Being a first-time renovator is a nerve-wracking experience, and for good reason, too. There are a lot of ups and downs to the renovation journey, and sometimes things might not turn out quite the way that you envisioned. Sometimes, they are going to turn out far better than you expected, and sometimes things can go south fast. This is something that many renovators learn the hard way, which is a shame, and it shouldn’t have to be this way. So, to help with that, here are some great hints and tips that every first-time renovator can use to their advantage.
#1 Give Yourself Room
You are going to need to find a place to put any of your worldly possessions that are taking up the renovation space. This can be relatively easy, as you can have storage units to rent out, or even rent out storage containers that can come to you – which isn’t necessarily the problem, but it can get a bit expensive.
You are also going to need to find a service that can help you remove these items and transport them safely to your location. You could use a family truck and get your friends and family to help you. However, with this, there is a major risk of things getting broken, and people getting hurt, which is the last thing that you want when you are doing a renovation.
You are going to want to invest some money in a company that can professionally handle removals of your furniture and transport it to the location that you require, without needing to strain yourself or worry about your possessions getting damaged.
#2 Work Out the Order of Your Renovation
This is a really important factor that can affect your renovation and costs. When it comes to renovating a property, you are going to want to make sure that you are doing it in a certain order:
- Do your upstairs bathroom first. The higher the bathroom is in your house, the higher up on your order list it should be. This is because if there are any problems with the plumbing or you have water damage on the floor, you are going to need to take up the floor. If that happens, you do not want to have the room underneath be recently refurbished.
- Do your kitchen after your bathrooms. This is good as it gets all your plumbing done in the first lump. This is going to get most of the expensive things out of the way too.
- You need to do the rest of the house at the convenience of the rest of the household (i.e., don’t uproot your kids from their bedroom while they are studying for an exam). If it is only you living there – great. You can do it in whatever order you please. If it isn’t, and you have schedules to work around, you might want to rethink your order.
#3 You Are Going to Need to Think About Your Budget
This is important to the completion and success of your renovation, but this can be difficult, especially if what you want is way out of your budget. You are going to want to make sure that you are working to your budget, and you aren’t going over. It can be very easy with a renovation to blow all your money on one room and have that looking amazing, but the rest of the house looks half finished.
#4 Planning
Planning is important. You are going to need to make sure that you have a structured plan of what you want to happen and how you want to end up. As mentioned above, you are going to have to make sure that you are budgeting. A good way to help with the planning process is to get a couple of quotes from different businesses to see what kind of price you are expecting to be faced with and work from there.
#5 Other Things to Consider
There is a world of other things to consider when it comes to looking into a renovation. You are going to need to make sure that you are taking these things into account when you are looking into your renovation for the planning, the implementation, and the completion of your project.
- Do your research. Plan for the time you think it might take and then add some more, and then more again. You also need to make sure that you are doing your research into the reliable contractors in your area, well in advance.
- If you are doing it yourself, there is no harm in making sure that you are using the right tools and that you are using them properly.
- Always bring in a professional electrician and plumber to do these parts of the job. You don’t want a fire hazard or a potential water leak because you couldn’t be bothered to hire a professional. Remember, things can get very expensive very quickly if you don’t do them properly.
