Remodel & Renovation Costs

Last January the little hygrometer on my bookshelf read 21 percent. I’d bought it for $14 after a week of zapping myself on every doorknob, waking up with a sandpaper throat, and watching a gap open between two floorboards in the hallway wide enough to lose a dime in. My rental duplex has a gas … Read more

My sister Jen has a brick fireplace in her 1962 ranch that she has used exactly twice in six years. Both times the living room filled with smoke, the dog left the room, and she spent the next morning scrubbing soot off the mantel. Last winter she shut the damper, put a basket of fake … Read more

My mom called me in August because the floor of her shower had started to flex. Not much. Just a soft give under her heel, right by the drain, the kind you only notice barefoot. She’s 71, she lives alone in the house I grew up in, and that fiberglass stall was put in around … Read more

For nine days last winter, a brand new gas range sat in the middle of our dining room with the plastic still on the knobs. We ate takeout around it. The delivery guys had taken one look at the wall behind the old electric stove and said, politely, “No gas here, ma’am.” They were right. … Read more

The back bedroom in our house had dark 1970s wood paneling, the kind that makes a room feel like the inside of a cigar box. I pried one sheet off on a Saturday in March, mostly out of curiosity. Behind it: bare studs, a mouse nest, and one lonely strip of old wallpaper glued to … Read more

The thermostat in my hallway came with the house. Beige plastic, a tiny screen, a schedule set around 2009. The first cold morning in October, it said 68 and the house said 61. I tapped it. The screen went blank, came back, and the furnace downstairs clicked off. Two days later a smart thermostat sat … Read more

It was raining sideways on a Tuesday in March, and the garage door stopped about knee high with a sound like a blender full of gravel. My car was inside. I was late. I kept pressing the wall button like it owed me money. The motor just hummed and clicked. I pulled the red emergency … Read more

The first real storm after we moved in, I found a puddle the size of a dinner plate on the entry tile. Our front door was the original 1960s wood one, and I could see porch light under it at night. My son thought that was cool. I did not. Then I poked the frame … Read more

In August, the upstairs bedroom was three degrees cooler with the new AC, and I was proud of that for about a week. Then I put my hand over the register in that room and compared it to the one in the kitchen. The kitchen vent was blowing hard. Upstairs felt like someone breathing on … Read more

Last winter I sat in front of our open fireplace with a blanket on my lap and watched the thermostat in the hallway click the furnace on. The fire was roaring. The furnace ran anyway. Most of that heat was going straight up the chimney, along with the warm air from the rest of the … Read more

The room over our garage was the reason I started reading about mini splits. In July it hit 88 degrees by four in the afternoon, even with a rattling window unit going full blast. In January the old baseboard heater ticked and pinged and the room still felt like a mudroom. We called it the … Read more

The first clue was the oatmeal. I pulled the canister box out of the pantry one Sunday in October and the bottom corner was chewed into lace. Then I opened the utensil drawer and found what looked like a sprinkle of black rice behind the spatulas. I closed the drawer, stood there for a second, … Read more