What You Need to Know When Starting a Home Renovation?

Are you moving into a new house that you want to renovate or renovating your house you are living in for an interior change or an upgrade? If you are new to this game you need to know the important aspects of home renovation way before starting the project. We will guide you and give you a few key tips to make your home renovation easy and economical. So here is what you need to know when starting a home renovation:

Budget

Planning a budget for home renovation and sticking to it is the most challenging part if someone is renovating a house for the first time. Pretty much everything depends on the money, amount of work you can do, type of material, quality of contractor you can afford and when you need to stop renovating. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind when planning a budget for home renovation:

• Make a priority list of the changes you want and define the scope of this change.
• Make a remodeling plan with a cost estimation of each change.
• If you want to save money, do it yourself - but only if you are a good handyman and have the time to do it.
• Always keep 15 percent of your total budget aside for emergencies because the task of home renovation is always full of surprises; you never know what is behind those walls or under the floor. Any emergency cost can pop up out of nowhere.

Live In The House Before Renovating

It is like a golden rule of home renovation. You need to spend some time in the space to understand the flow of how things run in the house; take note on which parts need to be fixed to which extent and decide what changes would look good. Spending some time in the house before renovation also gives a good idea about where you want to put that stuff, which piece of furniture complements which room, and where does the laundry go, etc. Spending this time in the space, imagining the place put together after renovation upfront protects you from many mistakes.

Choosing Good Materials

You can save money in the long run by going with higher quality material. You should find the balance in picking materials that get the highest return on your investment. If you go with cheaper materials, it will save you some money in the short term but in the long term it ends up costing you more. So buy high-quality material for your project. If you are a person who doesn’t have much knowledge about the market, you can consult online reviews. Remember that picking good quality material will give you the look and finish you want; cheap alternatives will spoil that too easily.
Look at some lifestyle stores like IKEA to get some new ideas.

Hire A Professional

If you’re doing major restructuring which is more than just changing the look of your house then you must hire a professional contractor which is much better than giving multiple jobs to many individual workers. A professional contractor will examine the house in detail and will determine the exact work requirements and give you the total cost estimate. He will have a team of expert workers and you will not have to worry about individual workers. A single contractor will save you the headache of working with multiple workers and avoiding inconsistent work quality.

Add value to your house

While you doing modifications and renovations think of adding value to your house. You can change the look and feel of your house by adding a new porch or re-design the garden, add exterior and interior fancy lights or even install a new hot tub. You can look for some great reviews of hot tubs. The house will look fancier as it will increase the overall market value for the house or rental value if you plan to rent it out.

Some points to remember while planning Home Renovations

• Not everything goes according to your plan. Keep some budget for corrections/ modifications or even changes that you may want to make.
• Hire a professional contractor from the start. This will make your life easy. Trying to handle things on your own will only lead to regrets later and in many cases, you may end up paying for a lot more.
• Do as much research as possible before starting anything. There are plenty of resources available on-line. Check them out thoroughly. Compare prices, material and read about the experiences of others. Homeowners are ready to share their knowledge and stories in various blogs, websites, and forums such as Remodelista.com. Best of all - it is all free.
• Listen to your contractor. Sure, he is there to make money but an honest contractor will give you sane advice since he has the knowledge and experience of doing similar projects. You have to have mutual trust. Continuously communicating with your contractor is important. Try to write in as much detail as possible what you want. If he has some concerns, listen to him, so that you don’t have surprises at the end.
• Limit your scope. Carefully choose what you can easily accomplish within your budget. Overambitious projects usually go over budget. Making too many changes can seriously affect the essence of the central theme and design of the home. Keep the overall aesthetics in mind while making the changes.
• Underestimating changes can be financially challenging. A change that you thought might be very minute might cost way more than what you thought. Planning is essential.
• Also, Make a timeline of the project and discuss and finalize the schedule with the contractor. A project without a timeline may take on forever to complete and will cost you even more.
• Measure everything and get good estimates. Be prepared for some adjustments. Although nothing can be planned 100% from the start but still try to be as thorough as possible in your planning.

Conclusion

Good planning is the base on which you start the renovation process. You should spend a significant amount of time thinking and sorting out every detail beforehand. Find the best professional contractor for the job. Do the research about both the changes you want and the material you want to use. Do not compromise on quality. Ensure that you renovate your home within the allocated timeline and budget. And finally, keep everything in writing.

Peter Rossi, Bespoke Hot Tub Designer, ex-Jacuzzi Head of Product Design