House Buying TV shows

[vaking]

Granite countertops

When I bought the house I am in now (years ago) the kitchen was in very poor shape. Money was tight and we decided to redo the kitchen on the cheap (thinking temporarily, until we can afford better). Home Depot was clearing out one of their "display kitchens", so we bought it and built kitchen around it. The display kitchen included some "solid surface countertop", similar to corian. Display kitchen was smaller than our real kitchen, so we added some granite tile countertops. My wife is good at tiling (learned as a girl) so she installed the granite tile with virtually no spacing for grout. Because we thought we were only doing it temporarily - we did not bother to seal the granite tile countertops. It has been probably 8 years ago and I am still using that setup. Granite tile stands up to anything even without ever being sealed. Solid surface counter gets stained easily, I will definitely not buy any "corian". I am finally getting ready to do a real job. Candidates for the counter are granite, granite tile and butcher block.

[BigguyZ]

I've done a lot of remodel work on my brother's houses (he's at 6 right now), and every time we've looked at countertops, we've found that Formica is only slightly less $$ than granite. So IMHO, there's no reason to ever use that. Everything has their own issues, but I think granite offers the best value because of it's durability and the "appreciation factor". If not slab granite, granite tile.

[Tom Slick]

I agree, the installed price between "solid surface" and granite was less than 5% if you compare apples to apples. The maintenance and care of granite has been minimal and I don't baby it. I did spend 20 mins and $5 last year resealing it.

I am also a fan of the not-so-big-house, which is still fairly big.

[smorris]

We occasionally watch these, LOML describes them as train wrecks in slow motion. You want to look away but can't. "The offer fell through and the owner has reduced the price, the house is still on the market" seems to be a common ending.

The new show on DIY about folks who have no idea how to do anything tearing out walls and such to do major remodels is a complete horror show. I loved the one of the guy who was putting up deck posts and was going to set the 16' 4x4's in concrete then cut them back to 3' later.

[dbhost]

The house I am in is far from my ideal. It is a 2K sq/ft 4 BR 2 BA job that was honestly chosen for me by someone no longer in the picture. The choser of the house was in it less than a year, and after a few bachelor roomates while I was in the single again phase created many of the issues I am working with now...

The remodeling is going slowly, but it IS going... From the top down. I do not expect to make a profit on this house unless the economy comes back to pre downturn levels soon...

I honestly WOULD love to get this house done, and sold for what it is worth, so that LOML and I can move on to a home that we BOTH choose. I personally want more land out of an urban area... My folks keep pressuring me to move away from the gulf coast... Funny thing is, if I wasn't anchored to this house, I would have done that 5 years ago...