Another neverending renovation is a wrap

City officials spouting about the Nicollet Mall project being "on time and on budget" sounds familiar ...

We had a beautiful brick midcentury home with a lovely, tree-shaded yard. It had won design awards. By the 1980s, it was a bit rundown, and my do-it-yourself repairs over the years were sorely lacking. We embarked on a major renovation that changed our home's character to something more fashionable for the times — kind of a stone McMansion. We cut down most of the trees in the yard and widened the sidewalks.

That 1980s style didn't stand the test of time. In our haste to remodel, we had used a poor design and impractical building materials. Once again, my fix-it projects weren't holding up so well. In 2013, we decided to tear it down and build a new house that would be the envy of the neighborhood.

It took a couple more years to actually get started. We set a firm budget of $500,000. We were excited about adding some large doors to access the backyard, something that the other two iterations of our house had lacked. We planned the new house to be built of a lovely brick, rather like the original house. We also would replace the old fence that surrounded the yard.

We hired a top-notch architect who developed expensive plans. The drawings were beautiful, but the architect nixed the doors to the backyard because they'd be too expensive and ruined the aesthetic. We were disappointed, but we went ahead with demolition anyway. We moved into a small apartment in an inconvenient location, expecting to be back into our new house in two years.

We sent our drawings to several contractors for bids. We got just one response from a builder who wanted $750,000. We were shocked and conferred with our architect. The brick he had suggested was very expensive, so we decided to go with vinyl siding instead, but a fancy type of vinyl. Also, the new fence was a good chunk of money. We discovered that since the fence was my neighbor's, we could force him to pay the cost of replacing it.

So, with those adjustments, we got a new bid that came in right at $500,000. The contractor got started a year or so later than we wanted, and we realized we'd be stuck in our cramped rental for three years.

Our building project turned out to be a catalyst for a few neighbors to build beautiful new houses. However, other neighbors got sick of living next to our huge construction site and up and left. Their old, empty, boarded-up houses are still sitting for sale, which makes the whole area look a bit sad.

We finally moved into our new house on Nov. 16. We invited all of the neighbors to a housewarming party with balloons and music. Not that many showed up. I think they were exasperated with the whole process. Nonetheless, I proudly exclaimed how proud I am that our house was "on time and on budget."

One neighbor reminded me that we originally had hoped to be completed by 2016. Another reminded that we had said we'd only miss two summers in our backyard, but that we had actually missed three. Yet another commented that it was too bad we hadn't added those doors to access the backyard. They would be difficult and expensive to add later.

My neighbor who has to replace the fence is still working on it.

Someone else reminded us that we had planned to use brick and snickered about our vinyl siding. Another commented on how the remaining punch list must be long, given all of the unfinished trim. Many are unhappy that our project drove out several neighbors, resulting in those empty houses in the neighborhood. However, they've heard some nice families may move in and fix things up.