You just bought your first house. Congratulations! But now the real work begins. While you, like 34% of buyers who purchase homes, were probably looking to avoid renovations and electrical repair work, it’s inevitable that you’ll want to do a little bit of upgrading after a while. So if you’re ready to start your first home renovation project, here are a few key mistakes to avoid.
Starting Renovations Too Soon
It’s easy to want to start your home renovations as soon as you’re all moved in, but that might be a big mistake. Unless there’s an aspect of your home that’s putting you in danger or having a negative impact on your quality of life there, it’s best to sit on your renovations for a little while. Learn about how you function in your home and after a few months, reassess to see if you’re still feeling comfortable about that. If something still doesn’t feel right, then you can start thinking about how to improve the flow of your life in your home.
Failing to Accurately Estimate Costs
It’s an unfortunate truth, but home renovations are often much more expensive than they seem to be at first. Even though home renovations like installing a metal roof can save energy by reflecting up to 85% of sunlight away from your home, they’re still a big investment up front. So before you commit to working with a contracting firm for your home renovation, make sure you have a completely accurate idea of what the project you have in mind is going to cost.
Going with the Lowest Bid
In a similar vein to underestimating how much of an investment your home renovation is going to be, make sure you don’t automatically go for the lowest bid when it comes to hiring a designer or contractor for the work. It might seem like you’re getting a great deal at first, but offers like that are usually too good to be true. It’s smart to shop around until you find a price you’re comfortable with and craftsmanship that you’d be proud to have in your own home.
Failing to Set a Timeline
When you sing on with your designer and contractor, you should be able to get a general timeline for the project. But if you have a big event coming up or family coming to visit and you need your renovation done before that point, you need to plan specifically for that! Letting your contracting agency know what kind of timeline you have is essential to making sure your project is completed when you need it to be. And if your timeline isn’t realistic for the scale of the project you’re taking on, it’s in your best interests to delay until further notice. Shoddy work is a terrible price to pay for getting things done “on time.”
Trying to DIY a Big Renovation
If there’s one mistake that’s worse than all of the others combined, it’s trying to be your own contractor and DIY-ing a home renovation. There’s vital information that an experienced general contractor will have that you don’t. For instance, there are about 100 nails in the average wooden pallet, which you might need to know if you’re using pallets for a project. Without the proper knowledge of construction for your renovation project, you could end up botching your project or seriously injuring yourself. Don’t do it!
A home renovation can be a super exciting undertaking. But when you’re ready to start your first home renovation, make sure you’re doing things the right way and not making any of these mistakes.
