Rising costs force homeowners to fix roofs before kitchens
A generation of homeowners is quietly deferring cosmetic dreams to fund structural survival and contractors are learning to meet them there with honesty instead of sales pressure.
The water stain appeared on a Tuesday. MariaGonzalez, a middle-school teacher in suburban Ohio, noticed it spreading slowly across her bedroom ceiling during a particularly rainy October. By the following weekend, the ceiling had buckled in one corner, and a chunk of drywall had collapsed onto her dresser. The repair estimate came back at $4,200 money she had been setting aside for new kitchen cabinets she had been dreaming about for three years. "The cabinets were supposed to be my reward," she said. "But you...
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