There have been times, with various crises, where I only half considered if indoor plumbing was such a great thing. But that's probably a very old-fashioned New England thing.
The open workroom was a relatively short fad pioneered by Frank Lloyd Wright. If you look at office buildings before that, they're much more similar to houses and apartments. Lots of rooms connected by hallways, staircases, and atriums. You can imagine the difficulty and expense of lighting a large open space without electricity.
How many renters would even want to replace appliances, get new insulation installed, get all their lights replaced, etc.?
I had a bunch of work done after a kitchen fire in my house and it did genuinely cut my electrical bill. It also cost a lot of money and is something I wouldn't have done by choice especially in a rental property.
You would certainly need to be a serious long-term renter.
I purchased a home with a walk-out basement (brick exterior, cinder block foundation, >80% above grade). As it turned out, the prior owners had pulled a fast one and faked their framing with 1x4s and added no insulation. Our monthly power bills ranged from 400-500$ on a 2,000 sqft home.
I spent most of last year gutting the interior of the basement, framing, plumbing, electrical, insulation (R-13 fiberglass batt insulation), Sheetrock, paint, trim, flooring (laminate @ 2$ per sqft). I spent approximately $10k on this project doing the labor myself.
As a result, my bills are now in the 200-250 range. I had the insulation work done by 01/2025 for context. So, perhaps a new efficient water heater? But any serious work is unlikely to be worth the costs.
That’s an incredibly low rate for the breadth and depth of work here. I, a homeowner, can do all of this work with no permitting involved and no certification. Were I to hire out to a GC he’s going to sub out to a plumber and electrician at a minimum. Probably also a drywall+paint crew. Maybe they’ll handle trim and flooring? Who knows!
My in-laws, a cost conscious couple, recently had a bathroom remodel. Nothing fancy or Gucci about it. Materials could not have been any more than 10k and reasonably closer to 5k - it was 45k total for the entire job.
I can’t give you an exact man-hours count but it was less than 40 hours of real-time but with 2 or 3 man crews. Let’s ballpark and say 100 man hours.
So you want to gut and finish a basement? That’s far worse than 10k more in my state of South Carolina.
A bathroom remodel cost me almost $20K 6 or 7 years back. And that was a small bathroom and keeping a couple of cabinets.
More recently I had a kitchen fire that mostly involved redoing the kitchen completely but also involved move-out/in, seal/paint, for the rest of the house and some other things that made sense while everything was ripped up--and that probably ended up >$200K. Insurance covered a lot but I also paid quite a bit out of pocket.
Yes, I was being extremely optimistic with the labor cost. That would really be the lowest possible opportunity cost for the homeowner to do it themselves.
The higher than number goes, the longer the ROI.
Putting in insulation actually has one of the worst ROIs if you outsource the labor.
Replacing kitchen appliances is a quick job for common pieces like refrigerators. Most other kitchen appliances can be done in a day even if they're built-in as long as you get something that occupies the same space.
Insulation upgrades are heavy remodel jobs: Opening the walls requires people to leave the space for the duration of the job. Even if you can stack contractors back to back perfectly it's still a lot of time and displacement.
These things usually happen between renters when the space is vacant. In larger units you can some times shuffle renters between similar spaces but it's a huge pain and they usually don't want to do it.
Some things are less standardized than others. That said my kitchen was totally redone after a fire. Dishwasher was basically a 1 for 1 replacement pre-fire but everything else had to be redone.
Most kitchen appliances are very standardized. Refrigerators come in certain widths (30", 32", 34"). Over the range microwaves are a standard size. Dishwashers fit into a 24" wide space unless you specifically get a compact or oversized dishwasher (rare). Ovens come in certain widths.
It's rare to have a kitchen appliance that requires a specialized space that you have to build the kitchen around. Unless you're dealing with odd very high end appliances, a skilled installer can almost always find something from the local home store that fits into the old space.
(Source: Time spent in construction and renovation)
> I got cabinet above fridge taken out because fridges have basically gotten taller.
You're right that refrigerator heights aren't standardized but you must have had a really short space if nothing at all would fit.
Installations are typically supposed to leave some additional clearance for the heat to escape from behind, although some builders will try to tightly integrate them for a different look. (High end and commercial refrigerators are designed to actively exhaust and don't have the same limitations)
"Something" would have fitted but it would have been a big volume downgrade. In any case, fire happened and all the cabinetry and appliances came out anyway. So things worked out. Had a bit of margin but not enough to accommodate a current French Door fridge.
