House in Progress Diary

I've been thinking about these questions too. Seems like cheap and tacky go together because good design takes talent, and talent costs money. Sometimes good design can be had for cheap by copying the expensive good design, but that usually only gets you 90% of the way there, and that other 10% is really noticeable. Then again, sometimes I think the majority of people just can't see the difference.

From what I've seen, the less expensive options in renovating tend to involve band-aid solutions. You can either repoint your brick so it's actually watertight, or you can add another layer of mortar (and another, and another). But the difference in quality isn't always so blatant. I'm not saying cheap always means band-aid, though; just often.

I think Americans have been exposed to too many artificially low prices (Hello, Wal-Mart!) and our perceptions are skewed as a result. So the materials and craftsmanship that are actually required for a job to be done right seem decadent, almost elitist.

And of course that gets into issues of poverty and the decline of America's middle class, and I'm gonna stop right there.

BTW, you're just the sort of nerd that makes a boring cocktail party fun for nerds like me!

As beautiful as many of the Tuscan towns are in Italy--they got this way because of change...additions and alterations over time, each telling its own story and becoming part of this "history" of the home.

That being said, I believe in incorporating the ideals of the Secretary of the Interiors Standards for Rehabilitation when it comes to altering a "historic" home. These guidelines invision change, but provide guidance on doing so without losing the "integrity" of a home. Look at the guidelines and tell us what you think--Come on, I double dare you.

I have found that "cheap" is a relative term--and "costly" items are usually associated with the labor that goes into putting an item in place.

For example, many people are now using "cultured stones" because they are light weight, easier to stick to the walls using a mastic, pre-cut corners, etc. This product is in existence, not because it is superior to stone, but because it makes building faster--thus reducing labor costs. If one is doing the stonework themselves, the cost of materials maybe relatively inexpensive (stones free in my case), but the time it takes to install it will be considerable (again free since I'm doing it myself).

...So does a workable and pleasing design HAVE to be expensive?

I say, and so does my architect, it does NOT have to be expensive...especially if you take labor costs out of the equation. I recently had the opportunity to see a homeowner (and a few good friends) building a "rammed earth" house in the "wine country" of N. Cal. The materials for this home were "dirt cheap." (ha, ha--get it?). But the home was incredible--big, thick walls, and great texture--with an incredible "feng shui" inside. I was in awe...and it was an incredibly affordable home (excluding all the nice antiques and appliances).

Others have had "companies" come in and build rammed earth homes--but the cost of labor increased the beyond a conventional home.

Natural materials are generally "cheap" in their raw form...the cost with making them "liveable" is where it gets crazy.

I must begin by saying that I found your site, probably like many others did, while doing research to do improvements/restoration on my 85+ yr old home. I have gotten some great ideas and resources I want to check out from it. I also don't feel that alone or strange anymore. Thank you. It as taken me three weeks to read through your whole blog and it was just great.

On the topic of expansion and these beautiful old historic neighborhoods. I must agree with your analogies that it looks like trailers dropped from the sky. What are these folks thinking!!! Or are they even thinking?

It is horrible what some people will do. It makes you wonder what the people on the planning and zoning approval boards are doing.

My neighborhood (Colonial Terraces, Newburgh, NY 12550 Website:http://www.ctna.info/index.html) is a unique one and last year we finally got the city to approve what we call Architectural Guidelines. These are guidelines that homeowners can use to come up with changes they wish to make. We did this because over the years people pruchased and made some horrible improvements. The character of the neighborhood was disappearing. Long time residents were frustrated that this cutting up and distroying was being allowed to happen. They had complained to the Building Inspectors office and City Hall for years. Finally they decided to be part of the solution and made the proposal to the city which it accepted and helped initiate. The guidelines are part of that plan. Our next step is to try to get historic designation by being listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Our city also has a Architectural Review Board which approves plans in historic districts. Although our neighborhood isn't a designated historic district we have gotten the city to approve that all our homeowners must go to Architectural Review for all plans an improvements. Want to put up a fence - building depart will give you a permit after you get Architectural Review Board approval. Want to put up a new front door, change your roof from slate to asphault shingle, enclose your porch etc. No permit until you get ARC approval. I know it seems like a little too much red tape but for neighbors like myself it is worth it. We also are very good a policing ourselves. "Newbies" get a copy of the guidelines from our neighborhood association president. Folks will quickly call the Building inspector when they see stuff happening. The guidelines we worked on with a historic preservation and planning architectural firm also serve as a guide for the ARC.

