Giving Your Home A Facelift – An Essential Guide To Renovations

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home facelift guide

 

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Taking on a renovation project can be a serious undertaking. Making an older property new takes planning, finances, and patience. But done right it can be a worthwhile and satisfying project to complete. It can also improve your quality of life as well as the value of your home. But how do you go about renovating a property and what pitfalls do you need to avoid? Read on to find out.

Initial planning stage

Before you start ripping down walls or pulling out old bathrooms suites, it is necessary to have a serious planning session. In the session, you should decide what things you want to do during the renovation. For example, it may be that you want to install new bathrooms. But your budget dictates that you can only complete the main family bathroom first. Then you will have to do the other ones in stages when the funds become available.

You also need to arrive at a ballpark budget figure for your budget. This needs to take into account both what needs doing and the funds that you have available. If these things don’t match, then you will need to either find more funding by taking out a loan. You can find out some information about home improvement loans on sites like https://www.primelending.com/renovate-home/.  Or if you don’t want to borrow more money you will have to scale back your plans for the renovation.

home renovations guide

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The idea of this initial planning stage is to come up with an approximate overall plan of what needs doing and what the total budget will be. Once you have this in place, then you can move onto the next stage.

Design stage

This section is the design stage. This is when you look at each individual part of the renovation and factor in exactly what needs doing and what you want the end result to look like.

You will need to go room by room if you are renovating the whole house. Don’t forget the garden and the outside of the house including the roof either.

It can be useful to create mood boards for the separate rooms to convey the colors and textures that will be used in them. In can also help you on the journey to what the final finishes and furnishings will be.

It is important at this stage that you do not forget to include any additional work that may need to occur to get each room up to standard.

You may have a sleek modern bathroom with a walk in wet room planned. But you must also think about things in others parts of the house that will have an effect on this. So if you wet room is upstairs, will you need to take extra precautions to ensure that it doesn’t leak into the space below? Also is the plunging in your old property up to managing a high power shower? It is common to discover that things like water heaters may need to be repaired or replaced before they are up to your renovated homes new standard. You can get some more information on things like water heater repair at www.benfranklinclt.com/water-heater-repair-charlotte-nc/.

guide to home facelift

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Quotations and budgets

Once you have a distinct plan for each room, and how each room affects the building as a whole, then you can move into pinning down the numbers.

It is best to request quotations from a variety of local firms, so you can see who will be the best value. Remember that the cheapest isn’t always the best, as it depends on what services they are offering and how much experience they have in the field.

It also depends on when you contractors will be available. As this can be a major deciding factor if you are keen to get the project moving.

Deciding the order of works

Availability leads into the next stage of the process which is the schedule of works. This is basically a timeline document that you, as the project manager, need to devise.

It will show what is being done on what day, where and by whom. This will allow you to schedule in other non-related works around what is already happening to save time.

guide to home renovation

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Just remember that some things are dependent on what goes before them. For example, you cannot get the carpet laid if you are still having the walls skimmed. As not only will the contractors get into each other’s way, but the carpets run the risk of being ruined by wet falling plaster!

While the working is happening

There are two main things to be aware of during the time when the work is occurring. The first is where you will live?

If you are renovating the house, you are living in as a home, you will need to ensure that you leave enough space untouched to live there successfully. That means you will need access to water, heat, and light as well as space to sleep, and cook.

The second thing that you need to be aware of while the tasks are being done is monitoring the standard of the work, and the progress of the contractors.

It is important that you receive the finished that you expect and have paid for. It is also important to meet your schedule of works deadlines as much as possible, as not doing so will put the entire product behind. However, it is worth noting that some delays will be inevitable, in a project like this so you will need to factor in some flexibility.  

Once the work is completed

Once the majority of the structural work in you renovation has been completed you can start to consider the interior decor. Get walls painted, and carpets laid before you start to install furniture into the rooms. It is also best to get curtains hung quickly to ensure privacy and keep the heat in.

Remember, each room will need different items to make it complete. Don’t forget bathroom linens like towels and bath mats or blackout curtain in rooms that overlook street lamps.

But know when to stop too. It can be easy to get carried away when you have been working on a project like this for a long time. But try to remember that the point in renovating your home is so that you can enjoy living in a house finished to a higher standard.

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