When my daughter and son-in-law bought their first home together two years ago, the young couple had three dreams: a new kitchen, a nicer bathroom and a baby. Last month, they got all three. Except for the outdated kitchen and tired main bathroom, the 15-year-old Craftsman-style house had everything Paige and Adam wanted for what they hoped would be their growing family — great location, good schools and enough bedrooms.
They decided they would either learn to live with the home’s shortcomings, remodel or, if those plans failed, eventually move. The worst part of the home was the shower, which Paige, who gets her patience from her mother, wanted to replace the second she moved in. “My college dorm had a better shower,” I remember her saying day one.
Indeed, the small cubicle smelled like a mushroom farm, had a calcified door and would have fit right in at a campground. How quickly could they fix that? The answer came two years later. From that first day, Paige heard from not just me, but also from an interior designer and a contractor, that if they wanted to replace the shower, they would need to replace the adjoining bathtub.
If they replaced the bathtub, they would need to replace the floor, and they might as well update the vanity, too. Anyone who has ever remodeled knows how a small change leads to a big change which leads to a total gut. And then it bleeds into at least one more room.
See, even if they did remodel the whole bath, in the Denver area where they liv.
