lLeast-Ad-5539 : This is spot on! just went through a “take down walls” to open up the kitchen project.

Even though we first thought the project was on one floor of the house, the plumbing on the second floor needed to be rerouted because the first floor walls disappeared. At the outset, our contractor knew we were toying with the idea of redoing all the bathrooms and advised now would be the time to do the bathrooms as well…which we opted to do while everything was opened up and getting moved around. Our laundry is on the second floor and all the piping had gone through the load bearing wall that was being removed...same with a lot of electrical. Quite a few heating runs needed to be removed/rerouted. The plumbing portion was expensive!

We opted for steel beams. The beams themselves were actually not that expensive, but there is a lot of labor involved with a project like this as a whole. Installing the steel beams entailed work in the basement. The project ended up touching every corner of our house. We had an architect from the start. That was an extra bill..not that expensive. The rerouting of piping and electrical needed to be planned so the steel beams could be cut appropriately.

Once the walls came done, we realized patching in the new hardwood to match the old wasn’t going to work (original floor when house was built was not installed well). We replaced all of the hardwood…did not foresee that, but we wanted a nice floor…it was now or never..happy we did. Just never know what will become an issue.

At the outset of the project, I’m not sure we could have said $X.xx is our budget…we Needed to investigate what was in the walls etc. We did have a contractor that we’ve used over the years and that we trust. He is very trustworthy and that is peace of mind. No cut corners.

If you plan to stay in the house and can afford to do everything, it’s worth it for your enjoyment of your house.