You’ve decided to tackle a home renovation project. Now what?
The first thing you need to do before starting any home renovation is to set a budget. You must determine how much you have to spend on the renovation prior to hammering the first nail. Let this number serve as a guide as you make a plan. What is it you want to renovate? What about the room or rooms do you not like? How do you plan to change the room to achieve your vision?
Once you’ve set a budget and determined what you would like to change, it’s time to go shopping. But Wait! This is window shopping. Take a notebook and spend days (or more) browsing the aisles of all relevant stores in your area. You need to price check your local stores, compare prices online & determine the cost of each item you want to change. If you are renovating a bedroom, you may be looking at:
- What is the cost of primer & paint – include brushes, rollers, painters tapes, drop-cloth, etc.
- Do you need to paint the ceiling? This requires additional paint, a longer roller handle, & more labor
- What type of flooring to you want? Carpet or Wood? Include removal & replacement plus specifics such a quality and type (be armed with detailed measurements of the space!)
- Do you need to replace fixtures such as ceiling fans?
- Do you need to replace doors, hinges or knobs?
- Will you be replacing bedding and related accessories?
- What about window treatments?
Try to think of the details and tools you may have to purchase or rent to complete each project. Every penny adds up, quickly!
Once you’ve done your research and made a reasonable price list, compare that to your original budget. Do you have enough money saved to achieve your goals with a bit of wiggle room? If so, you’re good to move on & start transforming your space.
If not. You need to consider the possibilities:
a) Eliminate some of the renovation
b) Downgrade your finishes (maybe that Brazilian Cherry for $6 per sq ft isn’t possible right now)
c) Hold off on the renovation until you can save more money
d) Get out the credit card
To be continued…
This post is linked to Madame Deals, My Coupon Teacher & Life as Mom
Thoughts?
LOVE that they crossed out choice d.
One more tip: Be reasonable when deciding between DIY and hiring a pro.
We set aside the entire homebuyer credit for repairs/renovations. We budgeted it all very carefully, got estimates from multiple contractors, made a list of every single supply needed (even wrote down finishing nails, lol!) To cut costs so we could knock out more projects (and there were a lot of potential projects to choose from since we bought a very old home,) we assigned some of the work as “DIY.” Holy smokes did we make a huge mistake. Especially when things that seemed easy enough (replace a light fixture) turned into a nightmare because of underlying problems we were not aware of (faulty wiring ALL over the house.) Or when we thought demolishing a wall would be all fun and games with a sledge hammer but found the entire wall behind the plaster was brick and mortar and steel mesh. We didn’t even own the tools or have the knowledge to finish those jobs…so (*sigh*) ran our debt up so the pros could finish what we started.
Would have loved to take the advice of cutting down our list of renovations, but silly us signed contracts and were then committed to these jobs…and to paying the people working on them. Maybe other people reading this article with plans to repair/renovate will also read this and not make the same mistakes…lesson learned the hardway right? Have a lovely bathroom addition though!
K,
That is a great point! Older homes can have a host of underlying problems (or slightly newer homes like mine, as we discovered). I think I need an entire post about expecting the unexpected.
That is my hope with these articles. To attempt to help people before they learn the hardway. You were on top of things in the beginning with adding in the finishing nails. Most people don’t think about the details and tools.
I may be using pieces of this in a future post. Thanks so much for sharing! I’m glad you had a lovely bathroom addition in the end!
I’m curious as to why “get out the credit card” is not an option? I understand, as a means on financing the renovation, using a credit card would not be a wise choice, but suppose you have the cash on hand? Using a credit card, espeically a higher-tiered one that pays good rewards (points, miles, etc) would be an absolute must.
The “get out the credit card” was meant as incurring debt to complete renovations. I realize tt’s not always feasible to pay in cash, so having a credit or debit card helps. We put our floors oin the card just because we couldn’t get a cash discount. I then paid off the balance.
Thanks for bringing this up! I guess I should have been more specific about the debt part.
Thanks for pointing that out yall! Financially irresponsible people (blowing 8k on adding a bathroom instead of paying down a massive mountain of debt…) forget credit cards aren’t pure evil for everyone. I didn’t even know using a credit card can get you discounts!!! The only “reward” we get from our credit cards is huge monthly bills sprinkled with outrageous interest charges. 🙂
Budget is so important. It is the key to doing anything the right way! Thanks for linking up!
It’s so important to be on the same page with your spouse, too!! We are in the process of converting half of our garage into an office so that our current office can become a bedroom for baby #2 arriving in March. Luckily, my hubby’s pretty handy, and we have a lot of other handy friends and relatives that have helped out so it is all DIY. But we also have the goal of paying off our student loan before baby arrives, which means our new office budget is relatively tight. In the past, my husband would have just said “oh well” and bought whatever he thought he needed from the most convenient store (regardless of the budget and of my frustration!), but this time he has really been shopping around and impressing me with some of the deals he finds!!