Q: You’re putting time and energy into this “temporary” job for your bathroom (not to mention some money), so why not just go ahead and do the full gut job? I know you guys watch money really well, but isn’t this not the most cost-effective in the long-run? :) – Karen
A: This is a great question, and we thought it would be fun to elaborate on the subject. Because it’s safe to say that we love saving a buck, but we also like showing an old house some love and making it feel like home, so here’s our take. First of all, I think a lot of people think like Karen does – in fact we had that same exact instinct when we moved into our first house. It was so tempting to just to freeze a room until we had the budget to completely redo it.
But we slowly learned that sometimes a small “sweat investment” in the form of a few upgrades to tide you over for a year or two until you can save up the loot to fully redo a room (and really think it through) is completely worth the Phase 1 effort and the small amount of money you might sink into that interim upgrade. And sometimes doing a few small things to improve a space before diving into a bigger redo can actually save you money because they give you a chance to (inexpensively!) figure out what you like and what you don’t like as you go. It can definitely cost you more if you don’t discover those things until the middle of a big gut job when time is money and the stakes are a lot higher.
Let’s take our current bathroom makeover, where we’re aiming to spend around $100-200 on a Phase 1 makeover.
We got to the point where we just couldn’t live with the old carpet in there for another day, so to us, showing the room some interim love just made a lot more sense than living with things that made us groan for a few more years. Especially since inexpensive updates like a few cans of paint and a new mirror (which can always be used in another room down the line) can easily make it a lot more pleasant in there. Note: this is just a photoshopped rendering of our plans, but next week we hope to have the floors stenciled!
Why not just get to gutting things right away? Well, we learned all the way back in our first house (even before we started blogging) that doing a full renovation when you only live somewhere a few months means you might not have time to think everything through. For example, it took us over a year of living with our first kitchen to realize that if we closed off a door we’d gain 70% more counter space. Had we rushed into a renovation, we never would have come up with that plan – so we’d have new counters and cabinets – but the same cramped layout that we started with.
Soon after moving in we did a Phase 1 makeover while we saved up for a more major reno down the line. Just some paint on the cabinets and peel and stick tile on the floors (along with updating a few appliances that we reused when we fully redid the room). Let me just tell you, it was so worth enjoying a somewhat updated kitchen for that time (during which we got married in the backyard and had 75 of our friends and family over). Sure, we spent a weekend painting the cabinets, another weekend updating the floor, and dug into our savings for about $150 just for Phase 1 (that’s a guess at the total cost for the primer, paint, and the peel & stick tile) but the “return” on that money & time investment was that for over a year we got to walk into a room that felt fresher, cleaner, and more like us, instead of feeling stuck or frozen in the before shot for over a year.
When we had finally saved up the money – and had fully thought it through – we got to renovate that kitchen and ended up loving the outcome. It was completely worth the small time/effort up front for a Phase 1 update while we saved our pennies, and the fact that we ended up with a completely redone space that we adored (with a lot more function than anything we could have slapped together right away after moving in) definitely confirmed that this phase-by-phase, over-time method just seems to work for us.
The same thing happened in our full bathroom at that first house of ours. We started with this carpeted and crocheted space…
… and we did some simple updates like pulling up the carpeting, re-caulking things, adding some paint, and bringing in some sweet art, new lighting, and accessories to tide us over for a few years.
But up close both the floor and wall tile was cracked and damaged, so although we loved it, we sadly couldn’t salvage it.
So when we finally had the money and time to tackle a full gut-job a few years later, we were excited to dive in. And thanks to spending a lot of time planning every step, we only spent around $1800 on a full bathroom renovation, including rebuilding this room from the studs (new walls, new trim) along with a new marble tile floor, new fixtures, a tub/shower that we tiled to the ceiling, a new custom vanity, etc.
But it was certainly nice not to spend years living with this carpeted bathroom with a duck curtain, and do that Phase 1 update – even though we couldn’t fly out of the gate with a full renovation immediately.
So this method has been serving us well for a while now (holy cow, over seven years!) and we expect that nearly every room of our current house will have a multi-phase progression since we’re planning to be in this house for a nice long time. We don’t want to rush into anything without fully thinking it through and we’d like to save up for things that we truly will love for the long haul. But that doesn’t mean we have to live with old carpeting and wallpaper – and that we can’t toss up a little paint up, hang some art, update some light fixtures or faucets, and generally make the place feel fresher and more like us as we plan those larger scale undertakings and squirrel away some money.
