumbing project wasn’t so easy after all.

2. See the crazy homeowner breakdown sobbing on the phone to a plumber, begging them to come after showering at the gym four days in a row because every plumber called was either too busy or never showed for their scheduled appointment.

3. Watch as your befuddled homeowner realizes that her 92 year old front door lock is broken and that no amount of key turning or praying is going to open that door. Watch her almost have a heart attack and cry out “Absolutely NOT!” when a locksmith pulls out a hammer and chisel to use on the 92 year old door handle.

Capture the stress on the homeowner’s face when she realizes that she is going to have to make a decision of ‘Sophie’s Choice’ like proportions. Should she enter from the back door and ruin the still wet finish put down on the wood floor only two hours earlier, after days of sanding and prep work, or should she sacrifice the front door or at least it’s original hardware?

Stay tuned because after the commercial break your crafty homeowner and her locksmith sidekick will break into the house through a window causing much dog barking and an ear shatteringly loud house alarm to go off. To make it even more special, make sure it happens to be the homeowner’s birthday.

4. Have an animal trainer on set to direct the cat to run up the stairs the second after the homeowner finishes shellacking them. Allow the homeowner to think the cat is quarantined and that her spouse is watching him to make certain the little escape artist doesn’t make a run for it.

Zoom in on the homeowner with paint brush in hand, standing there with her mouth agape trying to form the words…hear her scream (insert spouse name here, for our purposes lets just use Dave), “Dave! I THOUGHT you were watching him!”

Edit out the ensuing swear words for primetime viewing.

5. Have your home owner start a “little project” and watch how quickly that “little project” grows into a HUGE project resulting in taking a room down to the studs, ripping out a floor and basically rebuilding that room from the ground up.

6. How about a restoration fashion show? Have your homeowners sashay down the catwalk modeling the latest in tool belts, hammers in hand, clad in paint splotched tee-shirts and sooty, ground in dirt and grease stained jeans. The voice over can proudly say that no amount of washing, bleaching or use of stain removers will ever get these clothes clean again!

7. Feature the best fast food restaurants in a 30 mile radius around the homestead. Your homeowners aren’t going to be cooking any time soon because, chances are, on any given day they won’t have running water, electricity in the kitchen or everything in the house, including their dishes, will be covered in dust. Sealing rooms off with plastic helps but dust won’t be contained. It’s “The Invasion of the Dust Mites…”

8. Set up hidden cameras to capture the expression on the homeowner’s face when she looks in the mirror after an important business meeting and realizes she just gave a presentation to a room full of people with green latex paint in her hair.

9. Today on Restoration Realities watch as our homeowners come to grips with the Golden 3x Rule: Projects cost 3 times more than you had estimated and take 3 times longer to finish.

See our homeowner pick her spouse (insert spouse name here, for our purposes lets just use Dave) Dave up off the floor after he adds up exactly how much money they have spent on the house. Listen in while they try to figure out line item by line item how this project got SO FAR off budget. This episode is a fun one!

10. Ok folks, get ready for Restoration Survivors. Our new spin-off pits young couples against the most challenging circumstances, the most perplexing restoration problems, and the most annoying tasks. Will they be able to work together to overcome the stress, day after day, week after week while they are hit with unforeseen and unexpected difficulties?

Who will run out of money? Who will decide to sell? Who’s marriage will survive, who will split up? Who will be the last couple standing? Who has the strength and cunning to be our next Restoration Survivor?

All winners will receive a 30 year mortgage, plus their home’s resale value.

Spending so much time restoring the house and peeling through all the layers to learn about it’s history, I thought a lot about how the house was when it was originally built. It was natural that this would develop into a curiousity about the family who lived in this house 92 years ago. Who were they and what were they like? What happened to them after they sold the house?

Of course, we would LOVE to see some old pictures of the house and the family. Sometimes I hope that maybe the Welsh family or John L. Welsh himself are looking down at us and glad that we are working so hard to restore the house.

I think that a house is more than a place to live. To me a house is about family roots, beginnings and endings, a context for our lives.