I
can’t figure out where all the money goes.
Actually,
that’s not true. When I’m watching some of the shows where they
tear about a house—in part or fully—and rebuild it, I do know
where the money is going. Ripping apart a bathroom, updating a
kitchen, even adding a deck has a price. And if you haven’t looked
for someone to do the work, you might find yourself surprised
by the cost. These things are not cheap.
So,
when they speak about budgets and unexpected dilemmas and more,
I can absolutely figure out where all the money goes.
Putting
in a new bathroom isn’t just putting in a new bathroom. It can
involve the septic system, options for new plumbing, the hot water
heater, the well pump and the list goes on. It can involve the
electrical needs of the room. It’s not just new drywall and some
paint. It’s an involved process and detailed project.
Consider
this… and this doesn’t involve dollars at all. Terry and I lived
in a house with one-and-a-half bathrooms. We were planning on
renovating the full bathroom completely. New sink, toilet and
bath/shower. Ran new electrical to the room and installed a vent
for a fan. But there’s a funny side note. We designed our work
on the bathroom in such a way that we planned on two specific
days for ripping out the current tub (a cast iron monstrosity
with tiles along the walls and up past the showerhead to the ceiling)
and installing a new bath/shower unit. We definitely needed a
running shower when the work week hit, but could survive with
the half-bath and no shower for the weekend that took place.
In
short, there are a lot of plans that go into home improvement
projects, and not all of them involve money.
What
does strike me though is how often the designers and hosts speak
with couples about budgets and the investment of dollars. Biggest
conversations happen when the wish list and budget don’t match
or a sudden structural emergency chews up large chunks of cash.
And then, later in the show, there is a truck of new furniture,
appliances and more being off-loaded.
Hey,
I want a new amazing range with two ovens. Whatever size we think
we need for a new refrigerator, I want to double it. Give me that
live edge dining room table that seats twelve. But if you’ve found
that the there’s a problem with asbestos, lead paint, or the discovery
of shoddy workmanship behind the walls that needs to be upgraded,
I can make due with what we’ve got and dump the $5,000 wish-list
table.
But
that part of the conversation never seems to come up, and there’s
the table coming off the truck.
I
suppose a fair amount of it must be hidden in the fine print.
Companies providing appliances in exchange for advertising, what
is the actual contribution from homeowners and the production,
and assorted ideas that might come in to play. My guess is that
when a store’s façade appears on the screen of a well-known,
prime time, syndicated into reruns for years show, the owners
of that store are willing to perhaps offer a discount or assorted
deals. Hard to give up a dining room table to pay for replacing
the main support beam in the roof when the dining room table as
a line item on the project budget had a notation of free.
I
think the reason it really bothers me though is that I’m not big
on meaningless knickknacks. I’ll be the first to admit that many
of the items on shelves and tables around our house are not design
perfection. But they are amazingly meaningful to us. Try to replace
them blindly with a generic bowl of lemons, new throw pillows
that are there only because they match the curtains or a sculpture
with no personal backstory in picking it out, and you have quite
likely lost me.
I
enjoy the shows. I’ll keep watching them. But I hope they don’t
mind that I’m throwing pillows toward the screen on occasion when
they start discussing how to save money about ten minutes before
tearing apart a bathroom where an upgrade was nice but a new coat
of paint would have worked.
And
if I can see the places to save a dollar…