Home Improvement

Home improvement in deed restricted housing is a very interesting proposition.

Our appreciation is capped at 3% per year. This amount is basically guaranteed regardless of the condition of our home upon sale. I mean, if we did absolutely zero upkeep and owned the home for a long time, the cost of basic repairs would be deducted from the sale price but other than keeping it in basically decent repair, we're guaranteed 3% per year.

The flip side is that, with some limited exceptions, we don't get to recoup any upgrades. Any changes we make to the house can only be made with a thought towards improving our quality of life, not with a thought of increasing the value of our home.

This makes the cost of redecorating/remodeling extremely pertinent.

We've lived in our house for almost 5 years and other than replacing a few light fixtures, painting the exterior of the house and enlarging our garden, have done basically nothing. We are now attacking our first interior remodeling project in our small downstairs bathroom/laundry room.

I say we but really Steve's doing all the work. It's a bit of a test project to see how well we do with do-it-yourself remodeling. Since it's a bathroom, it's not quite as visible as the dining room or living room and will make any mistakes easier to hide. Steve's done a ton of work as an electrician so he's familiar with remodels but he's never tiled or patched or painted, etc.

Our house was constructed on the cheap so among other things, nothing is level or spaced properly. Since we're replacing all of the fixtures, Steve's moving and rewiring all of the boxes and generally trying to fix what the original builder, Colorado First (or as our neighbors call them, Colorado Worst), left us.

We have a time constraint as Steve starts a new job on Tuesday and we have the financial constraints already mentioned so it's been a challenging proposition. These sorts of projects take on a life of their own and can easily grow out of control. Deciding where to compromise without losing sight of the original vision has been tricky.

It remains to be seen just how successful we'll be, both with our timeframe and the finished product.