Pull Off a Major Home Renovation Project
Planning a bigger home renovation project is not outside of the average person’s abilities, it just takes more time in most cases and has to be approached with a responsible attitude. The good news is, as long as you understand your own requirements and financial situation and take the time to scout out the market for attractive deals on every aspect of the job, it shouldn’t take long before you’re already living in your dream home.
How to Pull Off a Major Home Renovation Project
Know Your Budget
Knowing how much money you have available now is not the same as having a good understanding of your budget in the context of a large-scale home renovation job. Make sure that you can afford to pull off the whole project, as well as support your new home after the job is finished. You might find yourself with some new expenses that you didn’t have before, especially if you install any new additions to the house.
It should go without saying that you should start saving up for your renovation project as early as possible and explore all financing channels available to you. Don’t be afraid to take out a loan if you can responsibly fit it into your finances and you have a good idea of how you’re going to repay it over its assigned duration. Of course, don’t go overboard either, and always maintain a good overview of how much you’re spending and what exactly your money is going towards.
Start Early Enough
Scheduling conflicts tend to be one of the biggest problems that usually come up in home renovation projects and avoiding them is as easy as just starting out early enough. Ensure that any contractors you’ll be using will be available for the entire duration of the project, and ideally, a little after that as well. You’ll likely run into the need to make adjustments to the house after the renovation job is completed, especially if it’s a more complicated project with multiple aspects that may require the coordination of multiple types of contractors.
Don’t Cut Corners with Contractors
Another common mistake that people tend to make when renovating their homes – especially those doing it for the first time – is that they think they can be clever by looking for shortcuts when hiring contractors. The truth is, you get what you pay for with every kind of specialist. Take plumbers, for example – there’s a world of difference between an average plumbing company and plumbers recommended by experienced building contractors. You can easily find out the experience of a plumbing company through their website. Taking the plumbers Bristol has to offer at Plumbing Care Services as an example, you can easily see on their website that their plumbers have guaranteed level 3 NVQ qualifications and the company as a whole has 50 years in the industry with staff from backgrounds in British Gas. All it took was a simple Google search of “Bristol emergency plumbers” for us to find this company and their experience was made clear on their homepage.
Sure, it will cost you a little extra to get the right kinds of specialists on the job, but considering the long-term implications of your renovation, this isn’t really the time to look for suspiciously good bargains. Plus, if you’re familiar with your budget like we described above, hiring local contractors shouldn’t be that much of an issue.
Watch Out for Permits
Some parts of your renovation project may require special permits, especially if you’re looking into something like expanding the place with new rooms or even a new floor. Don’t think that nobody is going to care what you’re doing to the house just because it’s your own. There are various regulations regarding what you can and can’t do to your property, and it can be a financial and legal nightmare to find yourself in a situation where the renovation is already complete, and you suddenly find out something about it is not up to code.
It won’t be your contractors’ responsibility to undo the faulty work for free in that case, and you may end up in a very difficult situation, not to mention the fact that you’ll lose the new improvements to your home.
Talk to Your Neighbours
Last but not least, this is a point of courtesy that many people unfortunately forget. If you’re planning anything that’s going to involve heavy machinery, especially for extended periods of time, your neighbours will probably appreciate a heads-up before you start the project. Maybe not everyone will be in a position to move somewhere else for the duration of your renovation, but those who’re currently planning their holiday schedules may appreciate knowing that they have an attractive period available.
The rest comes down to, of course, knowing what exactly you’re trying to achieve with your home renovation project in the first place. Having a list of goals that you keep updating over time may not be a bad idea, and this will also give you an opportunity to think through some of those ideas more carefully before putting them into action. Not everything that you come up with is going to be a suitable idea for a home renovation project and having enough time to think through all of those points is going to prove important.
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Pull Off a Major Home Renovation Project is a feature post – you mihgt also like my posy on the pros and cons of buying an old house
