It started with a gift.
In late June, Paul Zirk got a surplus shower base and fixture from his nephew, who works in big-scale mechanical contracting.
"We thought why not put a shower downstairs? It'll be a quick job," recalls Zirk.
A businessman by day (he owns The Destination, Slope and Surf Outfitters store in North Vancouver), Zirk has done small-scale renovations in the past on various investment properties, so is familiar with the type of work that had to be done.
His plan was to budget about $1,000 and four or five days for the bathroom project.
Almost three months later, Zirk now estimates that what started as a free shower base and a five-day maximum budget will finish sometime next spring and top out at about $70,000 worth of work.
Luckily, he can do much of the work himself so he won't be paying that much cash, but the story of how his little project got really big really quickly is a warning for other homeowners itching to start on a DIY project.
The first change in plans came when Zirk's wife suggested adding a soaker tub in the same bathroom as the new shower. However, Zirk soon realized that the shower base would not fit with a soaker tub in the small basement bathroom. "Once the battle was done, she won," says Zirk.
The decision was made to add a soaker tub in the basement bathroom, concede the shower, and put a bigger shower in the upstairs bathroom. And so the work began.
However, when Zirk and his son took the walls off the backside of the bathroom, he discovered that up against the cement foundation the studs were on sideways and there was no insulation, which was a ripe condition to trap moisture.
So Zirk re-did the studs, plumbed in the soaker tub, and took off the ceiling in preparation to do the upstairs bathroom at the same time, but once everything was exposed, he realized all the copper plumbing in the house had to be replaced.
As water goes through copper it wears, explains Zirk, whose house is 65 years old.
"At the age it was it was due to spring a leak somewhere," he notes.
Taking all the copper out required going into the laundry room and into his daughter's bedroom, which is also in the basement, so she was moved to the family room.
The wall in her room was also not studded properly and didn't have any insulation, and in the course of removing things to access the copper to cut it out, they had to take her bedroom ceiling down as well.
And that's when things got even worse.
As he was making his way along the wall toward where the main water comes in from the city, Zirk put his hands up over a wall to pull some gyprock down, and felt "something funny" on his hand.
He knew the prior owner hadn't put cover plates back on some of the electrical boxes in the house so thought he had just received a small electrical shock.
"So I put my other hand up and stuck my head over and it was a wasps' nest," he reports.
The result? Sixteen stings in one hand, eight in the other.
"My hand was easily three times its size," notes Zirk.
Continuing his reno with swollen hands, Zirk managed to get the plumbing working again. He continued to pull away gyprock to put the studs in and insulate.
Then, two feet from the corner of the bedroom, he pushed his hammer through the gyprock to pull it out and his hammer went right through to the outside.
Zirk discovered that the previous owners had planted a garden higher than the foundation wall so the whole bottom of the house was rotten, including a structural post.
He then had to take all the siding off and take off all the sheeting because it wasn't to code and it was also rotten. He had to jack up the house and take out a structural post and replace it, and then start re-sheeting. He will also likely have to replace the siding on the whole house.
"It is good that we found them, it's necessary. Who knows when they would have shown themselves, but at the actual moment as each thing cropped up it was 'Oh no, there goes another week, there goes another two weeks,'" says Zirk of finding more work than he expected.
He explains that when he bought the house, he knew it would need cosmetic upgrades but was waiting until his four children were grown and out of the house. He wasn't expecting to have to tackle so many structural issues at this time.
Zirk says the unexpected delays haven't turned him off renovating in the future.
He is already thinking it would be nice to renovate the kitchen and add an entrance hallway, but that's probably not in the cards anytime soon. He warns other DIY hopefuls that you never know what you're going to encounter until you pull down a wall or pull up a floor, and you better have a good contingency fund ready for unexpected work.
"Be prepared for the worst and be prepared to quit."
