Real Stories of DIY Home Renovations Gone Wrong

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images

Doing your own home renovation has a scrappy allure — you’ve got a power drill and you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty! But the bigger reason most people decide to retile their own bathrooms is that they can’t afford to hire a professional. Home prices nationwide have risen a shocking 60 percent since 2019, and the median cost of an existing single-family home hit a new high of $412,500 last year, per a report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. So even if you can scrape together a down payment and qualify for a mortgage, chances are you won’t have much money left over. Which means you’re on your own if your new house needs work.

Between YouTube and TikTok, there’s a tutorial for every DIY scenario. Want to make a custom bookcase? Look no further. Find human remains while digging up your basement? Here’s what to do. Building your own pool? Consult Reddit. “Like everyone else, I had seen people doing DIY stuff online and figured it must not be that hard. If they can do it, I can do it,” says Nicole, a DIY blogger who has done renovations on three separate homes in the past six years. “But it almost always takes more time and money than people think it will.” 

Here, three homeowners share what they’ve learned about the time, effort, and money it really takes to fix up a house, and what any aspiring DIY-er should know before they try it.

We bought our house last year in a moment of total desperation. We were house-hunting for a full year, and our landlord was about to kick us out of our rental because he was selling the building. Finally, we found a place in our price range, a little over $200,000, but it needed substantial work — nothing had been updated since the early ’90s. My husband is pretty handy, or so I thought, and we figured we’d be able to manage the work ourselves. I was even looking forward to it. The DIY videos I saw online made it seem like fun, like this cute thing we could do together as a couple.

Right after we moved in, the boiler crapped out. We knew that the old one would need replacing somewhat soon, but we weren’t prepared to shell out $5,000 so quickly. We had to hire professionals for that, and it basically tapped out the rest of our savings.

We didn’t really have a grand plan or budget for renovating, but one major thing we wanted to do was take down a wall between the kitchen and the dining area on the ground floor. We’d asked the home inspector if there was anything structural in the wall, and he said no. The previous owners confirmed this too. So, like idiots, we believed them and didn’t hire a structural engineer to check it out, which I will regret forever.

After watching a million videos about DIY demolition, we bought a sledgehammer and some protective gear and got to work. The wall we wanted to take down had a big pantry cabinet that was falling apart already, so we figured it wouldn’t be too hard to smash it up and clean it out. Then my husband hit something really hard. We couldn’t figure out what it was, so we demo’d the rest of the wall and came back to it. I started getting nervous when my husband cracked it but it wouldn’t give way. It looked like a big wooden post. We were afraid it was structural. And it was.

We paid a structural engineer a couple hundred dollars to come look at it, and he told us that we’d damaged a crucial structural beam. We had to get a big temporary support post and wedge it in there, but we will need to hire a contractor to fix it properly. It might be my imagination, but I think the ceiling above the beam is starting to bow a little bit, and we’re scared to go upstairs because the beam has compromised the floor up there. It’s a disaster.

The structural engineer said that fixing the beam would probably cost at least $15,000. He discovered a bunch of other issues with the house too. I’m now terrified that the whole place is going to fall down on our heads, although he assured us that it wouldn’t if we addressed the issues soon. He also told us very explicitly not to try to fix it ourselves — I think his exact words were, “Do not fuck with this without a professional.” We’re trying to find a contractor we can afford, but everyone is busy and way too expensive — we’ve gotten quotes everywhere from $17,000 to $25,000.

In the meantime, we have a wall in our kitchen that’s been half-demo’d, so that area of our house is unlivable. We put a microwave, mini-fridge, and coffee-maker in our living room, and we basically use that as our kitchen. We’ve also been sleeping in there, on a mattress on the floor, because we’re too nervous to go upstairs. It’s like we’re camping in our own house.

Of course I now wish we never bought the house in the first place, but we obviously can’t sell it in this condition. We’re stuck in this hellish dusty mess of our own making. Our families are not in any position to help us out, so we’re on our own. I’m hoping one day this is a funny story we tell our grandkids, but right now, it just really sucks.

Two years ago, our landlord raised our rent by about 40 percent. My fiancé, Dustin, and I needed to find a new place to live in under three months. The house hunt was stressful. We were getting outbid at every turn. When one of our offers was finally accepted, we still paid way more than we wanted. We knew the house needed work, but we didn’t realize quite how much. It was our first time buying a home, and we didn’t have parents or extended-family members who could help us through the process. We didn’t know what we didn’t know until it was too late.

I had done a fair amount of DIY furniture projects, so I figured I could learn how to fix up our house, too. We were able to do a few small things in the month before our lease was up and we had to move in. We both work full-time, so we would get to the house after 5 p.m. and work until it was too dark to keep going. We demo’d a couple of small walls, taking turns with a sledgehammer. It was a mess. We went through three different Shop-Vacs because there was so much dust.

Once we moved in, we realized that the main big room, which is the living-slash-dining area, wasn’t insulated. It’s a beautiful room — it’s actually a solarium — but it’s baking in the summer and freezing in the winter. We looked into different ways to rebuild and insulate it, but everyone we talked to gave us quotes ranging from $90,000 to $180,000. So instead, we bought these thick thermal curtains. They’re not perfect, and they still cost thousands of dollars, but we had to do it just to make it livable.

