The Hidden Cost of Home Renovation
What is the price of living in an ongoing renovation? I don’t mean the monetary cost. The cost in time, time that might have been spent doing something else.
Every weekend we spend time working on our house. Time that could be spent elsewhere, relaxing, preferably with a drink with a straw in it…
David Giffels and his wife have spent 12 years renovating their home.
The strain on their marriage, as Mr. Giffels admits in his sweet and funny book, “All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House,” which will be published next month by HarperCollins, has not been inconsiderable. Weekends, vacations, time Mr. Giffels might have spent with his two children, have been given over to such projects as removing, cleaning, and re-caulking the 733 windowpanes in the house. (He counted.)
And yet, they are still not done. The Giffels do not believe in credit cards and other than their mortgage, they have no debt. This means that they do not embark on any home improvements until they have the money. What a novel idea! Quaint, even. My mother, a product of the Great Depression, doesn’t believe in credit cards either.
How long did projects like re-caulking 733 window panes take?
“Years,” Mr. Giffels says. “This is where I’m glad I wrote the book 10 years later, it gave me a perspective of all the time it cost: All my vacation time, all my possible spare time, a number of years of my children’s growing up I gave to my children’s house. And once you get in it, you can’t get out, you can’t sell a house in that condition. When all of a sudden you realize what it is costing you in your life, it’s too late.”
And yet Mr Giffels says that they would do it again.
I am looking forward to release of his book next month. Maybe it will remind me of why we chose our house.