It would seem to me that your nighborhood should have some type of desgnation and maybe similar guidelines to aid homeowners, especially for the "curb appeal" items.
At this point you probably don't need another project but you might do some research and see if these things are in place or what needs to be done to get them in place. After all your hard work so far, you hate to think that someday you might sell or one of your neighbors will sell and the new owners may decide to park a trailer up on that roof!!

Good Luck and I look forward to reading more of your renovation adventures.

first, would love to have you at any one of the cocktail parties I have been to. I am also that nerd. I believe that the good design really starts with research. And the idea of spending time really studying or going to the trouble to special order anything is sometimes more than the trailer from the sky metality can bear. To much immediate gratification. I have found that sometimes there is very little difference in price between ordering something and picking up whatever you can find, it just takes more time and planning and there is the great catch. However, really good design will outlast us all and it is the best form I think of reduce, reuse and recycle we have.
aimee

The problem with renovating, at least in the middle classes here, is that people have a budget and need to stick to it. They put most of the budget indoors where they can enjoy it (expensive kitchen or bathroom) and no money left for landscaping or nice front door or good windows. And certainly no one has the time to restore their old windows (or money left to pay someone to do it). So you get an expansion with cheap-o windows (with the white plastic that often is the ONLY white element on the outside of the house), awkward rooflines to maximize indoor space. Once inside, it looks fantastic. (BTW, our area has no alderman or design guidelines save for a height restriction and setbacks).
I think the housing design is a reflection of the basic selfishness of modern Americans these days with little or no regard to community or aesthetic standards. Those of us WITH these senses intact (and we are fewer and fewer, especially those of us whose budgets have some say in it) get frustated, start blogs, do weird things at cocktail parties... etc. But you get the idea. I am with you on this.
Carol

Why does the word "cheap" always seem to be followed by the word "tacky"?

Because there's a difference between "cheap" and "inexpensive." Cheap is usually tacky because it tries to imitate something that isn't cheap, and because corners were cut to obtain the cheapness. A good example: cheap imitations of oriental rugs. They're usually too bright, with an awkward, chunky, clunky design. Good substitute---braided wool rugs or woven grass matting. Both are inexpensive, but not cheap, because they are what they are, not an imitation of something better.

Another example: vinyl tile made to look like marble. Awful looking stuff, truly. It's cheap in price and looks worse than tacky. But commercial vinyl tile? It costs the same or less, and it's not bad at all. It is exactly what it is. Useful, sturdy, nice looking, not tacky.

Houses are the same way---If you can't afford a real mansion, so you build a big vinyl box with a brick veneer facade and awkwardly placed palladian windows that look mansion-y on the inside but stupid on the outside, you get a house that looks "cheap, followed by tacky." If you build (or buy) a well-designed, modest sized home made of decent quality materials, you may get "inexpensive" (or not, depending on your definition of modest), but you will not get a house that looks cheap.

Does saving money on restoration/renovation always mean that you are choosing a less than ideal solution? If so, why?

Absolutely not. Sometimes limited funds force you to be creative enough to save what you already have. Our kitchen is a fine example. We wanted custom cabinets, but we couldn't afford them. We had good quality hardwood cabinets in our kitchen already, but they were 50 years old and not particularly attractive. We painted them and added nicer hardware. They look great, they function well, and they were saved from a landfill. We were saved several thousand dollars. I don't know how custom cabinets could have been any more ideal than that.

