The pandemic has accelerated many things, including the urge to upgrade your home. Online shopping for home goods has surged, as has the motivation to carve out more space—or, failing that, building bigger. A pair of recent surveys from Houzz and Porch found that nearly 80 percent of homeowners are daydreaming about renovating.
But as easy as home makeover shows make the process seem, not every house is ripe for renovation. How do you know if your current digs have potential to become your dream home? It’s a question familiar to Victoria Sass, who founded her Minneapolis-area design firm Project Refuge Studio with a focus on renovations that keep young families in old homes. “We get people who want to know, ‘Should I invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in this house or not?’” she says. “At some point, it’s not a good investment if what you really want is a different house. It’s like a marriage: Is this the one, or are you trying to make it into something it’ll never be?”
Sometimes, the scope of a client’s dreams outstrip the return they’ll see on the home—or the joy they’ll ever find there. “For me, it’s a red flag when a homeowner starts talking about moving the stairs,” says Sass. “There's a lot of engineering that comes into play, and it's not usually the best bang for your buck. That’s when I take the conversation to a more abstract level and say, ‘What is it you really want out of a house?’ It's probably going to be cheaper to move and get the house that you actually want, or at least start closer to where you want to end up.”
That was true for designer Emily Clark, who runs Boise, Idaho design-build firm Clark & Co. Homes with her husband Dan. “We purchased an older home in a fantastic location—and then spent four years deliberating how we could remodel it to fit the needs of our growing family,” she recalls. The couple ultimately decided that they’d need to rebuild in order to accomplish their goals. “We relocated the older home to a new location, then started fresh with a home design [on the original property] that will serve our family for years to come. It’s one of the more dramatic solutions to consider, but it is possible!”
Should you stay or should you go? We sought out the best advice from designers, contractors, and a preservationist to find the secrets to renovation success—and for a frank take on when it’s time to start fresh.
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