In fact I think moving forward and experimenting within a certain space (not just in your head or while staring at a picture in a magazine) is a really helpful step when it comes to getting it right down the road with your major renovation. This was our first attempt at our first house’s bathroom. Scary, eh? But it turns out we had to paint the windowsill black and toss up a blue pashmina to learn that it was NOT what we liked (I thought it would be “so Domino magazine” and it was so… bad).
So we course corrected as we went, and ended up with a room that we could really enjoy in the interim, which then led to a brand new bathroom that we loved even more down the road. I guess one way to look at it would be that those small updates over time are like stairs. They build to a better result, and they bridge the gap between your before to your after. Without Phase 1 in here, we might never have arrived at that “love it” Phase 2 result, which might now have led us to a “love it even more!” Phase 3 outcome. So expecting to freeze at “before” and then skip right to “after” might not happen for everyone. But for us, that step-by-step approach over time just seems to get us from point A to point C without as much stress as attempting to skip right from what we hate to what we love in one fell swoop.
And sometimes it’s amazing to see how a few updates like paint, art, a window treatment, and a few accessories can bring an old room back from the brink without a major makeover down the line. Yes, in some cases a Phase 1 update can help you see that you don’t need to gut something at all (hello, money savings!) – and realizing that you can actually work with what you have can be the equivalent of finding a thousand dollar bill in your couch cushion. Take our $51 guest bathroom mini makeover, for example. We had pretty much planned to work with this tile from the start (it was in great shape and we thought the vintage yellow tone was charming) so we hoped this bathroom just needed a few cosmetic fixes… but others who came over couldn’t see how it would ever work without bringing in the sledgehammer.
All we did was paint, add a window treatment, hang some art, and remove some bad elements (like the mirror that reflected every guest’s full body while they sat on the toilet) but when the decorating dust cleared, even my mom was saying “you’ve made a believer out of me.”
So you might think a room needs a full gut job, but experimenting with some affordable for-now fixes might just prove otherwise and save you a whole lot of money and effort down the line. And the only way to find that out sometimes is by diving into Phase 1. So if you wait and skip right to Gut Job, you might never know how charming a room can be with just a few wallet-saving fixes. Our hall bathroom was a slightly more involved update than our guest room (we framed out the mirror and added a built-in shelf), but the tile was still in great shape, so we got to work with almost everything that was there already. Note: pardon the yellow cast on this picture, it was move-in day and I was rushing around shooting in the wrong mode.
After spending just $168, we had a completely fresh looking room.
The cool thing about this method is that if Phase 1 does the trick, you’re done! And you’re probably thanking your lucky stars you didn’t go straight to full-reno mode. And if Phase 1 only serves to “tide you over” instead of majorly saving you from a bigger renovation, it’s still a win because you get to smile more as you save up and percolate on Phase 2 plans down the line. Plus going through the thought process of Phase 1 can better help you pinpoint what you still don’t love about a room (the layout, damaged tile, missing counter space, etc) and you get this bonus “learning experience” before jumping into any major construction down the road.
What about you guys. How do you balance your desire for a space that feels fresh and homey without blowing a bunch of cash you don’t quite have? I’m sure it’s different for everyone, so I’d love to hear what works for you. Do you do the ol’ freeze thing and just try not to think about all the things that bug you? Or do you sprinkle in some inexpensive updates along the way? Don’t get me wrong, we still have a bunch of rooms that we’ve been ignoring for months (can’t do ’em all at once!) but I like to think that those “we just can’t take this anymore” moments are what help us decide what needs a Phase 1 intervention most of all, and then we can dive right into that with some gusto.
Update – Wanna know where we got something in our house or what paint colors we used? Just click on this button:
We have lived in our house for 23 years and are on Phases 3 or 4 at least. Phase I was just so we could live in it without hating every minute (ie: glossy green paint). Phase II was great, until my taste and sense of color changed. I think a house has to grow and change with you, otherwise when you sell, you’ll have to market it as a “dated” . . . oh wait, that’s what you bought. I guess it works out sometimes.
