Congratulations! You bought a gorgeous home with tall trees, and it’s in a beautiful neighborhood; it has everything you need to build a wonderful life, except the kitchen doesn’t fit your needs, and the bathroom is outdated. And let’s not forget the wall that needs to be removed. It looks like you bought a house with some demolition projects waiting to be done. Or maybe you built a new home a few years ago but have realized you want to make some changes.
Many people attempt to remodel a home or update appliances, with a 36% increase in homeowner remodeling since 2020. My husband and I were of the same mind as today’s homeowners when we bought our home in 2003. Our house was built in 1974 with a small kitchen, awkwardly placed doors in the original part of the house, and an addition with an external entrance between the two rooms. The location was great, but the layout did not fit our family’s needs, so we began to dream of things we would change. I would have loved to knock out the back wall of our kitchen and add six feet, changing our galley kitchen into a large room with long counters that opened into the addition. I dreamed of keeping most of the envelope of the original structure and moving most of the interior walls around to make better use of the square footage. These dreams were far too costly for our budget, so we scaled things down and settled for less expensive solutions for the parts of the house we felt needed to change the most.
Because knowledge is power, my husband and I tried to educate ourselves about the remodeling process to make the best choices. We shopped around and researched materials for durability, cost efficiency, and the bells and whistles we were excited about. We spent a pretty penny making our new home a place of comfort for our growing family, and we thought we were savvy about getting the most out of each dollar. We gathered a lot of information about what we decided to put into the house, but we didn’t think about what we took out. Like most homeowners, the most significant changes we made were upgrades to the kitchen and bathrooms. We ripped out the cabinets, countertop, sink, faucet, appliances, and flooring in the kitchen and took down an interior wall. We replaced the toilets, vanities, sinks, faucets, and lighting in the bathrooms.
Nearly everything we removed during our remodel went to the landfill, and it didn’t have to end up there. At the time, I was sure no one would want our old cabinets and countertops, and no one would buy an old toilet; those things belong in the landfill, or so I thought, but I was wrong. I learned that Portland, Oregon adopted a mandatory deconstruction ordinance in 2015 aimed at diverting 95% of the demolition waste from the waste stream. Portland isn’t the only city to become earth conscious. I began to learn how these items could have been reused with that in mind. Learning about these trends had me thinking about where things end up and how this affects the earth in the long run.
A simple google search led me to a deconstruction company, which is a company specializing in carefully deconstructing existing structures rather than demolishing them. The days of busting out the big sledgehammer and knocking a hole in the wall may soon be gone as humans learn to think of where everything we demolish ends up. But can the average person afford to make this change? I found some numbers from actual deconstruction and rebuild projects other people had done which were encouraging. The cost of deconstruction, appraisal, disposal of trash, donation value, tax benefit, and cost of demolition were all included in the figures, providing a clear comparison of the different approaches for remodeling. The projects I looked at were on a much larger scale than we attempted in our home, but it still seemed that if we had donated our old but still useable pieces, the non-profit could have sold them to benefit their charitable mission and would have been reused elsewhere. That would have been a win for the earth and could have helped a worthwhile cause.
It has been several years since our remodel, and I now work for an appraisal company specializing in preparing taxable donations appraisals. Over the years, I have seen homeowners find value in their donations of deconstruction items. Some homeowners choose to deconstruct the entire building. Some are like us and settle on smaller projects, but most could donate light fixtures, useable flooring, 2”x4” wall studs, doors, doorknobs, electrical boxes, high-end appliances, sinks, faucets, etc. I have learned that what cannot be donated from a deconstruction remodel is much smaller than the list of acceptable items. Choosing alternate options besides the landfill for their construction waste has these folks reaping cash benefits. By thinking ahead, these homeowners recoup a portion of the cost of their remodeling by claiming the donation on their taxes.
When I told my husband about what I saw and how we could have done things differently, he was skeptical, as I am sure many would be, still thinking that our old things would not fall into the category anyone would want. The home we purchased did not have high-end appliances, we did not remodel an entire house, and the demolition we did was so small that we did it ourselves. If we had chosen to donate the materials, it seemed that our donation would not have added up to much. I know the IRS requires a qualified appraisal for a donation worth more than $5,000, and we wondered if the items we donated were worth the cost of the appraisal? While I knew we had not thrown away hundreds of thousands of dollars in useable items, I knew we had removed some heavy French doors with glass panes and bits and pieces that were probably not at the end of their useable lifespan. I decided to see what we might have been able to claim had we chosen to follow the route of deconstructing and donating all those years ago.
A quick look was all it took to find useful information on a just a few items:
-
1.Refrigerator: a base model - Possible Value: $200.
-
2.Kitchen cabinets: wood quite old - Possible Value: $2500
-
3.Toilets: - Possible Value: $175 per each
-
4.Kitchen sink and faucet: - Possible Value: $75
-
5.Doors: - Possible Value: $45 per each
This list does not count the light fixtures, 2”x4” s, door frames, doorknobs, and other building materials. It doesn’t list the bathroom fixtures we replaced. When every useable piece we threw away was added up, we could have claimed quite a bit on a donation of those items. We could have claimed thousands more if these items had been higher-end models. If we had provided all the needed information, donated everything, and obtained a donation receipt, a qualified appraiser could have helped us find value in what we chose to throw away. An appraisal would have been an excellent financial choice, even on that relatively small project. While the difference in what we could have saved would not have covered the larger kitchen of my dreams, we would have enjoyed the tax break.
Today, as I look at the wear and tear on our kitchen and think of how the flow in the kitchen has changed as children have grown and moved out, I am interested in revisiting our remodel. This time I will choose a local non-profit willing to accept a donation of my unwanted pieces, which are better quality than those I removed nearly two decades ago and may have a more considerable fair market value. I will use what I have learned to allow us to claim the value of our donations through obtaining a qualified appraisal, and I also plan on maximizing my savings by shopping for my new cabinets and countertops from a non-profit. By starting the process with the end in mind, I will be one of the many homeowners who know how to harness the power of deconstructing, donating, and claiming the donation, and that’s knowledge I can be proud to hand down to my children.
