Confessions of a Serial Renovator

In the past eight years, we've managed 11 renovation projects in six countries.

In three cases, we identified the projects as "total gut jobs" from the outset. Looking back, though, now that the last tiles have been laid and the final floorboards placed, I'd say you could safely use that phrase to describe nearly every one of these undertakings.

Lesson #1 when renovating an old property: You don't have any idea how much demolition or reconstruction will be required until you've poked far beneath the surface.

We thought our new home in County Waterford, Ireland, when we purchased it nine years ago, needed a new kitchen, new bathrooms, and a fresh coat of paint.

The inspector's report, which we commissioned before signing the contract, seemed to confirm this. He commented negatively on the "decoration" of the house (I'm not kidding), but made no mention of serious defect. We signed, closed, and hired a "decorator" named Noel.

Noel's first day on the job, he recommended we have someone come and take a look at the wood on the first floor.

"What do you mean, Noel?" we asked innocently.

"Well, you might have a little damp. Someone should take a look."

All of Ireland is more than a little damp, so we weren't sure what to make of this. We asked around…and finally a friend told us about "damp guys." We asked one to come take a look. He showed up with a screwdriver…which he proceeded to poke easily through the shutters, the window sills, and the floor moldings all around the ground floor of the house.

"Do you see this?" he asked, as he pushed his flat-head through another window frame.

"That's not good, I guess?" I responded.

"You've got rising damp. In some cases, five or six feet up the walls.

Plus both wet and dry rot. It's all got to be replaced. The wood. The moldings. The shutters. The plaster."

Our two-month refurbishment had become a year-long gut job. We just didn't know it yet. Over the next 12 months, men with jackhammers pounded away the plaster from every wall in every room on the first floor. Carpenters tore out the wood of the windows and the floors. We wanted the renovated house to be as true to the original as possible, so we preserved every piece of wood molding, every shutter, every floor board we could. Then we had replacement pieces made to match.

The old, damp plaster was hammered away to reveal stone walls beneath. These were treated with a water-proof spray, inside and out. The new plaster was mixed with further damp-proofing agents. As was all the timber before it was hammered back into place. No one thought it odd that our "inspector" had failed to notice the rising damp and the rotting wood.

Lesson #2 when renovating a property abroad: You're on your own if things don't work out as you expect them to. No Irish Better Business Bureau was going to bring our inspector mate to task.

While the plasterers and carpenters worked away on the ground floor, we called in a plumber to get started on the bathrooms upstairs. He took some measurements…sized things up…and announced he'd charge us 1,200 pounds (at the time about $1,600) to install the tub in the master bath.

To be fair, it was a big tub. With claw feet. To be positioned strategically in front of the window overlooking the sheep field.

Still, we responded skeptically…certain we must have misunderstood. Perhaps he meant 1,200 pounds for fittings and fixtures for the entire room.

Nope. Twelve-hundred pounds for the tub.

When we relayed the details of the estimate to a friend in the office, she smiled knowingly. "Ah, he's chancing his arm."

This expression, which the Irish use often, we learned, dates back centuries and has something to do with a nobleman who, confidently, perhaps recklessly, risked, literally, life and limb by extending his arm to the king in a gesture of cooperation…even though, he realized, there was the real chance it might be cut off.

In 21st-century parlance, the phrase translates to mean something like, "I'll throw out this ridiculously high price and see if the sucker goes for it."

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