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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I have a normal European detatched house with 2 bathrooms. I find that stressful and expensive considering the cost of renovation. Say you do it every 15 years or so. (Yes I realize it would last longer of course, probably want to do it after 15 years or less, especially if you plan on selling). The going rate for bathroom renovation here is $12-15k for small or cheap standard rebuilds, up to $40-50k for large or higher standard jobs. Normal standard and normal size is probably $25-30k. For most people this is a years' pay after taxes. If I had 4 bathrooms I would have just doubled my cost.

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> Say you do it every 15 years or so. (Yes I realize it would last longer of course, probably want to do it after 15 years or less, especially if you plan on selling).

Our last home, in the southern US, was build in 1980 and two of the 3 bathrooms (all full which is odd) were original and about 35 years old. While the appearance was dated, structurally and mechanically they were sound with no mold, water damage, or other issues. A steam clean of the tile and porcelain, along with a re-caulk and re-grout would have been sufficient to keep them going for quite some time. Our house before that was from 1965 with both bathrooms being original. The metal plumbing had started to fail and there was some rot to the sub-flooring around a toilet but otherwise fully functional and clean. In both cases the bathrooms were like most homes in the US with ceramic tile floors, steel tubs, and tiled shower stalls.

When I think about all the bathrooms I've used while in Europe, most were much newer and all felt like they needed to be redone. The finishes were unlike what's typically done in American bathrooms, some where plastic or vinyl covered while others used wood. They were all small and poorly ventilated, and they all had issues with mold and rot. I'm thinking poor ventilation and choosing materials for style over longevity might be why you feel the need to redo your bathrooms so frequently.

A lot of what's in the market for UK bathroom remodelling is actually very poor and unsuitable materials (e.g. cabinets with a veneer on top of particle board that will just love the humidity and blow up nicely once the surface or a corner gets a knock). It originally started with kitchen companies seeking new markets, and only needed to resize units and change installation habits a little to add new, (badly) fitted bathrooms. As a result a lot need redoing as half the stuff was never really suitable for being in a bathroom in the first place. Going on the quality of most kitchen installations, why would anyone ever...? :)

So you move into a new house with a grotty, worn out (and possibly only 4 or 8 year old) bathroom, with mould and maybe a tile or two falling off. Now you need to remodel, and most of what's out there is shoddy "replace every 5-10 years" quality, so the cycle repeats. New build homes are happy to install the cheapest shite available so long as it looks OK. Every time someone moves it's just about certain the mouldy, grotty bathroom and kitchen will need a makeover (or a divorce). If they got suckered in to a fitted bedroom you'll need to budget to rip that out too (also built from kitchen units with ideas above their station). :)

The parts of Europe I visit seem caught in a similar game.

Up until the seventies most houses were built with lifetime bathrooms -- one 50s house we lived in still had the tiling and fittings from when the house was built, still looked clean, nothing broken. All we ever needed to do was change taps as they had started to wear, and fit a better shower. A couple of tiles were lifted doing that -- that was revealing. No tile adhesive, all the tiles were mortared directly onto the brick, no wonder none had been lost since new. Not only that, tiles were better and the edges and corners were in the tiles -- none of the awful, easily broken, plastic corner things that appear to encourage mould.

The nicest house bathroom I ever saw was a house that had managed to keep its turn of the century bathroom, with high gloss tiling, original bath, radiator and polished pipes, with the modern additions carefully picked to appear like they were there from new.

Never quite understood how so many got so completely suckered in to such wasteful and expensive short-termism.

The fit and finish items in new construction in the US is also what I would deem substandard but with the option to upgrade. That's typically how developers can offer homes starting at very low price points, because quality finishes can increase the home selling price by 25-50%.

There are plenty of renovators that will be happy to install floating floor systems and other garbage but the traditional materials and installers still exist and don't charge that much of a premium. Many times the newer methods require subfloor modifications or other added costs that usually bring them in parity with the traditional products but the end result is much lower quality.

Here, the bespoke cabinet makers doing things the traditional way are often on par or even less than the installation companies. I think people simply assume they are right at the premium end so don't even ask for a quote -- as a result may not get all the work they deserve. Box installers meanwhile have bumped prices up to "insane", right where I might expect a carpenter making genuinely fitted cabinetry.

Why would you renovate your bathroom so often?

Can't agree more with this. Spending ~25k every 15 years on a bathroom remodel needs a budget of over $1000 per year. Do you really get that much value out of it?

The design life is probably 20-25 so it's not much different.

Or turn the argument around: would one rather have 2 bathrooms with an average age of 7.5 (15 years interval for renovation) or 4 bathrooms with an average age of 15 (30 years lifespan)?

The house with the 4 bathrooms in worse condition would be a worth a lot less money on the market than one with two bathrooms in better condition.

The cheapest option is of course having 2 bathrooms but staying with long intervals for remodeling. That's where I am now, but as both are pushing 13 yers now it's kind of stressing as they'll both "come up for renewal" at the same time soon.

But yes, living without 80's tiles is something I very much imagine paying a lot of money for.

