Alternative title for this post: Never Renovate on a Deadline.
Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Nowhere in life is this more true than during a renovation project. So before I get into examples, I will give some words of advice: never plan a renovation with a hard deadline. If you want to renovate an entire floor of your house before you have your extended family over for Christmas, you better not start in October, you better start in June. Case in point, our upstairs renovation (read more details about the plan in this post). We’re putting in a new bathroom completely from scratch (our house only had one when we bought it), re-configuring the closet space, adding built in bookshelves and cabinets, putting in new wood (or bamboo) flooring where we once had carpet, and adding new drywall on all of the walls and ceiling (where once there was only ugly paneling and cardboard ceiling tiles). Obviously that’s a lot of work, especially to DIY. Doing that on weekends and during my entire week off between Christmas and New Years (!!!), we were hoping to be done by January 7th when we left for vacation. Now, a list of things that have set us back since we started this project a bit before Thanksgiving, making that deadline utterly impossible to meet:
- The plumber’s “two days” to install our plumbing turned into FIVE DAYS.
- The electrician had to rewire some switches in our upstairs because they were connected to two breakers (because that’s not unsafe at all).
- The building inspector helpfully pointed out that the joists of our second floor are not to code (it’s an addition which had no permits pulled when it was built) and thus the plumbing cannot run through the joists, and the joists would have to be reinforced now that we’re renovating, spawning the next two items on the list.
- All of plumbing had to be removed from the joists and re-run underneath the floor (aka in the downstairs bedroom, joy!).
- All of the joists that run under the bathroom had to be reinforced with NEW joists on either side (so basically, adding two new joists for each existing one).
- Adding the joists required removing more of the subfloor than we had planned, plus removing the already-in-place bathroom walls, and removing all of the electrical running through the joists (so half of the downstairs was without power for a few days).
Aside from these project-related problems, which made Seth beg me to just let him burn the place to the ground so we could just start over (I did not agree to this, obviously), we also encountered these unrelated problems at the same time (thank you to the universe for these special treats):
- The plumbing that drains the kitchen sink rusted through completely, creating a lovely pond in our crawl space.
- The kitchen sink faucet randomly stopped working halfway through a sink of dishes.
- The dining room light fixture made a popping noise and all four bulbs burned out at the same time. To be fair, I hated this fixture and had tried to lobby for replacing it before, but as Seth and I couldn’t agree on a light fixture, we had just left it. Obviously its death required a replacement ASAP.
So, there you have it. A very good example of Murphy’s Law and why your renovation plans should always be flexible. Once one area of your home gets some attention, the rest of your house starts screaming for your attention too. Every house is full of a few surprises-thanks to the previous owners usually-that you’ll discover and need to deal with. May your house have fewer surprises than ours.
Share your renovation nightmares to make us feel better in the comments below!