We are having this same situation right now! We moved into our house about a year ago, and it is a total fixer upper! We are planning on doing a full kitchen gut job, but not for another 8-12 months. I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth taking down all of the ugly plastic tile and painting the cabinets just for my happiness, or leave them be for another year! You’re giving me motivation to just do it!
I agree, you definitely need phase 1’s. We live in a 200 year old farmhouse and we are into year 6 with renovations, and sometimes people get impatient with us and want us to hurry up and do big renovations. But sometimes the money isn’t there yet and we don’t want to go into debt. I dreamed for 3 years about my dream kitchen, and if we had done the job right away it would have looked nothing like that-it would have been terrible. We decorated, painted and bought new appliances to make it bearable in the meantime. Not to mention in year 3 we had a huge power surge go through our house and destroy most of our electrical and appliances. My husband is quite handy and did a lot of the work himself, so we were able to make that money go very far, giving us much more money than we ever dreamed to create our dream space. Stick to what is right for your family, I think you are doing it the smart way!! :)
I love this post! I love your thoughts on Phase 1 projects and your examples. I love what a difference a little paint and artwork can make. We discovered that when we did our Master Bedroom Makeover- http://lovepastatoolbelt.com/?p=1118
We are about to get into our new house and I can’t wait to see what we can do with some Phase 1 projects while saving a dreaming for the Phase 3 projects (if need be). I have big dreams for my master bathroom.
Emily
I LOVE this post. Seriously, that yellow bathroom is one of my favorite ‘upgrades’ EVER from you guys! I think that is what a lot of us need to see and keep in mind. There are so many people that just instantly think: “rip it out! Tear it down! build something new!” but I’m totally on the work-with-what-you’ve-got train. Old can be beautiful, and your reno on that sweet yellow bathroom maybe, just maybe, proved to all of us out there that sometimes newer and bigger isn’t always better. :)
This is a great post and why I love your blog. I sometimes get frustrated that we don’t have the money to do Phase II projects and then realize that sweat + a bit of cash can make a huge difference. I think it’s absolutely worth it to spend a little money to be comfortable in a space.
Painting question: when you do two coats, do you do two cut-in coats as well? Or just two with the roller?
Two of each, so I’ll cut in, John will closely follow with a rolled on coat, then I’ll cut in again, and John will roll.
xo
s
When we first bought our house I was under the impression that a room had to go from before to after quickly and was frozen/paralysed by that notion. Since I started reading your blog (around the same time we moved in) I’ve realised that a home evolves with you. I now skip from room to room updating what I can when I can and it has given me far more pleasure than waiting until I have the cash to do the gut jobs. With your help, I think I’ve learned to really LIVE in my home – so thank you for that, Sherry & John.
We are HUGE fans of the Phase 1!! Our master bath really needs a full gut reno, but we were recently quoted $35-$45K for that job (seriously? This isn’t Palo Alto — we’re in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama!!) In any event, that is not happening any time soon. Meanwhile, we’ve painted the cabinets white (they were an oak color); painted the walls; framed out our ginormous builder-grade mirrors with trim; changed out the hardware; and took down a door blocking off the toilet/tub/shower room (like your master bath, ours is crazy chopped up). It’s still not our dream bath, but it no longer gives me a panic attack whenever I walk into it. I can definitely live with our Phase 1 bathroom for a good long time.
WOW, really? Have you considered doing it yourself (and hiring a plumber and electrician)? We completely gutted a bathroom ourselves and spent under $2000! My husband did the plumbing for us though (his dad is a master plumber so he had help).
I really LOVED this post! Our master bathroom in the house we bought a few months ago is kind of my arch nemesis at this point. On one hand, it’s very large, has two sinks, a big linen closet, and some awesome light fixtures, but on the other hand, it has some outdated cabinets, a tiny shower stall with a hand-held shower that hits you about at the nipples and has one of those vinyl bath-fitter inserts. I know a total bathroom overhaul isn’t in the cards for us any time soon, so now I’m thinking of temporary and inexpensive fixes I can focus on until we can afford it. Thanks!!
I am trying to work on my Phase 1 abilities since, previously, I was very much the dive in without planning fully and end up with a mess and less money kind of planner. Not fun. Currently, I am working on some Phase 1 steps with my laundry room as storage space is next to nil and it’s the only spot to store a litter box, cat & dog food, cleaning supplies, and of course, laundry. Some fresh, fun paint is definitly happening this winter with new cabinets to follow. After that, tiling? Hidden cat box? Fun storage bins for pet food? New flooring? Not sure yet but I’m excited to figure it out!