> Or turn the argument around: would one rather have 2 bathrooms with an average age of 7.5 (15 years interval for renovation) or 4 bathrooms with an average age of 15 (30 years lifespan)?

A home with 4 bathrooms is going to see half the traffic of a home with 2 bathrooms so they might last 2x. Or is as the case a lot of times, the bathroom in the common areas of the home gets renovated as does the master.

> living without 80's tiles is something I very much imagine paying a lot of money for.

A lot of European bathrooms I've experienced were very trendy for their time and while that occurs in America I would say it's the exception and not the norm. In general our bathrooms are relatively bland and the materials are "timeless" in the sense that they're not very stylish ever, even new, but also never look that dated either. The last 3 bathroom renovations I did all involved using subway tiles, which while currently trendy, have been used consistently over the last 100 years. The houses I grew up in all used a similarly bland while tile that was 3x3" while squares.

The fixtures and finishes I've seen in European bathrooms also don't tend to stand up either. Pedestal sinks with exposed metal pipes and those detachable shower wands on sliding poles. Apart from the master bathrooms, most American bathrooms are boring with simple sturdy faucets and fixed shower heads. The sinks use vanities which hide/protect the plumbing which is usually plastic and much less vulnerable to corrosion.

Timeless!? They are insane. The toilet uncomfortably low to the ground. The sink that splashes, and you have to spend 40 seconds every time to get the water temperature right. The cabinet that's 2 inches deep and things fall out each time its opened. The mirror that fogs up. The slippery tub. The moldy curtain. Noisy flush. Soap gunk by the sink. Plumbing that leaks and clogs under normal use.

Spider Robinson wrote about it. An alien looking at human bathrooms, would have to conclude we are masochistic, stupid, or have some cultural blind spot.

> The toilet uncomfortably low to the ground.

In many parts of the world you squat on the ground, which actually better for you than sitting. Most toilets in the last 30 years are taller to accommodate ADA requirements and you can get even taller ones for a slight cost.

> The sink that splashes

I've really only experienced that in those awful flat bottom or angular sinks. The traditional hemisphere or egg shaped sinks don't splash.

> you have to spend 40 seconds every time to get the water temperature right.

I'm assuming you're talking about showering? Most American bathrooms are not located near the hot water heater and the water in the pipes between the spigot and the heater generally cools because it's not well insulated. As such, most Americans don't hop in the shower immediately when they turn it on but instead let it warm up for a minute or two.

> The cabinet that's 2 inches deep and things fall out each time its opened.

Are you talking about medicine cabinets? Sounds like the one you used wasn't pitched properly. There's two screws inside you can remove on the inside walls to loosen it, you can then shim the bottom edge and replace the screws. This will pitch the cabinet back so things fall to the back and not out the front.

Generally medicine cabinets fell out of fashion as the size of bathrooms grew and are usually only found in pre80s homes. Fun fact, most of them have a slot in the back to let you dispose of straight razors and if you remove them from the wall you'll find a stack of rust old razors in the wall cavity.

> The mirror that fogs up.

Hmm... so fancy heated mirror that will fail or a bottle of defogger you apply once or twice a year? * Better yet just turn the ventilation fan on before you start your shower.

> The slippery tub.

The only time I've ever fallen in a shower was in Italy in one of those shower coffins. So... yeah that's not a problem unique to America.

> The moldy curtain.

You know you can change those right? And if you spend more than $2 you can buy one that's mold resistant?

> Noisy flush.

That sounds like those jet flush toilets used in commercial property, most residential toilets are gravity flush tanks like their European counterparts.

> Soap gunk by the sink.

I'm guessing by this and your mold curtain comment that you're not one to clean your bathroom?

> Plumbing that leaks and clogs under normal use.

That's not normal.

In denial.

Remember those two faucets that used to be on sinks, one hot and one cold? Got replaced by the lever-valve that you push right or left to adjust temp? Took a generation to switch, though the benefits were obvious the first day.

Well, those two faucets go back even further. Watch any old cowboy movies? In the rooming house, the wash stand with the enamel basin and two pitchers? One pitcher hot water; one cold. Mix in the basin, then wash and shave.

When plumbing happened, the basin got set into the wash stand, a drain put in the bottom, the two pitchers replaced by two faucets.

Then, for about 100 years, nothing. No progress. Just that old familiar setup without modification.

Finally the kids were like "hey! I'm not filling that dirty old basin with water and washing in there! I'm just washing under the running water." The basin became simply a drain. So thus the impetus to combine hot and cold. So you didn't alternately scald and freeze your hands.

The 'modern' bathroom sink took 100 years to come about. Not because to took that long to invent. It took only a moment to see the advantages. What it took was, 100 years for the old, hidebound folks to pass away and let the kids take over.

I'm convinced our bathrooms are the way they are (weak explanations notwithstanding), because people are slow to change.

You responded to my comment about the timelessness of an aesthetic as somehow wrong because the underlying technology is not to your liking?

