Five Unexpected Ways Your Home Renovation Can Backfire

Home renovation projects always start out in a rush of excitement—you’re finally going to solve all those annoying problems, update those dated aspects of the house, and live the life you deserve! And sometimes it actually works out that way—but there are a lot of ways a renovation can go wrong. That’s why nearly three-quarters of homeowners come to regret their renovations to some extent.

Most of the reasons behind renovation regrets are pretty straightforward: Cost overruns, dissatisfaction with the final result, or shoddy work (either by contractors or DIY efforts) are the problems most people worry about when embarking on a renovation. But there are other, less obvious ways your renovation plans can backfire on you—problems that will only seem obvious in retrospect.

Utility red tags

I once innocently called my local utility company to come out and service my water heater, and ended the day with a dreaded “red tag” on my mechanical room—a paper notice that I had to bring something up to code. The worst part? The problem had nothing to do with my water heater, furnace, or anything else—it was the door to my mechanical room. When we renovated our house we had a new door hung, and it didn’t have any ventilation built in. We passed city inspections after the reno, but now the utility company insisted I cut a louver into the door.

In another instance, a utility worker came by and noticed that our electrical panel was just in the wall. They informed me that there was a new requirement that panels be enclosed, so we had to build a fairly ridiculous box around the panel.

Those are mild cases—it can be a lot worse. A nearby neighbor is renovating his house, and the utility company discovered that he shares a gas supply with his next-door neighbor, and that now has to be separated and re-routed despite the fact that neither of them have ever had a problem. The project is adding weeks to the renovation schedule and aggravating everyone involved. Often our homes have non-ideal setups or infrastructure that was code-compliant decades ago—and when the utility company comes by you’re suddenly the proud owner of a shiny red tag, and your renovation has just backfired on you.

Hidden problems

Your utility company doesn’t have to be involved for a renovation to ruin your day. Just opening walls and floors can expose all manner of scenarios where stuff that is working just fine will suddenly need to be replaced, at great expense and frustration:

• Wiring. You have exactly zero problems with your electricity—no flickering, so shorts, no non-functional outlets. But when you open up your walls, you discover your wiring is old (most modern electrical wiring will last about 50 years, but your panel typically has a shorter lifespan) and suddenly you have to replace it. While this might be a good idea from a safety standpoint, it’s hard not to think you could have lived a happy life without ever knowing about it.

• Plumbing. Like your power, you’ve never had a problem with your plumbing. Everything drains, nothing leaks, and your water pressure is fine. Then your contractor digs into your walls and floors and suddenly the drain slopes are wrong, the pipe connections are outdated and no longer meet code, and your supply lines are insufficient for modern appliances.

• Permits. More accurately, a lack of permits. Pulling permits for new renovation work can reveal that the previous owners did a lot of DIY work without getting a permit, and now you’re faced with getting old work you had nothing to do with retroactively permitted and possibly brought up to code before you can even begin your intended project.

• Craptastic DIY work. Do-it-yourselfers can perform miracles: Their work can look pretty good in a casual inspection and be revealed as a shoddy, lazy mess the moment you take a closer look. Whether it’s a living room floor being held up by wishes and dreams because the previous owner enthusiastically cut every joist in the basement or uncovering a host of buried electrical boxes they couldn’t be bothered to remove properly, the ghosts of incompetent DIYers will haunt you the moment you start your own project.

Lowering home value

It’s true: Sometimes a renovation project can actually lower the value of your house. Sometimes it’s personal taste that will require effort to change, like wallpaper. Sometimes they're features that come with hefty maintenance bills, like swimming pools. Sometimes it’s a practical decision to delete something from the home—removing one bedroom to expand another, or taking out a garage to add a bedroom, for example.

You shouldn’t assume your renovation is going to pay for itself by raising the value of your home. If you want to change something because you like it a certain way—hey, it’s your house. But don’t be surprised if your decision to carpet the entire house results in a drop in its value.

Paying for nothing

Hiring contractors can be stressful. You’re dealing with people who have specialized knowledge and connections that you lack, so it’s easy to feel intimidated. We rely on recommendations from friends and neighbors, internet reviews, and the general vibe when they come out to give you a quote—but things can still go wrong. Some of those worst-case scenarios have obvious solutions—if a contractor ghosts you in the middle of a project, you hire someone else. But a bad contractor experience can be surprisingly difficult to resolve, especially if you rely on a simple contract provided by the contractor themselves when you hire them.

There are surprisingly few legal protections against what’s known as a mechanic’s lien—a claim against your property designed to force payment for work performed there. If you refuse to pay a contractor for poor work, or seek to fire them in the middle of a job for some reason, they can—and often do—slap a lien on your home, and you’ll have to head to court to fight it. And there’s no guarantee that it will go your way, especially if the contract you signed is vague about deadlines or other requirements.

For example, a woman refused to pay her contractors over a renovation job that ballooned to $500,000 and ended with an unfinished house filled with defects. But the courts dismissed most of her complaints, and she wound up paying her crappy contractor an additional $32,000—in addition to a hefty legal bill. And she still had to hire someone else to fix and finish her house.

Relationship stress

If you want to test the strength of your relationship with a partner, renovate a house with them. Renovations are so stressful they can damage even the strongest relationship: A 2018 survey found that 7% of people who’d worked on house projects together seriously considered separation or divorce as a result. Even if you don’t get to that point, there’s no doubt that living in a construction zone (or a cramped rental) for months, watching your savings melt away, and disagreeing about design choices and scope on a daily basis can have a negative effect on your partnership.

A renovation can also negatively affect your relationship with your neighbors. Months of dust, noise, and contractors trooping around will stress anyone out, and if your work damages your neighbor’s home in some way things can get heated. You might wind up with a beautifully renovated house but lose the friendly vibe you used to enjoy around the block, so it pays to tend to those relationships while the work is going on.