Phase 1 is totally worth my peace of mind, walking into a room I hated before but only sort of hate now. :)
I bought my house on my own and am still single, so any reno takes me quite a long time to save for. Phase 1 ensures I don’t lose my marbles in the meantime.
I used to think any money/time spent on Phase 1 type changes was a waste, but you have made a believer out of me. I spent about 100$ on a mini, temporary laundry room makeover inspired by the one from your first house. Now I love it and will probably keep it that way for the long haul.
Aw, I’m so glad! I LOVE when those little updates are so awesome you just want to live with them forever and ever.
xo
s
I’m really bad at functioning in phases. I keep ending up with rooms that aren’t coming together the way I want them to and I get frustrated and leave them as is. I need to try this whole taking it slow approach!
Sharing this post all over the place. This is a smart, and thoughtful, approach to home improvement. We have made Phase 1 changes all over our first home, and we are loving living here. Down the line we hope to make some larger updates, but in the meanwhile, we made a home we love to live in!
Aw thanks Jessica!
xo
s
Well done! I love this crash course in DIY philosophy! I especially like it when you make small affordable changes that have big impact. Seems to me that is the art and the essence of DIY….also, some of us who may never be able to afford that big “someday” reno can also benefit from your ideas and inspiration. So keep on!
We’re currently on phase 1 for most of my house. Our first goal is to make it pretty (and safe) before we can tackle the big gut jobs in the future. I’m glad you guys do your work in phases. It’s great inspiration! Plus, what would you guys blog about if you saved all your money for years before you could gut each room? Haha.
Haha! It’s true. I’d be all “let’s go look around at stores again and plan for our living room in 2016!”
xo
s
I totally agree with this process — we just moved into a new (to us) house that had a small island in the kitchen — just a two-door/two-drawer cabinet with a granite countertop. I thought it made the kitchen look smaller so our initial thought was to have it taken out and replace the tiles with extra ones that were in the garage. But, after living with the island for a few months, we found that it was VERY useful and we don’t think we could live without the function it provides. I got over the “it makes the kitchen look small” idea and now realize that it is actually a good design and suits our needs.
I’m all for phase 1 makeovers. Some of ours that have survived for years are: painting kitchen cabinets apple green instead of replacing (still love them 5 years later), and two bathroom updates where we kept the tile (in one case it’s pink) but by replacing flowered wallpaper with mellow color, painting dark woodwork white, replacing water-guzzling toilets and a flimsy wall cabinet, and replacing shutters with white blinds have found we can live with them indefinitely. Go phase 1!
Oh, I think you have exactly the right approach. There is nothing like living with a space for awhile to let you know what it needs (or doesn’t need).
I’m all about the in-between projects to make a home “homeier” (homey-er?) in the meantime. Question – we bought our first home in May, and it came with BRAND NEW kitchen cabinets – in an orangey walnut, which is just not our jam. I am of course obsessed with white kitchens… would you paint brand new cabinets? I’m just get paralyzed with “but what if I ruin BRAND NEW cabinets” fear every time I think about tackling it, and everyone makes it seem like such a massive undertaking.
Heck yeah. I’d wait and wait to be sure that’s what I want to do (you know to be sure I don’t want to gel stain the lowers dark and just paint the uppers white for a “tuxedo kitchen” look) and then I would totally do it! I know lots of people who have painted new cabinets in the last few years and they have come out awesome (now there are great tutorials and great products/paints made for cabinets and they really do the job well).
xo
s
…when and if you decide to do them, consider spraying them instead of rolling them (at least the doors anyway). We painted our cabinets white(the previous owner had painted them brick red, with a roller) and I wish we could have had the flat, professional, glossy surface. Instead we’re stuck with the orange-peel look until we decide to gut the kitchen. :(
Great tip!
xo
s
I am in step Phase 1F of my kitchen… just keep making updates over the course of 5 years and never really getting out of the phase 1 stage. Now we are a back splash away from it being finished. We always knew what the end product would be, but just did it piece meal until all components were done. Plus we have had 2 kids since we moved in, which changes the design drastically. If we had gutted it when we first moved in we would have never thought to put in a breakfast bar (like in your most recent home) or to remove a cabinet and open a wall up. I’m a firm believer in living in the space and making it comfortable while you really figure out what you want/can do.
