The need to renovate your home is commonly realised by the changing demands of your family. Some of these renovations includes a new room after an addition to the family, the need to expand living space, a new style preference that leads to the desire to repaint or refurnish, and even life events which require new function area that would eventually lead to knocking down walls or raising the ceiling.
If you’re thinking of renovating your home, it’s helpful to know the basics. Here are some handy tidbits that you need to know when the time for an upgrade comes.
- Renovating your home isn’t like one of those DIY shows that takes about 30 minutes to finish. You should now know this for a fact. Renovation is complex, difficult and real.
- Look at the condition of your current home. Your home can present issues that you may not have been aware of until you started renovating. Without careful evaluation, what you consider a simple renovation project could prove costly and time consuming. It’s important to look beyond the floor plan and assess all the unseen elements. Consult professionals like building inspectors, electricians and engineers to find out the condition of your home.
- Look for a good builder. Renovating your home sure does sounds fun and easy that you almost would like to do it yourself. But, hiring a good builder is a good way to save you time and money. Managing a renovation all by yourself can be very frustrating as it takes management skills like administering a timeline with a lot of working parts.
- Plan your renovation budget. Do not just only take quotes as an actual price for the budget to avoid ending up with a lot of add-ons that would cost you additional hundreds or thousands of dollars. What you can do is add an “unexpected allowance” to the quote, because until the renovation’s completely done, you’ll never know what else could blow the budget.
- Expect that there will be waiting times. Some components of your renovation may take a while to arrive. Also, the lack of skilled workers means you have to wait to get certain types of work done.
- Don’t overspend on your renovation. Spending too much money on your home renovation also means overcapitalising in the real estate market. Don’t spend more money on your home that you aren’t likely to recover if you have to sell it tomorrow. Pay attention to prices in your neighbourhood and its surrounding area. If the costs of your renovation keeps increasing, and you will want to sell soon afterwards, then you may need to reconsider your makeover project and its budget.
- Always do your research first and consult with the experts. So far, you’ve considered a lot of questions. Remember, it’s important to speak to the experts, get detailed estimation costs, consider more than one quote, and acquire referrals or references from trusted sources.
