Remodel vs Restore

The term used to be rehabbing a property. Now we hear remodel or restore as the terms for fixing a property up. Remodeling and restore are as the terms imply, but take two different sets of skills. The remodeler is more apt to have a compressor and nail gun while the restoration work is done by a hammer. Not a lot of restoration work is really done any more. Most people want bright shiny and new.

Earlier I talked about stripping to repaint some cabinets. Even I was not impressed by the results compared to some new cabinets that were very nicely painted in my nephew’s home. The cost was probably less for new after the time spent.

Remodeling changes the original design or intent of a house. The best example of that is there was a time when families had double digits of kids and small little rooms were appropriate. Today we routinely tear out walls to make rooms bigger and brighter. We can make houses brighter because we have thermal pane, tight fitting, flanged windows in vinyl. We can wrap an entire house in plastic before residing. We can get wood grain cement board siding, and do eaves with wood sheets, or perferated vinyl that looks every bit like tongue and groove. Twenty years ago I would have been horrified to even hear these comments, but after the last couple of projects I’m waivering.

My next project has what I believe is mohogany siding. Yes it’s unlikely, but whatever the siding is it’s an odd wood that I haven’t seen before. I just want to take it off and put Hardi Plank. We just peiced together a bunch of cedar, both smooth clear and rough tight knot. The truth is that twenty five percent of it will need to be redone in the next ten years or so. Cedar isn’t what it used to be. We don’t have the old growth that made cedar famous. Even the old growth stuff that we used to claim would last forever is taking more and more care to preserve.

The line between remodel and restore is getting blurred. I can have a contractor come out tomarrow and set six guys to work making a place look better than new using state of the art materials. I can get the work done in a couple of week, it will last for years, and will cost less than lovingly nuturing a home back to it’s original condition. I actually said, when I saw a plaster hallway that the home owner wanted to preserve, to gut it to studs and sheetrock. I can distress that sheet rock to look like fifty year old plaster in a day or spend a month patching and repairing the plaster.

It’s really a matter of style, or how the place is going to look when it’s done. The over all feel of a structure is what counts for me more today. I can do wood trim or MDF to look like wood. It is really a matter of how to make it work. If I can get big beautiful trim with crown moulding that will last I’ll do it no matter what the material. The period piece of restoration work is also determined by the lack of skilled labor to accomplish the task.

Plaster work is being taken over by Hispanic labor, but the skill, or style is different. There are trade schools teaching tile along with wood wrighting so some of that skill is being brought more main stream. The thing is, and I agree for my children, that I would rather they become a doctor or lawyer. There are some very successful contractors who live well. There are beautiful projects in every city or rural area around the world. It is possible to be a much sought after artisan at restoration. There is even money in it. There are people or projects that don’t have a budget. I was in one place in a neighborhood called Broadmoore here in Seattle where the owner bought almost a complete acre. The main house was completely restored with the kitchen costing what most people would pay to have an entire house built. The living room dining room and entry hall are perfect in period detail. All of it was new. The rest of the house was refurbished original materials. There was no expense spared and the contractors were moved to Palm Springs to work on a project there. The investment to the owner was five million dollars from an estate that was going negative. Long story to be addressed in another post. The end result was two additional building lots plus the main house. The house will sell, when it goes up for sale, for in the seven to eight million dollar range. maybe more, maybe less, but the over all dollar amount to the contractors is the same; big dollars.

The biggest kicker in all of this is that the consumer doesn’t care any more. The fact that solid wood dowled cabinets are in a house isn’t important to most people. Even the house you grew up in probably wasn’t built that way. As we tear down to build new, or as new gets to be remodeled as many places were in the 1960s or 1970s, we lose the desire for restoration.

For a while in the mid 1990s I had the idea to work in Europe. That old European craftsmanship and all. We’re going to talk about unions for a while as both a good and bad thing. The good thing is that unions are helping to keep trades alive. Skills are passed along and with collective bargaining wages stay even with economic times. The down side is that unions are pretty much closed shops that require a certain political ability for a person to thrive. It’s always possible to survive with a union job, but if you have ambitions it’s best they are tempered.

This is a personal matter for me. If I were a get along kind of guy I would be be doing a different kind of business. I like going into an empty property to get away from people. It’s easier to deal with wood, tile, and plaster. People in the trade unions have been my oldest freinds. I believe in trade unions and support them with my whole heart. The thing is that it’s not for me. I’m an independent for good, bad, or ugly. It was very noticable in Europe. I talked witht he foreman on a town house project who had been working there for almost two years. TWO YEARS???!!! My guys and I would have been in and out of there in a week. OK maybe a couple of months.

The day I was talking with the foreman on the town house project he was waiting for the scaffold company to come to make some scaffold adjustments. His guys couldn’t do it because they didn’t have safety certification some thing or other so they were on a different job until it was sorted out. Very long story short The old world way of construction practices wasn’t for me.

All in all restoration, while a very nice idea is not what we do. I can claim it is, but the truth is I like getting in, out, and over. As long as the integrity of the project has the feel as well as the look of the period I’m inclined to let it happen as it happens best.