Hey John and Sherry,
I just started a new internship today and my office has blue trim all over. When you’re done painting over all your trim, give me a call!!!
Haha, I think I’ll get a little twitchy whenever I see blue trim for the rest of my life.
xo
s
I was wondering the same thing so I am glad you took the time to answer in depth. I now understand the reasoning, makes sense!
I did the multi-phase with my house, too! When I first bought it and moved in, I did what I call the “cheap phase” because I was 25 years old and that’s all I could afford. But I had to do SOMETHING! I couldn’t live with harvest gold appliances and a pink toilet. (Yikes!) Almost 10 years later we are doing phase 2 with higher end finishes and a bigger renovation…. and because I’ve lived in the house for a long time now, I have better ideas of what I want that I would never have known back when I bought it. So slightly different reasons than you guys, but in the end, the same awesome diy reno results! ;) Cheers!
Love all the different reasons from you guys! It’s so much fun to peek into your brains on the subject! Thanks for sharing!
xo
s
I definitely see the value of doing a few cosmetic updates to tide you over until you can do the big reno. Our favorite room in our house is this awesome sun room/TV room just off the kitchen. It was built in the old garage of the house and has huge windows on two walls and beautiful handmade tiles on the floor. But the walls are old paneling that was painted once in 1986 or so and now is dingy, grey, and full of pockmarks and stains. We plan on completely gutting the kitchen and opening it up into the TV room. We will replace the horrible panels with drywall and raise the ceiling. But I don’t know if I can stand one more day looking at these dirty walls!!!! I really want to paint them and I let myself be talked into waiting but now I think I am going to move forward and just buy some cheap paint and clean these walls up until we can afford the major updates. Thanks for the inspiration!
Paint IS cheap! And such a quick, easy fix. I LOVE the ‘paint and primer combined’ stuff – I’ve found it covers so much better. It costs more per gallon, but if it takes two coats instead of three it actually ends up costing less overall. There is something really satisfying about covering up dingy or ugg-colored walls with fresh pretty paint!
I totally agree! But I haven’t seen added yet – I think it also depends on the person, how much they enjoy/don’t mind doing projects vs. how much they enjoy the payoff. For me the renovating is an enjoyable hobby and I *hugely* enjoy the improvements (fun eye candy in your post, all the before & afters!). But for some people each phase might require a lot of effort/time/energy/planning…so I could see for some people it could be better to save up the energy/effort etc for one go. :)
I completely agree! I have friends who don’t care at all what their room/house looks like, and to them it would totally not be worth the effort. Meanwhile we did this stuff for fun years before it became our living, so for us it’s still in that “wahoo, so excited to stencil the floor!” category. I have a few friends who question our sanity though, haha!
xo
s
As someone who usually skips Phase 1 to hold out for Phase 2, I am now in agreement with you. You allude to the psychological value – looking at the drab, old space will bring you down. Waiting left me with a growing disinterest in doing anything about the ugly space, which made saving up to redecorate more difficult. If you can spend a small amount of money and a small amount of time to transform the space, you will also gain a pickup in how that space makes you feel when you look at it. You’ll be happier in that space while you are making final decorating plans and want to finish the transformation.
I love that point of view Lisa!
xo
s
And while many people don’t (or shouldn’t!) renovate based on resell, it’s good to not leave small phase 1 type updates off your list just in case you get a job offer in another town or the house you’ve been admiring finally went on the market and you suddenly need to sell your own house.
I needed to read this post today!! We are in the process of getting quotes on re-doing our kitchen and are getting pretty discouraged at the price tag. This post made me rethink the complete overhaul and start thinking of smaller budget updates we could do until we save up the $ to do the whole thing.
Thank you!! :)
Good luck Lynette!
xo
s
I am slowly learning to do things in phases too, which is hard sometimes. When I bought my bungalow it was a time capsule so there were some things that HAD to be done before moving in-hardwood floors, paint and of course serious cleaning! I have done things without “phasing” and some decisions I end up wishing I had done something different. I have to agree with the comment about “paralysis by analysis” I sometimes overthink some choices and get “stuck” and do nothing!!
