Suggestion: Build a personal museum room around a few Bugattis and Bentleys. (Build it at ground level!) Wait until the judges approve of the renovation, then tear down a wall to take the vehicles out.
I could do it, but only by doing some truly rediculous stuff on the inside.
We would have to gut the house to the beams, and then rebuild the entire insides, new wiring, new piping, everything. Push the attic up a few feet, and turn it into a livable space, outlets, and maybe a small sink. Guest quarters, so to speak.
Along those lines, redig the entire basement so it’s a few feet deeper, and then finish it. Completely water proof the basement, and redo the piping that connects us to the sewer system. Basement becomes a workout room and crafts room, with a corner devoted to laundry.
Entire house would be digitized, with everything controllable from a couple of tablets or ipads. The most energy efficient windows, insulation, everything. Do top of the line cutting edge solar power system.
Secret passages, maybe even a secret room built into the basement.
Sadly, I don’t think this would even come close to 3/4 of the money.
Basement and subbasement. Put computer systems in cooled subbasement and have wired outlets in every room. Maxed-out theater in basement. Strip out and rebuild interior with top of the line materials, expand our dinky bathroom to include the bedroom next to it and put in a spa tub and a multi-jet shower. Tell My Beloved to created the bedroom of her dreams after we knock down the wall between the last two bedrooms. Subscribe to 10 different beer of the month clubs(to accessorize the new walk-in fridge in the new kitchen, of course.)
I bet I could do it. My house was built in 1870 and has a lot of updating that could be done, electrical, plumbing, etc.
[ol]
[li]Tear down kitchen/bathroom addition, build it back right with a basement and everything.[/li][li]Tear out all plaster walls, replace with drywall. Add insulation and proper wiring while I’m in there.[/li][li]Probably replace entire second floor’s floor. Maybe put in-floor heating?[/li][li]Replace ancient boiler and hot water heater with the newest, bestest stuff. I’ll have to weigh my options with replacing the boiler/radiatiors with something different.[/li][li]Solar panals on the roof[/li][li]Refinish all wood inside[/li][li]Addon: ground floor is a new office, upstairs bedroom, downstairs more basement.[/li][li]New garage that you can actually put a car in.[/li][li]Replace old concrete patio pads[/li][/ol]
Some really expensive city homes, have added living space by digging out basements, or digging whole extra floors. For prime real estate, say in a fashionable London or NY neighbourhood, doing this well (adapting the sewers!) and finishing it real chic might cost that much, and still be worth it.
One chic example is an hotel in my hometown Maastricht. Almost twenty feet below the current street level, they found Roman remains from ) AD. They excavated the cellar and made it into a restaurant/commercial meeting room, while leaving the Roman remains of a temple visible as conversation pieces. It is beautiful, I always show it to guests visiting here. It is an underground acheological lair and it might easily have cost one mil.
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Oddly enough, we dug out our basement and in Petworth, the neighborhood that blogger is the prince of.
Didn’t cost us a million, though.
For that much money I could buy the two family house of which I rent half and do some hardcore renovations. I think unless I gilded a couple of the ceilings I’d have trouble spending all of it on the house, but I’d sure try.
First I’d upgrade some basics. New windows for sure, the kind that flip in so I can clean them easily. I’d have the wood floors refinished, the gutters cleaned, and the exterior power-washed. I suspect it’s probably going to be time for a new roof soon enough that I’d do that. The siding is in good shape, but I don’t care for the color, so that’s on the list but let’s leave it for last.
My mom has a heated floor in her bathroom. I’d get that. But first I’d convert the small bedroom to a master bath, heat that floor, and make the current bathroom into an insanely organized walk in closet.
Can some of the money be used for upkeep? The management company is supposed to maintain the yard, but all that means to them is that every couple of months a guy comes by and cuts the whole lawn with a weed whacker. No really. I think almost every neighborhood has a house that frustrates the neighbors, and in our neighborhood I think I live in it. I’d love to put money into some beautiful landscaping but I have no gardening skills so I’d like to be able to use some of the money for a service to keep it up.
I’d regrade the driveway and make the garage bays under the house into finished rooms, I’d finish and trick out the laundry room to be watertight and spider resistant with a sink and room for an ironing board and a clothes rod to hang stuff on.
I don’t think we’re at a million yet so I’d add a gorgeous deck with a magazine worthy outdoor kitchen, with a sink and everything.
I’d have all the mahogany doors stripped and refinished. The sidelights on the front door would be changed to stained glass. I’d have the whole of the interior and exterior painted by proper professional painters who really prepped everything. The guys from building maintenance who painted our place didn’t tape or sand or fill or remove ANYTHING. Switch plates and outlets are painted over, there are flies painted into the windowsills, and places where you can clearly see that they painted over pieces of scotch tape on the walls. Who does that?
