Buying your first home is a huge life milestone, and one of the more exciting moments of adult life. However, this life milestone can be just as stressful as it is exciting, and especially when the enormity of your next tasks-at-hand come into focus. Most first homes are doer uppers by nature, whether in need of a few licks of paint or a complete kitchen/bathroom/everything refit.
Getting started with renovation is naturally daunting, but needn’t be – especially if you bear the following key tips in mind as you get stuck in! Mistakes are an inevitable part of getting your house in ship shape, but some mistakes are better-avoided than others… These are five of the most important mistakes to avoid when renovating your home.
Failing to Plan Properly
A good home renovation is largely with thanks to good planning. Juggling a lot of different projects at once can be difficult, and failing to properly stitch all works together into a cohesive timeframe can result in significant costs over time – particularly when it comes to materials and labour.
A successful home renovation also requires that you have a clear and firm idea of what you’d like to achieve. You can’t be making decisions mid-project, or everything could get thrown off – and some things might just finish up worse than you were hoping.
Underestimating Costs
Considering cost is a key part of planning your renovation, as you’ll have a clear – and potentially tight – budget with which to work after the dust has settled on your mortgage and insurance expenditure. The biggest risk here, then, is underestimating just how much your planned works will cost. Labour and materials are major considerations here, particularly for the fast-growing price of each, but even small costs like those attached to planning permission can be enough to trip you up.
Choosing the Wrong Contractors
One of the costlier mistakes you can make overall – financially, and with regard to your sanity – is choosing the wrong contractors for the job. Some contracting teams are much less reputable than others, trade industries being rife with ‘cowboys’. Your instinct should be to avoid professional negligence on the part of your contractors; choosing a team that’s worked for friends and family before, or which has received positive testimonials on a third-party forum.
Impractical Design
Renovating your home is exciting enough, at the design phase, that you can get carried away with ideas. But coming up with things on paper is very different to realising them in your home – at which point it can become abundantly clear that your plans are simply impractical. This comes back to proper planning; think carefully about the practicality of your plans as well as the cool factor!
DIY-ing Above Your Abilities
Lastly, you’ll naturally be tackling some renovation projects DIY – whether for fun, or simply to keep costs down. This is fine, but don’t try to DIY above your abilities. Learning is fun, but the cost of failure when it comes to something like plumbing or electrics can be far greater than a bruised ego.