I completely agree with you that you should take it slow and do renovations in phases. I think this is especially true of kitchens where you really have to spend time using the room to get a feel for how the space is used.
I’m glad you covered this. My husband and I bought our first house 2 years ago (which is 163 years old! and stuck in the 70s) and we’ve yet to do anything to it. We hate most of the style of it, but every time we think of changing something, it becomes like a “if you give a mouse of cookie” book … if we want to paint the room, we have to pull down the paneling, if we pull down the paneling, we’ll have to remove the flowered wallpapered horsehair and plaster underneath, if we’re going to remove the walls, we should add more than one outlet to the room, etc, etc, etc.
After living here 2 years, it still feels like someone else’s house. It’s all our stuff, but even the curtains belonged to the previous owners. We’ve fallen into the mindset that if you’re going to do anything, you have to do it all. While our house is in pretty good shape for it’s age, it is a fixer-upper and it will take quite a while more of saving before we can get started on some renovations.
So, thank you for showing us a new perspective. I might still not be sold on painting the paneling, but I may try my hand at making some curtains at least.
Aw, good luck Amanda! You’ll be amazed how much of a difference just some new curtains can make! And painted paneling is one of those giant changes for the cost of some primer and paint, so I hope you LOVE that too! Gets me all excited just thinking about it. (Gosh I’m weird).
xo
s
Something about a 163 year old house (‘born’ in 1850!!) being stuck in the 70s just struck me as hilarious. I mean, I can hear the house now: “Hey! I made it to 1974! Whaddya want from me?!?! Kids these days…sheesh..” Maybe it’s just me. I bet you find some cool stuff when the time comes to start pulling down paneling!!
Oh! and by the way, I can’t wait to see how you’re going to update your kitchen!
Ahh, me either! We’re still in that changing-our-minds-every-day phase! Haha! But I can’t wait to see where we end up!
xo
s
Great post! We bought our first house 4 years ago and renovated the bathroom before we moved in. While it was needed (the beam below the bathroom was rotted), I wish we had more time to figure out exactly what we wanted. There are things I would have tweaked and spent more time on. When we got around to the kitchen, I was much better prepared!
This one is a 50/50 for me. I def share your “live with it awhile” mentality until you figure out how that space is going to work for you and what may make it better…then pull the trigger, take it to the studs.
Having 3 small children painting cabinets (sooo much work!!) isn’t gonna happen. I can barely get a room painted…While they look great, the time isn’t well spent..IN MY WORLD! So it makes more sense for me to just save the money (while I may have the paint, primer etc on hand..it just takes away from other “quick jobs”)until I can buy new cabinets or start the actual demo. I actually don’t even like painting the walls until I know they are all staying…but I do realize that is a little extreme.
But any CHEAP little purchases that you know you can use in the future (example: mirrors/light fixtures) is def a worthwhile spend.
I personally love the multi-phase approach that you guys have developed because it reminds me that homes (and home updates) are a process and layered overtime. We live in an apartment and there are a lot of rules about what we can and can not change, but we get through it by bringing in small things like curtains, art and furtniture with personality and continue saving for a house that we can really do work on. But the interum its nice coming home to a space that feels like us.
My husband and I are completely into phased projects. At our old house, we had the 1950s pink tile like your yellow guest bath, and when we first moved in I thought that I would have to rip it all out, but after reglazing the white tub, getting a white shower curtain, new white window curtains, new paint and eventually a new pedestal sink, we realized that it wasn’t so bad after all. Adding in a fresh paint color and more white balanced out all of the pink-ness and we were happy with it!
We did the same thing with our pink-tiled bathroom, and now we don’t mind it a bit! Some people actually think it’s kinda charming.
From my experience the best thing to do is live in your house for a little bit and get the feel for what the rooms are meant for. My husband and I are first time home owners and we were really convinced that our fourth bedroom would be the perfect office. I pinned tens of pictures of offices and planned on spending thousands of dollars to bring my vision to life. We both work full time and are not that handy so we never got around to executing my vision and that turned out to be a good thing.
We never used the office as an actual office, we are not “office people”. I actually ended up getting dressed in that room a lot and slowly moved my clothes in there. It has become ridiculously clear to us now, after a year, that the room is meant to be a dressing room. Now if we could just get on that.
