The Ten-Year Plan

I had this very vivid dream, you see, and in it we were part of a glorious revolution of home renovation....

No. Actually, not. Instead, I was thinking about how hard it would be to live in the house and tear out the floors, and then it occurred to me that if we could put off dealing with the floors for ten years, we could probably afford to do it then. Then I started wondering what else we could put off for that long, and what we would need to do to limp by until then.

And so was born the Ten-Year Plan.

The idea is this: Instead of doing things now that will be so perfect and wonderful that we will never want to take them apart, we work on the house now with the assumption that in about ten years we will be gutting the place and doing it the more expensive and longterm way. So no more tearing down all the walls for us; we'll tear down walls only as needed to do the projects we really want to get done.

We sat down after breakfast and made the big list of Ten-Year Plan projects, which is reasonable considering that at least three and a half years of that time will have me in graduate school full time. One of those projects is taking down all the wood panelling, which I am really looking forward to. We may need to paper the walls under the panelling to get the plaster to stay up, but at least we'll have light, airy rooms.

Projects to be done in the context of the Ten-Year Plan:

1. Paint exterior of house *
2. Finish living rooms *
3. Foundation replacement phase one (replace existing foundation as-is)
4. Remove Fright Box under house, redo plumbing to upstairs bath and add half bath under stairs (related to foundation work)
5. Remove chimney (related to foundation work), replace furnace thing with gas fireplace, add gas fireplace upstairs
6. Re-roof (related to foundation work and chimney removal)
7. Insulate crawlspace and attic
8. Remove fake wooden panelling, stabilize plaster, and repaint all rooms
9. Block air infiltration around various doors
10. Replace window sashes
11. Strip ugly pink paint from as much woodwork as possible
12. Remove linoleum from floors/refinish wooden floors
13. Remove the concrete driveway extension into the back yard
14. Related landscaping/gardening
15. Repair front porch/re-rebuild front steps
16. Repair side porch, remove steps, and turn into a conservatory
17. Draw detailed plans for the Day of Glory (ie, when we get to start the renovation project that requires us to move out)

* in progress

posted by ayse on 01/04/04