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WHAT TO DO WITH THE STAIRS IN YOUR HOUSE
A couple of days ago I was dropping my daughter off at school and was approached by one of her teachers. She asked if I was an engineer and I told her I was an architect. Well to get to the bottom of the story. She lives in a split level house with her husband. They have lived there for several years and are starting to get tired of the stairs.
She asked if it was better to try and renovate the house put some money into it or better to try and find another house without the stairs. So do you shop for a house or renovate the one you have?
It depends, but want to dive into it because this is not the first time I have been asked this.
When you are looking to make any decision how do you start. I usually start with a pros list. Get a sheet of paper and draw 4 columns on it. Over the left two columns write renovate and the second set write new. Then of course write pros and cons under both.
So what are the pros of renovation
- Get to stay in a house that you might already like
- You can correct the problems you experienced in the house
- Renovation is less money and more scalable
- Renovation can be achieved in phases more gradual
Pros of moving
- change of venue
- you now know what you don’t like so you can avoid it
- can scale up or down in size
- You can move right in, maybe
cons of renovation
- lots of decisions need to be made
- you might not be able to solve every issue
- you can get a loan but typically don’t roll into mortgage
- might have to move out depending on the extent of renovation
cons of moving
- the time to find the right place
- will the new house need some renovations done anyway
- you might have to try and find something in an area that is comparable to what you have now. then are you making a lateral move? closing costs.
So this couple is getting older (as she stated herself) they are not old by any stretch, but the children are out of the house. Would now be a good time to go ahead and downsize the house preparing for retirement? Can you afford getting this close to retirement and take on too much financing or can you still complete your plan of paying off the house with a renovation before retirement?
Do you plan to travel a lot? Do you have people that travel to you and stay for long periods of time. I know that she and her husband are from Pakistan and she travels there for months at a time. Not sure if her son living there travels to here to see them as well.
If so they are going to need that extra space for when visitors stay. I have done house shopping a couple of times in my life. there are a couple things to say about it. The first is you need to have an excellent agent to find and negotiate a good house. An agent that listens to your needs and really understands them. You need to have a clear set of goals you are looking for in a house that can guide your agent.
The second is you need patience. It is going to take a lot of time to find the right house especially since you have been living in the house you are in now for quite a while. you know what bothers you and you now have the chance to avoid all those mistakes. Unfortunately there is no perfect house. You can look and look and never find it. There are options to find a house that is almost right for you and renovate it before you move it. If you can float the two houses at once for a while you can live in your current house while getting the other finished then transition over and sell your current house.
So to get back to the topic, stairs and this really pertains to my daughters teacher who currently lives in a split level. In a split level house you are going to have some stairs. Maybe not quite as bad as a full two level house, but you will traverse over those stairs more frequently.
If you are not familiar with what a split level refers to. Typically you enter the home from the exterior into the middle level of the house the kitchen and dining will be on this level and you drop down into the living room or go up to the bedrooms. So you are constantly going up and down even moving from your living room to your kitchen.
Is there any way to get rid of the stairs. hmmm not really. If you tore out your kitchen floor and lowered it to your living room floor then you would remove that transition or if you raised your second floor and built up the living room to be on level with the kitchen you get rid of them, but this kind of renovation is not really practical. You would pretty much trash the house and should just start over.
What can you do? The first thing you could do is to add a bathroom on the lower level either the kitchen level or living room level. These split level houses usually only have a bathroom up stairs near the bedrooms.
Kind of strange if you think about it, that they would not have a convenient bathroom down stairs. You could also add a bedroom to the lower level, so that you only move between the lower level and the kitchen usually just a couple of stairs and keep the upstairs for guests and family.
Does your site have room to add a bedroom or shift the living room to another location and convert the living/den area into a bedroom. These are all things that I will be visiting the house to explore. I’m looking forward to seeing the house and working with them to explore options and really get down to what they need. We will have to see what works best for them and their house.
Shout out for this weeks show goes to:
Ben Fewtrell, of the Business Brain Food podcast. Great content from down in Australia. He discusses business coaching, marketing and more. Thanks ben for the advice!
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So I wanted to end with one final take away for you. Before you think about moving really take a look at your house and formulate a list of what you like and don’t like. You might find that the list you like outweighs the list of don’t likes that the cons might be solved with a simple renovation. Find an architect that can do a consultation at your house with you. The small fee they charge could possibly save you a lot of money in the long run.
I wanted to end this episode with a funny little quote from Author Jarod Kintz. I don’t know much about the guy, but thought that this was an appropriate quote for todays show. he said:
“Should I go up one flight of stairs and then come back down, or should I go down one flight of stairs and then come back up? Same destination, same distance, same amount of work, but two different paths. Who knows?”
My words to you are to find your path.