With that being said, and with all due respect, I think stenciling the sub floor is probably going to be a waste of phase 1 effort and money. How will that tide you over for a year or two? I hope to be made a believer.
Oh yeah, I’m sure not everyone would stencil their subfloor as an interim step, but in our heads we have a few reasons for being so darn excited about it:
1. it should only take us about 5 hours (we learned a much faster/easier stenciling method when we wrote our book)
2. it should cost us around $12-$24 for two quarts of paint (in our minds, that’s a drop in the bucket to gain a fun and fresh looking floor instead of living with a chalky old subfloor for a year or two)
3. it’s something we’re excited to do (I know it sounds crazy to some people, but DIY has always been a hobby/for-fun thing for us, and if there are ten projects that sound annoying but one that gets you excited, I say go for it!)
Of course those “what you do for Phase 1” decisions are going to be different for everyone though! If stenciling the floor sounds like a nightmare and you’d rather spend $24 on new art or something else, I’d be all for that too!
xo,
s
I think sometimes the Phase 1 stuff like stenciling a floor is a way to try something fun and a little more “design risk” that you might not otherwise. It’s like purple streaks in your hair- you do it for a summer, but for most people- not for life. I’m excited to see how it turns out!
Haha, it’s true! It’s not like choosing a super bold tile or counter that you might tire of… so to us it’s sort of the low pressure (and low expense) way to do something bold!
xo
s
Okay I Googled and found this and I think you youngsters might be onto something:
http://www.lovelyetc.com/2012/08/painted-plywood-floors-update-good-bad/
I agree with doing upgrades in phases. I just think you should choose your battles carefully. Painting sub floor looked like a losing battle to me. This person seems to have gotten it right!
Good Luck!
She commented today and shared a link! I LOVE it! So inspiring!
xo
s
I’m totally for phase 1 but I think my husband is a just wait until we can do the full thing. Last year we were under contract on a house (which we ultimately lost because my husband’s job was eliminated) and I was planing some updates. The main bath needed a major overhaul but I knew we couldn’t afford it. It had the 50’s pink and black tile on the lower half of the walls and floral wallpaper on the upper part. My plan was to take down the wallpaper and paint the upper half. Then I wanted to try one of the tile painting kits for refinishing tile and paint all the tile white. I’m thinking the whole phase 1 would have been under $100 but Andrew thought it was a waste of money if we were going to redo the whole thing down the road. I know I would have ultimately won because I probably would have just gone out and bought the stuff on my own one day. Hehe :) Sadly we’ll just have to wait until we find a different house now.
I think it depends on why you’re doing a phase one redo. Do you know that you’re going to do a big gut job later and want something tolerable until then, or do you just not know what you want but know what you have now isn’t it? For me, I’ve made a few temporary (and cheap) design choices just because the “before” was so bad, and I wish now I had chosen something more permanent. The floor in my kitchen, for example–I put down peel and stick tile that is just not heavy-duty enough for my family. I could have put down ceramic tile but I didn’t know what to choose. I should have just picked something neutral and classic and gotten on with it. Now, not only do I not have the time or cash to redo the floor, I hate looking at it. I’ve repaired it a few times but the tile is now discontinued so I can’t fix it anymore. In my case it would have been better for me to just skip that “phase one” redo and go straight to the finished product. But I can see how other cases would need a temporary redo, especially if you’re planning to rearrange permanent fixtures like cabinets or plumbing.
Good points Jessica! I love hearing everyone’s thoughts on the process that works for them!
xo
s
I am so with you on making a few small updates to tide you over until you can really put in the time and effort to fully update something. We just moved into a new home and I have only taken on the challenge of painting two rooms so far, the master bedroom and my daughters room. The upstairs bathroom is a terrible turquoise green and has horrible linoleum floors that weren’t put down correctly. I would love to rip everything up but I know I don’t have the patience or the money to put into it right now. So I bought a new shower curtain that has turquoise in it but has a lot of navy, gray and white and helps to tone down the walls and I actually kind of like it right now. I bought gray accents and white and gray towels and for now I can live with it.
I LOVE this post, we moved into our 22 year old home just 3 months ago, and are doing “phase 1” all over the house until we have the money to do a big overhaul. Our master bathroom needs a major update, but for the time-being we are just painting the walls and vanity.