I can’ t believe I typed this much before I remembered central air. CENTRAL AIR!
I’d also research whether it would make sense to convert from oil heat to another type. Ooh, and I’d restore the fireplaces to working condition. (I think that’s likely just having the chimney cleaned, but I’m not sure.)
Thanks for starting this thread. This was so much more fun to think about than any of the stuff I was supposed to be thinking about this afternoon.
Just keep adding more sub-basements until you hit the limit. Easy peasy (as long as you don’t live somewhere with a high water table).
Labor is such a big part of renovation costs that how much people are going to be able to spend will vary considerably by location. I’m pretty sure I could blow through $1 million without breaking much of a sweat. My house is about 70 years old and in dire need of a lot of updates. Major projects that I’d consider - that wouldn’t substantially alter the footprint of the house or make the house out of keeping with the neighborhood - include:
- Turning the attic into a bedroom and bathroom and putting in a staircase to the attic.
- Substantially expanding the master bedroom (including going through a load-bearing exterior wall) and adding a bathroom and large closet.
- Putting a laundry room on the second floor.
- Waterproofing and finishing the basement, including adding an exterior door and a bathroom. Adding a door would involve some excavation.
- Tearing down and rebuilding the den.
- Converting the first floor half bath to a big pantry.
- Adding a front porch and a back deck.
- Adding some sort of outdoor storage, like a nice big shed, big enough for the bicycles and lawnmowers.
- Adding solar panels.
- Lots of small stuff: landscaping, refinishing/replacing floors, adding built-ins, updating the fireplace, replacing some cabinets, painting, furniture, etc.
We remodeled the kitchen about 9 years ago and I’m still pretty happy with it, but if I still had money to burn I wouldn’t hesitate to do some more in there.
No problem.
Gut the place to the bare studs on the inside, get rid of the knob and tube wiring and rewire, replumb, insulate the place to the extreme, replace the woodwork and put in new plaster walls. Radiant heat, central air conditioning. Secret sub-basement would be cool. Tuck pointing and new roof and paintjob for the outside. Add an elevator.
Not a million bucks yet, you say? No problem. Remember the old saying, “Fast, Good or Cheap. Pick two”? I want all this done in a week.
I’d attach rotors and/or giant balloons so I could move it around.
n/m
No golden gargoyles? Bah.
That is very cool.
I love the second picture of the basement!
That is very, very cool.
We have a 40 year old ~1000 square foot bungalow in a modest neighbourhood - we have all kinds of plans for things we could do to it, but I don’t think we’d hit a million, either. The plans include:
- All new windows and doors.
- Finish the basement with a large, opulent bathroom and media room.
- Blow out the back wall of the house, turning the space into a pantry/laundry room off the kitchen and enlarging the master bedroom.
- Possibly adding a second story so we can have a panoramic view overlooking the airport.
- Large amounts of yard updates, including a patio in the back with raised planting beds.
With all that extra money, we could look at re-doing the whole main floor, too, with all the best materials, making it exactly the way we want it.
Easy - buy the other side of the duplex, put in some modest improvements in flooring and fixtures, and the rest goes into the underground supervillain survival bunker.
Excellent user name and post combo. 
Give Hildi Santo-Tomas $200,000 to redesign the interior.
Spend $800.000 to fix the results.
My husband is already working on networking the whole house so we can have a central server with all our movies and music on it, accessible from everywhere. We could start eating up that money by upgrading that project and putting in speakers and screens all over the place, along with upgrading the house’s very old wiring.
After that, let’s gut the kitchen and build that from scratch, tearing down a wall to open the place up. New high-end appliances, giant sink, useful cabinets, and a springy floor so it’s comfy to stand on. Then let’s replace all the old carpets with hardwood or super-lush carpet. Gut and rebuild all the bathrooms.
Replace all the windows, including the big bay windows. Put a wood-burning furnace insert into the fireplace. Green the place up with solar panels (I think geothermal may be pushing the budget), and pump up the insulation in the attic and crawlspace.
Do I have any money left? Let’s go ahead and repair the pool, re-do the concrete around it with the pretty patterned stuff, and rebuild the deck. Update all the landscaping, front and back, demolish the two sheds and replace them with a well built pool shed and a greenhouse.
If I were you I’d have at least an extra $75K on hand. I’ve yet to see a large project actually completed on budget. I hear it happens though.
Be sure to spend all that loot upgrading your house in some way that gives a real boost to the property value when you then have to sell it to pay your income taxes on your winnings.