Once you buy a home, you'll find that things are not as simple as they seem.

My uncle, a lifelong carpenter and contractor, had a saying when it came to old houses: "don't fuck with it."

Labor and materials both cost way more than you think, and rarely will a project ever complete without complications.

Personally, I like wood paneling, but let's say you wanted to get rid of it. You hire somebody to take down the wood paneling, and then discover the wall behind it is too damaged to salvage. It's plaster, of course, and the laths are all busted. Repairing the plaster is going to be expensive, and this project is already costing more than you expected, so you opt to cover the entire wall with drywall. This is going to require relocating the outlets, though, so now you need to hire an electrician. The electrician plugs in a tester, and despite having "grounded" outlets, the grounds aren't actually connected to anything. Yikes! Now he's asking if you know what "knob and tube" means...

Now you're staring at a destroyed wall, and the only way to have it fixed is to repair a list of other issues. This $3000 project is now a $13,000 project, and you're thinking that maybe you should have just left the panelling alone.

Replacing a door or window often means having one custom made. Replacing the shingles on your roof often requires removing several layers of old shingles and sometimes even replacing the wood of the roof itself. Nothing is simple like it is on a new home.

The reality is, if you live in an old house, any "home repair" budget is usually spent on structural integrity, safety, or quality of life, with nothing left over for cosmetics. When the foundation is crumbling, water is pooling in your light fixtures, and your furnace just died, you're really not paying attention to the color of the carpeting.