The mental cost of living in rooms you hate far outweighs the few hundred bucks spent on paint or other temporary fixes. Just my opinion…
I’m with you on the “Phase 1” part of the process there. I’m not very patient when it comes to making things look like me/work for me but I definitely agree that sometimes it’s very worth it to give yourself some time to think about it. We have a very weird master closet – slanted ceiling and attic space access included – so while I tried working with it at first, after 6 months I couldn’t take the mess and we moved right into Phase 2 installing the Elfa (Container Store) closet/organization system. I mentally kiss and hug the closet every time I open it so absolutely no regrets there. The kitchen on the other hand, while it has updated counters, appliances and backsplash, it has a funky 3/4 wall separating it from the breakfast nook that we’re 100% we want gone, older cabinets and a 300+ year-old floor that while amazingly charming, it’s showing some wear and we don’t really know how to deal with it. But, rather than make any major decisions now, we’re going to paint and organize the cabinets and let that and time inform how we deal with the wall, the floor and the overall layout. So I think a combo of a phased and “let’s just do this” approach is what works for us. And like you guys, we’re happy to repaint anything 100 times so those updates are a no-brainer for us.
Thanks to your blog, I’ve learned the magic of Phase I. Oh, the money we have saved from not jumping into anything. Its just too bad that I’m so indecisive that I can never get onto the next phase but at least I haven’t thrown much money our the door. Thanks for the great life lesson!
Thank you so much for this post! I completely agree with your phase 1 approach but I saw the plans for the master bathroom, and just like Karen, thought you were about to drop a bunch of $ in there.
I’m assuming maybe you are planning to build the cabinet then if your total phase 1 budget is $100-$200? After seeing that photoshopped cabinet, I thought you all were about to drop $500- just on phase 1! That seems rather pricey to me haha. Thanks for clearing that up.
Oh yes, we’re painting on working with the cabinet we have by just painting it and adding shelves to that right part for towels. The lumber and paint for that project will probably be around $20 at the most (we already have paint we think we can use, so we’ll just need some wood).
xo
s
We have done a lot of Phase 1 stuff over the years to the interior, but our garage and the exterior of our house have been on a major freeze since we got the house 6 years ago, other than a new roof at the beginning and and new entry staircase last year. We kept telling our family we love our house and they were like, “really???” because our exterior looked horrible!
This summer I couldn’t take it anymore. We painted the house, the foundation, ripped out overgrown bushes in the wrong places, planted 14 new shrubs, releveled parts of the yard, rebuilt the window wells for the basement windows, and I decided to deep-clean and repaint the interior of our packed-to-the-gills 3-stall garage. Found 2 bird nests in there, and other insane stuff I’ve been selling on craigslist this summer.
Now I’m determined to finish rebuilding 2 retaining walls for raised flower beds I have half-done, even though I live in ND and it’s going to snow this weekend! Boo! I’ll be the person in the ER a month from now with frostbite, muttering “so close… so much done… had to finish…”
Haha, I love it Beth! Go get ’em!
xo
s
We tend to be phase 1 people and have had different outcomes. In the kitchen, we painted the walls, got a couple new appliances and a new sink (that we invested in and would keep through phase 2), and replaced the 80’s square tile counter tops with 12″ granite tile until we can afford slabs. It made a huge difference that we’re happy with, and granite slabs aren’t even on the top 10 list of things to save for anymore. We still plan to re-stain the cabinets, but that’s more of a lack of time and energy issue. Our weekend effort of placing the tile countertops held us over much longer than anticipated.
With our fireplace, we painted the surround and pulled off these stupid kit decorative scroll “things” (I don’t even know what to call them) as a phase 1, and it’s just made me even more anxious to just DO the fireplace already, but it’s going to be part of a bigger project that includes replacing flooring, so it’ll be a while. But the Phase 1 is definitely better than what we moved in to and made a difference visually. Seeing your amazing fireplace makeover in the last house hasn’t helped with my patience, but we’ll get there :)
I completely agree! We just painted the entire inside of our home the same neutral color to get a fresh, clean slate until we can save some monies to completely gut and until we can decide what colors we actually want for each room. It helped so much and helped me not to pout everyday about how awful the walls looked! (got the blank slate idea from y’all, so thanks!!)