They thought that a simple renovation would change their lives like furniture flips on a budget—quickly, easily, and completely. Then the walls opened up, reality hit, and things went wrong in ways that no sitcom could have written. No one posts these stories on Instagram.
And as a bonus, you’ll get two stories that show how renovations can bring happiness as well as stress and loss.
I said, “Let’s have a BBQ to celebrate your renovations.” I said it would be right…
A few years ago, I hired a local contractor to fix a leak under my kitchen sink. I never looked at his work. He fixed it this way after putting in a dishwasher today.
A couple of years ago, MIL spent a lot of money to have the kitchen completely redone and put new hardwood floors and trim in the whole house. I’m afraid her eyes aren’t very good.
I mess up everything I touch, and I do better work than that.© merlin0896 / Reddit
They bought a “dream cabin,” but when they got there, they found something unexpected behind the walls.
My sister and I spent $67,000 on a vacation cabin together. The listing said, “Good bones.” We figured out what that meant when we found out that the bones were the only good thing about it.
The chimney was just for show; it had never been connected to anything. Pipes wrapped in paper. No insulation. We put $55,000 into it over the course of two years.
We finally used it for a week last summer. On the fourth day, my sister found a deed in a wall cavity that showed the property line ended six feet inside the living room. We own most of the cabin. The corner belongs to someone else.
The work we did on the first floor caused our ceiling to come down.
For the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time fixing up our landscaping, only to have straight-line winds destroy our yard (and 46 plants) an hour after I finished the last part.
Last month, my dad finished fixing up his house after the last big hurricane. I woke up at 2 this morning to find 7 inches of water in the house.
A kitchen remodel revealed secrets hidden behind the walls… and it cost twice as much.
The budget for the kitchen renovation was $15,000. On the second day, we found asbestos in the walls. Then there was mould behind the asbestos. Then, behind the mould, there was writing on the original plaster—a grocery list from 1943. Butter. Flour. “Call Edna.”
We put it in a frame. The whole thing cost $31,000. We call the kitchen “Edna’s.” My husband says it was worth it. I agree with what he said.
I’m glad I spent $18,000 on a new roof two months ago!
We remodelled our house a few months ago, and a crew was there for a few weeks. When they were done, I saw that my guitar was gone.
We hired a guy to fix up the bathroom and shower. This is the tile work he did. A lot of people said good things about him.
A renovation turned into a sitcom that wasn’t planned.
I flipped a house once. Only once. Paid $210,000 for it, put $40,000 into it, and then listed it for $295,000. The first weekend, I got an offer.
The inspector found something I had missed during the buyer’s inspection: the garage had been turned into a bedroom without permits, and then the bedroom had been turned back into a garage without permits. Somewhere in that process, the load-bearing wall between them had been quietly taken down.
The deal didn’t go through. The structural engineer said that the second floor was mostly being held up by habit. I spent $28,000 to fix it up and sold it for $241,000. I don’t buy and sell houses anymore.
The contractors who worked on the facade wall used a drill that was too long for the job.
Wanted to paint our condo. The builder of the condo used bad paint that comes off with the slightest touch, so we’re taking it all off. I don’t like my life.
For nine days straight, we’ve been going crazy trying to find a smoke detector that is dying and beeping. A contractor left it in the wall between the kitchen and bathroom, as it turns out.
Bonus: heartwarming stories at the end of a long renovation.
I fixed up the house I bought with my ex so I could stop thinking about her. New paint, new everything—get rid of it all and make it mine. It took eight months.
A woman knocked on my door last week. She said she had seen the house on a neighbourhood page and knew it. She said she used to come here to see a friend. I took her on a tour.
She stopped in the kitchen and said, “Oh, you kept the window seat.” My ex-boyfriend made that window seat. I didn’t mean to keep it. I just never got around to tearing it out. I don’t understand what that means.
I bought the house to show my mum that I was ready, even though she said I wasn’t. She had a list of reasons. I didn’t pay attention to any of them.
Spent $30,000 to fix it up. Sent her pictures at every step. Never got a reply.
When I finally asked her to come see it, she walked through every room and didn’t say much. She sat at the kitchen table at the end and said, “Your grandmother would have loved this.” She then began to cry.
She had lived three blocks from this house as a child. She had never said that to me. She didn’t know I had bought it. I hadn’t either.
You have to pay for every flip. Sometimes it’s the pay. Sometimes it’s the story you thought you knew about yourself.
