A Simple Guide to Planning Your Home Renovations

Renovating your home is an extremely exciting endeavour, but not one that we necessarily look forward to with any degree of pleasure. Renovations are disruptive events, with short-term pain in the form of costs, mess and inconvenience – but the results are well worth it. A lot of the headaches involved in renovation can be handled early, by simply having a strong grip on planning and execution. What are some simple ways to do this?

Initial Planning

All home renovations start with a dream. That dream may be as fantastical as the perfect new bedroom, or as mundane as a re-fitted en-suite bathroom; still, the dream needs, in some way, realising before it is enacted. This means taking some time to draw out initial plans for your renovation. Doing this can help you ideate, and iterate, for the best possible project shape. It can also give you a great place to start when it comes to budgeting. Speaking of which:

Budgeting

After settling on the exact nature of your home renovations, you are now able to make some general calculations regarding cost – and use these general figures to inform your financial decision-making. Renovations are always costly, no matter their size or scope, which makes financial planning nothing short of vital.

Rather than aiming to have all the money needed for such renovations in the form of savings, you can take a smart financial short-cut and use your property as leverage. A secured loan can fund any construction work without jeopardising your own savings, while serving to improve the value of your home in the process.

Hiring Contractors

With your budget squared away and the generalities of your renovations well decided-upon, your next step will be to hunt for the right contracting team to take on the work on your behalf. While it may be tempting to consider the DIY route for as much of your home renovation project as possible, contractors are a necessity for larger-scale and complex undertakings such as the building of an extension, plumbing of a new bathroom or rerouting of electrical wiring.

As such, hiring skilled tradespeople is an unavoidable task, and one that will improve the safety and quality of the project in situ as well as afterwards. Choosing contractors can be difficult for the layperson, but a foolproof method is to combine customer reviews and testimonials with quotes and discussion; fielding pitches from a few different companies will give you an idea of the best ratio between cost and quality.

Materials

Depending on the size of the project and the contractors you choose, there may be another planning stage involving a professional architect before you begin. This is your final opportunity to make some decisions regarding the materials you use. In the case of an extension, this could mean anything from the colour of the bricks used to the possibility of experimental metal cladding. Again, price against quality is the ratio with which you are dealing – but this is also a chance to guide your renovations a little closer to your initial dream.