#weekendcoffeeshare: Remodeling Reality

If we were having coffee, it would be at my house. I apologize for the mess. We’ve had builders for the last few days remodeling the bathroom. Check out the paint samples I picked up at Home Depot for the bathroom walls. I find it impressive that I grabbed as many color samples in five minutes. I narrowed it down to these few for the bathroom. Would you like to take a guess which one I ultimately picked?

The bathroom remodel is part one of many remodeling projects in the house. The ETA of the finished home is…a few months.

I’ve been documenting the bathroom remodel it on my Instagram stories. It is better and more real than any HGTV show out there. I am surprised to get a lot of engagement around our home remodel journey. I was worried about oversharing and dragging it on and on. But then I told myself, “eff it.” People share all their stages in planning a wedding and pregnancy through social media all the time and it drags. Sometimes I feel they were engaged for five years and pregnant for two years — which neither true. Thus, I think it is perfectly fine to share my stages in house remodeling.

House remodeling kind of comes off as a mystery to a lot of people. Those who are thinking about remodeling ask me, “how do you go about that?” The truth is, it depends on what you want done to the house. You need to interview as many contractors as possible and talk to as many people as you can who have remodeled. Also, read just about everything you can around construction so you have talking points to your next contractors.

Then there are people who enjoy watching HGTV and think they are home remodeling experts. When we first got our house, people were making references to various HGTV shows and how we should be remodeling. Just like any media, HGTV is completely unrealistic in terms of timeline and budget. My stories would be an opportunity to show people remodeling reality. On HGTV, those expeditious timelines are attributed by builders working all the time and around the clock to meet the deadline for TV. The rushed job compromises their quality. In real life, the remodel is not “just build.” There are permits, inspections, financing, and shopping for the materials. You can’t cram that on a TV show.