We also wanted a bigger kitchen. Short of demolishing the breakfast nook, there is no way to enlarge our kitchen without losing our driveway. We didn't want to lose our driveway or demolish our breakfast nook. Creative solution: remove the upper cabinets and use the hall that leads to the basement stairs as a walk-thru pantry. We lined one side of the hall with wire shelving, so we have plenty of food storage, and our kitchen feels much larger and more open without the upper cabinets. I never miss them, and I really like my walk-thru pantry because I can see at a glance what I need at the grocery store. The kitchen is still small, but since I love having a driveway and a breakfast nook, it seems like an ideal solution to me.

Another example---we have two teenaged girls sharing a 12x14 bedroom with one small closet. They are outgrowing it and have no storage space or privacy. We talked about finishing the basement into a family room---ridiculously expensive, plus Ken is very fond of our authentic 1932 unfinished basement. Creative, inexpensive solution? We're switching bedrooms. Ours is 13x19, with a walk-in closet and private dressing room. We don't need that much space. Unlike teenaged girls, we don't entertain friends in our bedroom, nor do we play video games or have sleepovers. They'll have plenty of storage and plenty of room to lounge around on beanbag chairs playing Super Mario with their friends. We'll be a little tight on closet space, but we have a big hall closet that can pick up the slack. The cost of this solution will be $0, plus an afternoon of moving furniture.

Does going with a less expensive solution that still looks good mean that you pay in other ways...perhaps with the requirement of more maintenance?

Again, I don't think so. It depends on what the less expensive solution is. If you're talking about something structural, then I would worry more about getting a fair price than I would getting a low price. Good work in that circumstance will pay for itself in the long run. If you're talking about things like original windows and wood siding, yes they do require more maintenance, but they look better and last longer (nothing looks worse than faded vinyl siding and stained, tired vinyl windows.)

In our case, our design solutions have always been to make better use of the space we have. I'm sure there are people who would walk into our house and say "I can't live without a gourmet kitchen, we have to knock down a wall or build on" or "I can't live without a family room, let's sink $50k into the basement or build on." But glamour kitchens and great rooms are not the stuff that old houses are made of. The same goes for "spa baths" (I'm still trying to figure out what people do in those. When I'm in the bathroom, I'm usually standing or sitting in one spot. What's with all that floor space?) or "media rooms" (when our house was built, media was a radio...) I think it's when you try to imitate those modern mcmansion spaces in an old-fashioned house, that you end up with cheap, tacky, or both.

I live in an old neighborhood, an inner-ring suburb, where some of the homes are being retored with aluminum siding--all details boxed over with siding. I think aluminum siding is tacky and destroying the neighborhood. Also some streets have suffered from new, cheap houses being squeezed onto divided lots--rather than enjoying the yard space.

We needed new stucco on our old house. The cost of removing and hauling out the old stucco, and putting on new stucco, was quite expensive; but we were able to manage the cost. Plus painting all the exterior trim is expensive and will need to be redone periodically.

Many people don't have either the time, skills or money to do these projects, or even simpler projects, and so they go cheap. I know people who can't hang a picture on the wall. These people might not also have much of an eye for beauty, but the cost of beauty is going to prohibit them from developing one.

The middle class is dwindling and is generally poorer than it was fifty years ago when the family income, earned by a single non-professional forty-hour position, could afford a decent home and its upkeep, as well as leaving time for some do-it-yourself maintenance and time with the children.

These ugly additions you document are cheaper than buying a bigger home as the young family grows out of its space. That's the root of the problem. What if your family grows from one or two children to three or four?

Caring for our homes and neighborhoods should encourage us all to become a little political. We need to fight for decent jobs, wages, health care and social security so that we all can live the good life, and have both the mental and physical space to think about aesthetics; or else we will all have an increasily depressed and tense environment to exist in.

It seems like every one is walling themselves off from the outside world: enclosing porches, adding blocklike additions, entertainment centers. Turning the home inward, rather than opening it up to the neighborhood. Note the popular deck is in the back of the house while the front porches are disappearing.

I keep waiting for America to wake up. Most people don't even bother to take the few minutes to vote let alone question what is going on.