At this point, we’ve probably put about $20,000 to $25,000 into our house, and it’s nowhere near where we want it to be. We’ve had to call in a few professionals, especially for electrical work; I think the electrician cost about $3,000. I renovated our downstairs bathroom by wallpapering over the tile. That project took about $700. I tried to DIY our flooring, and I worked on it — I wish I was kidding — for ten hours. I restarted seven different times. And finally, I surrendered and called someone to do it for us. They came the following weekend and had it done in two hours, and it looks amazing. I was like, “Okay, this is why people hire people. I fully understand now. It is so much better.”

At the beginning of the summer, I wanted to build a little soaking pool in our yard. We dug a ten-foot hole, just my fiancé and I, using hand shovels because he was convinced that we didn’t need an excavator. We’re never doing that again. Later today, we’re going to pick up the stones for the edging around the perimeter. We’re 90 percent done and the whole project is costing us about $2,000, but if we had hired someone to do it for us, it would have been at least $5,000. Still, it’s taken us all summer.

Working on the house has put pressure on our relationship too. We’ve found our rhythm now, but at first, it was grueling. We were at each other’s throats every day because I wasn’t working fast enough, or he was working on the wrong things. It’s taken us two years, really, to recognize our individual strengths and then use them as a team. My fiancé does a lot of the heavy lifting, literally, which is nice. And I’m usually the one that does the research, like, “Let’s get this type of stock tank instead of that steel one.”

We still need to do our kitchen. Even if we do most of it ourselves, I think that’s going to take another $20,000, at least. There are no windows in there, the ceilings are low, the cabinets are falling apart, and everything in it is from the ’80s. We’d like to put in a big bay window and new cabinets and everything. It needs a full gut.

You see videos online of people transforming a whole house in three days or a week. But what you’re not seeing is the full construction crew and an unlimited budget. I’ve fallen into the trap where I consumed so much DIY renovation content that I was like, “Okay, how hard could this be? We’ll get it done in an afternoon.” And then three hours later, I’m still working on the same piece of wallpaper on the same wall.

You can easily spiral into, “Oh, my life’s not good enough. I’m not trying hard enough. I don’t have what these other people have.” Some of our friends got huge loans from their parents or grandparents to buy a house, and I’m really happy for them. But my parents immigrated here from Albania in the late ’80s and they never owned property. They still don’t. So it means so much to me that we have this home for ourselves, even if it’s not exactly what we want it to be.

I was always enamored with the idea of buying an old house and fixing it up, because I spent so much time watching HGTV as a child. When I was looking to buy a house four years ago, and this one presented itself, I was like, “Great!” It’s over 100 years old and needed a lot of work, but it seemed logical to me that I could put in the sweat equity and the money and reap the rewards. I just kind of dove into it without really knowing anything. I didn’t even know how to use a drill.

I had about $20,000 in savings left over after I bought the house, and I figured that would take me pretty far. But then I had to get the electrical panel replaced immediately, and that basically wiped me out. I spent the rest on power tools and then got to work myself. At the time, I was still working in marketing in tech, which was a remote job, so I had income from that.

I tackled the house completely backward. Now I know that you’re supposed to do the inside first and the outside last to keep your property taxes down. If it looks like you fixed up your house and it’s worth more, then they’ll try to raise your taxes. But I was thinking about curb appeal, so I scraped and repainted the whole house. Then I got a letter saying what my new tax evaluation was. So I contacted the local property office and went and showed them pictures of what the interior of the house looked like — it was still a mess. And they took pity on me and came down in the evaluation.

In the past four years, I’ve probably put about $100,000 into the house total, but I’m sure it’s appreciated more than that in value. The hardest project so far was the kitchen. I built all the cabinetry myself. I saved a lot of money doing it, because that level of custom cabinetry is really expensive. I’m super proud of it. Even still, it took me about eight months, and it cost a lot. Lumber prices are insane. I always hire help with electrical and plumbing; I don’t want to be denied home insurance because I did shoddy electrical work myself. I’ve learned to add at least 20 percent to any budget that I’ve got for a project before I start. Things always cost more than you think they will. And if they don’t, then it’s a happy surprise.

There are certain things I don’t enjoy working on. I do not like retiling bathrooms. All the videos I saw online made it look easy, but I have wonky walls in my house, so it was a nightmare. I ended up having to pack on all this mortar to get the tiles straight and level. I work slowly, so things kept drying too quickly, and I was panicking. It’s not exactly perfect.

I do worry about money, especially because I’m single, so there’s no other salary to fall back on. I don’t even try to date anymore, though. When I have gone on dates, I just come in with so much baggage. Like, “Yeah, I’m working on this house, and I may be working on it forever.” Most guys don’t want to sign up for that. I spent most of my 20s trying to find the right person before I could do any of this. And then I just decided to do it myself and create the life that I knew I wanted.

I’m probably better suited for this than most people because I’m adaptable and I’m used to living in less-than-ideal spaces. I lived in San Francisco for six years, and I had one apartment that was so bad it was basically like camping. I know there are people who need things to be clean and tidy, and that’s not me. My kitchen was completely infested with roaches when I bought the house, so it wasn’t usable for years. I just had a microwave and an air fryer and an Instant Pot in another room, and my fridge was in the mudroom. There are some rooms I’m very happy with and very proud of, and there are some rooms that are still disgusting. It helps to be able to close the door on some of the mess. And it’s just me, so who cares? I like the fact that I can turn my speakers up and listen to music loud and not worry about neighbors. What a luxury.

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