Home Improvement Project Gone Bad
And, yet there are nice houses, well maintained, and owner occupancy too. How does one do that? Go rob a bank? Unless one’s willing to go like mission bay or something, finding anything under half-million is like looking for gold dust in sand beach. Especially when you work from home and need more than just a studio, need 2 or more bedrooms to unload computers and books. No wonder growing families with young kids and more on the way would move out of the city.
Yet, we attempted. Two years ago, right before the interest rates inched up and up, we spent some 2-3 weekends, combing through newspaper and online, to look at a few condos, and a few TIC and not even attempting at any single house. Not in the best condition, but we got lucky to be finding a central location 3 bedroom place with a parking and launy in complex that we could barely afford. No dishwasher? We’ll in install a new one. No washer/dryer? We’ll install one. We were very optimistic.
I grew up watching my parents renovating house on their own, with a few visits to Home Depot now and then. They did wall paper in the living room, my mother picked bathroom tiles and my father installed it in 3 weeks of time, and my mother picked out a dishwasher to replace an old one and my father read instruction and did it in 1 weekend.
So how bad can it be? The partitioning of wall was ok, the place is newly painted. Kitchen looks old and window/drapery is ancient but we can take care of it.
A month into occupying our new home, 3rd floor 3 bedroom with a small balcony, we picked out a new curtain to replace faded pink vertical blinds in the livingroom. With lots of dusts to inhale, it took like a whole weekend but it was done. Wall looks somehwat ugly with holes and old paints under old curtain bracket that is now visible. We got used to it, and it’s pretty nice and decent.
Next comes kitchen. The realtor guy who was selling another unit in the complex remembered ours as ‘ah! the one with pipe in the kitchen’. Yup, that’s us, sadly… The old owner had not renovated the place since it’s original construction and everything in kitchen screamed old and unmaintained. Exhaust fan on top of stove didn’t have a way to let the air it sucked in to recirculate to other than the hole on its left column on the other face of the wall. there was a big ugly metal sheet pipe about 8 inch wide spanning in L shape in the kitchen.
Screws were almost impossible to take out, even using power tools and wrench. When done, however, the grease built up inside or around it was disgusting and smell from downstairs neighbors cooking became unbearable. Smell drove us to be quick about filling up the hole, with a visit to local hardware store to find materials. The wall isn’t yet repainted to coverup the scar but now we successfully have no big pipes and blocked the smells to some extent.
Next would be cabinets, and re-arranging refrigerator to go to the back of kitchen and away from livingroom, in addition to install a dishwasher was in the plan.
We visited Home Depot, but we quickly got discouraged. The associates there were always busy or unavailable, 4-5 times we made attempt at various local Home Depot stores. Hiring kitchen remodelers or contractors also wasn’t quiet attractive, to spend $10,000 to $40,000 for a tiny kitchen.
We found a perfect kitchen cabinet sets for us at IKEA, easy enough to pickup and to assemble. That was like a year ago. We got cabinets occupying two facing walls, and now completed 1 side’s top cabinets. It is a great accomplishment as we didn’tknowhow to take down cabinets, put the rail, or to drill a hole on brick wall before. And, we like our new sleek looking cabinets with semi-opaque glass door. Our attempt at resolving exhaust fan for stove at the same time to reduce space issue was to lookup over-range microwave with exhaust fan, something completely foreign back in 60s but rather common in new construction condos since 90s. Metal plate is already sitting on the wall, after 2hours spent removing kitchen tiles between stove and top cabinet. Holes for microwave’s cord is also drilled into cabinet that microwave is to be mounted under. All preparation is done and the delivered microwave might finally be freeing up livingroom space after a whole 2 months of just sitting around.
Can you believe how heavy this so called ‘space saver’ appliance is? 50lbs. No wonder the delivery guy wouldn’t cimb up the stairs and just abandon the shipment on 1st floor.
I think I’ll have to call in a contractor, if anyone is willing to come and spend 1-2hr to help install it. Because I’m at my wits with this. Followed all the instruction and holes for screws and metal plates and all are matching the template that came with the appliance. Yet, when we struggle together to lift up the microwave to the small wall space hoping to hear that click between the plate and dips on back of microwave, there’s none.
Why is this thing so heavy? Why doesn’t it just go in?
Our optimism that in 6months we’ll have a pretty house and will invite friends and family for housewarming is quickly discipating. New found hopelessness, on the other hand, is quick to rise and we can’t wait to get out of house on the weekend past few weeks, just to avoid the scene and feel anxious and guilty that we’re letting it sit as is.
Why doesn’t it just work?