No one is agreeing or disagreeing with what you're saying because no one understands where you're coming from. You've basically said "Green is stupid because we're still using cars!"

Hey, I can speak for myself. No need to put words in my mouth. Thanks!

Design aesthetic is different from 'stuff that doesn't work'. I'm reminded of design students that create something that looks like a bicycle out of cardboard layers, and say "See! I've improved the bicycle! It'll change the world!" And what they have is a useless sculpture of a bicycle.

It's plain to most folks, using ordinary bathrooms in ordinary houses that the stuff is laughably awkward, dangerous and hard to clean. Try to explain it away all you like.

> Design aesthetic is different from 'stuff that doesn't work'

Again, we were speaking about durability and aesthetics, not functionality.

Since you want to discuss functionality...

> laughably awkward

For example? Do you have any better real world alternatives.

> dangerous

What and how?

> hard to clean

Compared to?

> Try to explain it away all you like.

No one is trying to explain away anything. We're not talking about the same thing. You're interjecting your thoughts on functionality as if they're in opposition to our discussion about reliability and design.

To put it another way, we're talking about reality and you're arguing hypothetical. It's like showing us how your air guitar is better than our actual guitars.

I just do most of the work myself and only contract things out directly (hire the tile installer directly, don't use a "remodeling" contractor) to make things affordable.

Obviously there are still expensive parts, but we don't rebuild the entire bathroom every 15 years and we don't have to do that rebuild all at once.

That would be a ludicrous amount of money to spend for a bathroom renovation in the US, even forgetting that there is no reason to do it every 15 years. A bathtub costs $500 max, toilet maybe $200, sink and vanity maybe another few hundred. Finishes should be another $1,000 max. Labor should be around $3,000 even in HCOL. So ripping out every fixture in a bathroom and replacing all the finishes, total should be within $5k. Even double that is $10k.

And bathtubs, toilets, and sinks last 20+ years easy (it’s porcelain and/or cast iron, what can go wrong?) Replacing the toilet innards is a 1 hour job at most with a $30 repair kit from the hardware store in case the seals wear out or something.

A facelift with e.g. new fixtures or paint I can do myself, that's not what I'm talking about. I mean a full renovation: stripping the room, putting up new drywall, then seal layer, then tiles. Then applying a new seal layer (nothing you are even allowed by insurers to do yourslef). After that tilling, electrical, plumbing, fixtures.

Up to date breakdown for a cheap one ($12k) (Google translate it if curious) https://www.byggahus.se/badrum/kostnad-bygga-nytt-badrum

labor $6.8k (carpenter 40h, electrician 16h, tiling 60-70h, plumber 1-2days) material: $5.2k fixtures: $3.5k

Are you murdering people in your bathroom?

All Swedes do. Goes hand in hand with writing crime novels about it. Most common occupation in Scandinavia.

Why would you do all that? I've seen many 1950s-vintage houses where the sink and toilet have been replaced once, with no further changes, and they're fine. No on should hate brown tile so much that they spend so much money to tear the whole thing down.

Yes, your average Swede would rather live in the woods than have 80's tiles. Meanwhile an average american would perhaps rather have 4 80's baths than 2 new ones. And that's exactly the cultural difference the article is about I think. It goes part of the way to describing why I only have 1.5 bathrooms.

I also suppose there is a difference with wear. If you have e.g. one or two baths instead of 3 or four for a large family, then it might be in worse condition after 15 years.

Actually now that you mention it the bathrooms in Sweden when I visited were notably magical.

Maybe the author of the article should write about how many bathrooms Swedes have, installed in series every 10 years rather than in parallel when the house is built. A one bathroom house where the bathroom has been replaced 4 times in 40 years counts as 4 bathrooms.

Is it really better for money-wise to make frequent renovations if you plan to eventually sell?

There are almost no renovations that will return more than $1 per $1 spent. Add in the additional penalty for any time value of money and you're even more underwater. (It can help speed up a sale, but generally will not have a positive RoI.)

Renovate for yourself and your own use, not the next owner.

This is pretty much why I've settled on the idea of buying a small flat.

I've lived in most different types of place now (rurally, in the suburbs, in inner city suburbs, in the middle of metro areas) etc and the idea of having to decorate a massive house is something I really can't be bothered with. If I had children I'd want enough space for them, sure, but that's about it.

It's not even about the cost but just the mental overhead of it all, cleaning, all the stuff you accumulate, etc.

I have a very sparsely furnished and decorated single family home. I felt intense pressure to buy because the cost of houses was increasing faster than my salary. Purchasing a home felt like a closing window of opportunity.

I figure I can always grow into it, and I occasionally buy something to go into it if I find a very good deal. Total cost of ownership is more than a rental property, but I also find my total quality of life has increased due to extra space for pets and decreased noise.

From my perspective, apartments and homes are rising in value at roughly the same rate, so I could trade in a flat in the center for a home in the suburbs later on if I so wished.

I figure at that point I'd have more of an idea about where I'd want my theoretical family (that I'm not even planning at the moment) to live, plus a partner with you know, desires and opinions and stuff ;)

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