(Suspect changes in energy regs would have made what I had difficult to accommodate.)
I’ve lived in my rental for ~15 years now (rent control) - to be honest, if I’d known when I moved in how long I’d be here, I’d have paid for some upgrades. It’s not equity, but I do still live here.
Even without rent control, being known by the landlord as a reliable tenant in a troubled apartment/building... is a way to eventually have one of the least expensive apartments in an area, through a series of only small rent increases.[1]
Every little repair and upgrade I've made has been more than worthwhile, and I only wish I had made more.
Though, a friend in a nicer place went and made a deal with his landlord, for landlord to pay for only materials for substantial DIY renovation friend would do. Suddenly, his apartment had higher market value...
[1] Unless landlord participates in RealPage/YieldStar, and is pushed to illegal price-fixing.
I've had a bunch of windows replaced over time. It is expensive but some had gotten really ugly looking--in addition to being, I'm sure very inefficient. I have oil heat and have just never seen the justification for solar especially given my electrical usage and all the scammy solar stuff out there.
FWIW, https://indowwindows.com/ (San Francisco) make window inserts that are the exact same size as the existing window, plus a wooden frame, so they look exactly like the existing windows. Mostly for keeping the exterior look of buildings in SF due to regulations, they block out sound and help with temperature control. They're pricey tho.
As for solar. If you have the budget and the disaster preparedness for it, there are some camping grade solar + battery systems that aren't house-grade, but great for power outages. The systems range from small (affordable), to the 1000 Plus, consisting of a battery with 1264Wh capacity and 120 v inverter, along with 200W of solar panels. That one'll run. you $1,500.
Do you have an Indow? I’ve been eyeballing them for a while, but they’re pricy enough I haven’t been willing to call the shot yet.
I do have a pretty big bluetti and a couple panels for it - I also grabbed an RV fridge for storing food. Naturally, the capitalist gods smiled upon my financial offering and have blessed me with steady power since then.
I've done upgrades in rented apartments at my own cost because finding a rental with said upgrades already done was either outright impossible or would've cost even more in rent than the cost of the upgrades spread out over the leasing period.
Many. My entire apartment is filled with large single pane windows. There's zero draft sealing at any of them, nor the front door. I likely pay an additional $100 in electricity a month due to this.
It was noticeably reduced when I took the time to 3M wrap all my windows one winter, but I didn't want to do it again.
As a product manager in the computer industry from the mid 80s into the 90s, Dilbert really resonated with me as satire--except, as you say, when it was barely satire. Not so much except for occasional later strips that really nailed some specific thing.
The story I read long ago was that he had a long-standing agreement with his manager that if his cartooning ever became an issue for his day job, he would leave. Then a new manager came in who basically said "OK."
Dilbert definitely captured a 90s era corporate zeitgeist. But, after he departed PacBell, although there was the occasional strip that really nailed it, Dilbert never really moved on to modern SV/startup/open floor plan tech and it mostly felt like been there, done that. That said, Dilbert in its prime was easily in the top comics I enjoyed.
That’s exactly it. I got into the industry right at that transition, at a startup that sold software into telcos. At the startups we found out what happens when Wally becomes the CEO…
Someone I knew taped a cloud-related strip to my half-cube wall. It was perfect. (I had been hired in early cloud-related days for that purpose.) But there were increasingly fewer things in that vein latterly.
In the US or elsewhere? I've known a lot of people who attended college at 16, and through friends with teenage children know even more these days. They attended (or are attending) schools in a variety of states.
To qualify for general admission to a college, you must have a high school diploma, its equivalent, or be 18 years of age or older.
Unclear whether that is statewide or just a requirement of this state institution. I suspect many of the ones that do have this age requirement also have the diploma exception.
By what you quoted, VA does not require you to be an adult to attend college, if you graduate high school early (or somehow satisfy the diploma requirement early) you can attend college there (assuming you get admitted and meet whatever other requirements they have like SAT scores and such). That's not an example of a state barring minors from attending college.
Probably fair. I think there is a lot of in terms of initially starting school, skipping grades, etc. that it is practically difficult (probably more than it used to be)-and probably a lot of competitive schools that will just go NEXT on the application. More or less obviously, private schools have a lot more flexibility.
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