Vacation house gut job - help me help my dad

[Susie]

My dad bought a vacation house almost exactly 2 years ago.  It's a 3 bed/2 bath cape built in 2000, that is bayfront at the Jersey shore and about a 5 minute/2 mile drive to the beach.  Our family uses it in May/June/Sept/Oct for both beach and fishing, and it is rented out for July, August, and winter holidays during the year (TG, Christmas).  I will PIP pics below from his RE listing so you can see what we are/were working with.  

Over MLK weekend, a pipe fitting came apart in the wall behind the upstairs shower valve.  We initially thought it froze, but the house was 60 degrees and furnace was working fine.  It's a copper pipe fitting that was supposed to be inserted about 1/2" before being soldered, and was only actually inserted less than 1/8".  After 20 years it finally came apart.  

The year round next door neighbors realized there was a problem when they saw water leaking out the dryer vent.  They had a key so they turned off the water and power and called my dad.  The next day, my dad came down, called the insurance adjuster, and the demo process started.  The ceiling fell down in the kitchen/DR:


and everything is wet.  The adjuster told him, ballpark, $8-10k in demo, and $75k to rebuild, although insurance will be covering all but his deductible.  All the salvageable possessions/furniture will be removed to temporary storage.  Most of the house will be torn down to the studs, 90% of the sheetrock on the first floor will come down, at least some of the upstairs sheetrock, the hardwood floors, and all the bedroom carpet.  The status of appliances and kitchen cabinets is still TBD.  I'm not sure about the bathrooms.  It's a little overwhelming.  It's like there was a fire, but opposite.  At least it was caught fast enough that there is no mold.  A professional crew is already at work with dehumidifiers, all the carpet is gone, etc.

In the last 2 years we are lucky that most of the monetary investment he had made survived:  fencing, deck/dock repairs, new HVAC, new washer/dryer, and a few other things.  We had just painted the ENTIRE downstairs and 2/3 of the bedrooms though   (The PIPs below are pre-painting.) FML.

So anyway, we have to decide on replacement finishes:

1.  Flooring for the first floor (kitchen/DR/LR/hall).  I liked the old HW, but my dad is vehemently against HW.  He wants tile, and if left to his own devices, would do like a beige 12x12 basically like in the bathrooms.  I don't want that in the LR, even with an area rug.  We someday plan to put in a gas FP, to come home to after cold days of late and early season fishing.  Tile sounds so not-cozy.  I proposed porcelain wood look tile as a compromise, something like this(ish):

but it will still be cold.  First floor radiant heat in a waterfront, at-flood-risk property is a no-go.

Flooring criteria:
- won't scratch easily with sand from the beach
- won't scratch easily with dog toenails (we bring our golden retrievers to vacation there).
- not crazy loud under dog toenails.  I have a laminate in my kitchen that we all hate how loud the dogs sound on it.  
- Reasonably tolerant of getting wet (bay, beach, hurricanes, who knows what tenants do, etc.)
- Relatively light in color so the dog hair doesn't leap out at you from across the room

2.  Flooring for bedrooms + stairs?  This is a small win, as nobody's going to miss the old green carpet in the small bedroom in particular.  Again, I'm pretty confident I won't be able to sell HWs.  

3.  The wall and ceiling replacement is pretty straightforward, but is there anything else we should think about right away?  (We also will not miss the old textured ceiling!)

Here's the house as it was...



 (the kitchen is blue now - no more lavender)
(omg that lavender was so bad)
 Walls were repainted cream, not mint, and no more swag valences.


small/downstairs bedroom

Upstairs:


(front bedroom)

(bay side bedroom)

[aprilsails]

In a beach house I would 100% lay down thick luxury vinyl planking. It would be able to withstand all the issues you noted and there are a lot more options available for finishes now. The only issue would be the future fireplace, but it can easily be cut back and a tile hearth installed right around the fireplace.

As for the bedrooms, I would possibly do tile with jute or easy to clean rugs. I don’t mind that in vacation homes and I’m not as worries about the floor being warm in bedrooms, but more concerned about bed bugs etc if you are doing rentals.

If the kitchen cabinets are mdf then I would plan to replace them. If they are solid wood then they might be ok.

I’m sorry this happened to you. Water damage is brutal.

[munkii]

I don't have time to post a lengthy post; so, I'll throw this out there for now and revisit later. Have you considered LVT? It's warmer than tile underfoot, waterproof, and, depending on the thickness and type of the wear layer, scratch resistant and strong. It comes in several different installation methods (glue down, click, loose lay), a million different patterns and colors, and is pretty inexpensive.

[ellipses84]

I agree with others that luxury vinyl is a great option, and very popular in rentals right now due to its durability, clean ability and price, plus it’s not as hard or cold as tile.

I know first hand how destructive water damage is and I’m glad insurance is covering it. A lot of my neighbors put in tile or epoxy terrazzo in their home, in the hope it could withstand a future flood, but those were slab on grade houses. For upstairs bedrooms even luxury vinyl can be kind of loud, so you may want to think about underlayment if you are doing anything but carpet upstairs. I prefer hardwood or laminate with lots of rugs, but would probably do luxury vinyl for a vacation rental. I might consider carpet for upstairs bedrooms, but go with something similar to what you’d find in a hotel, not typical residential carpet.

[Susie]

Thanks, I suggested LVP to my dad over the weekend, and it turned out that was what the contractor recommended too.  We're still waiting to see if the kitchen cabinets (MDF) and countertops (laminate) survived, but we figure probably not.  Honestly we sort of hope not.  With everything else that's going, it would be nice to just replace.  The contractor typically works on much larger beach houses, and asked my dad if he likes granite -- we joked that he could probably do my dad's kitchen entirely with remnant pieces from his bigger jobs, ha.  This whole process is going to be stressful and a huge PITA, and not anything we'd have wished for, but the silver lining is that in some ways we'll wind up with a house more tailored to our wants than we started with.

One thing we are thinking about now is where we'd like to put in recessed lights in the living room.  There's a ceiling fan in the LR, but no overhead lights, so all light comes from table lamps and the windows.  Having some overhead light is always nice, and while the ceiling is already down is a good time to do it.  We also want to move two of the can lights that are directly over the kitchen sink (the two little ones) out further into the kitchen.  The arrangement of bigger ones will probably be tweaked to accommodate.  Where they are, the work space winds up kind of shadowed.  The positioning is really strange:



I have no idea whether the kitchen cabinets are original to the house, but I kind of think maybe not, and that originally there were no cabinets directly over the sink?  Because otherwise it doesn't make a ton of sense.