Renovating

Renovating ones home can be an exciting and rewarding experience. The benefits of adding value to your home range from prolonging the life of and increasing the ultimate resale value of your property, to improving your present lifestyle through the added changes to space, design, and or presentation.

This process however can often be a daunting task for many home owners resulting in much frustration and stress. Determining whether one is a DIY (Do It Yourself) renovator or looking to obtain some assistance from differing trades is not only a key piece of the renovation puzzle, but is often a primary source of this frustration for many novice renovators. Thus determining and being realistic about ones time, skill and budget is crucial in making this initial decision. Furthermore finding reliable trades people, establishing a collaborative sequence of works among differing trades when renovating, while maintaining a budget, are further elements that can determine how smooth or rocky this process may be.

Whatever the renovation from repairing squeaky floors, painting a room, updating a bathroom or kitchen, or extending to create space, the things to consider are fundamentally the same. Some of these considerations are as follows.

What are the reasons for the renovation? What is it you are aiming to achieve?

How much can you afford to spend on your renovation? What is your budget?

Does what you want to achieve and what you can afford to spend add up?
This involves weighing up the two points listed above. It is primarily important to determine this prior to the commencement of any works. Much too often people commit to large scale or extravagant renovations without taking the appropriate time to consider the financial outcomes, which results to either significantly exceeding their initial budget, or having to make changes to their initial renovation plans during the construction process. This leads to our next point.

What is your present level of knowledge on what you want to get done?
Do your research. Focus on the specific needs of the renovation project at hand. Utilize resources such as home magazines and the internet to obtain knowledge on the different types and cost of materials, appliances, and fittings. In relation to the internet try and focus on websites that provide solid information as appose to opinionative articles. By educating one’s self prior to committing to any project, one significantly increases the possibility of achieving what was visualized while maintaining a desired budget.

Will you be a DIY renovator, using differing trades, or a combination of both?
As mentioned above determining and being realistic about ones time, skill and budget is crucial in making this initial decision.

Will you be making structural changes to your home? As a result will you be requiring architectural plans, engineering reports, and or planning and building permits for your designated works?

How will the renovation affect yours and your family’s present lifestyle? Will you need to move out of the property while the renovation is taking place? What is the approximate duration of works?

All of the above are important factors that need to be given serious thought when contemplating a renovation. At Nuts & Nails we can assist you in working through these fundamental considerations prior to the commencement of any works. By doing so, we have assisted many individuals and families in setting solid foundations in their renovation endeavours.