What To Prioritise When Renovating Your House

Whether you’ve taken on an old wreck or are just tired of your old décor, sometimes renovation projects can be extensive. Overhauling the appearance of your home can range from anything from a small paint job to stripping back the floorboards. Not only can it be a huge drain on time, but sometimes on your budget. Before you start chipping away wallpaper or pulling up old carpet, it’s a good idea to get a sense of what you need to prioritise.

The result of the survey

If you’re planning to go for a top-to-bottom renovation, then it’s advised you get a surveyor into your home to assess the structural integrity of your house. This is particularly the case if you’ve only just bought the property. You should also bring in a surveyor if you suspect your house may be experiencing some significant structural issues that could affect the process of your renovation project. When it comes to changing the structure and appearance of your home, there really is no such thing as being too careful. Of course, the survey may not flag any issues at all, but if it does, any changes you make should be influenced by the result.

Budget

In order to plan out your renovation, you will need to plan out your budget. What products and materials you choose for your home should be hugely influenced by how much money you have to spend on your property. For example, if you want to achieve a sparkling new bathroom suite, you will need to ensure that it doesn’t leave you in debt. In order to do this, it might be a good idea to do some online and virtual shopping:

• Take a look at each room and assess what materials will need to be bought for it.
• Work out the measurements for how much building material you will need and work out a price.
• Add in the price of any extra features, items, and labour costs.
• Total this up, and assess whether you can afford this budget.

On top of this budget, it’s wise to add in any potential last-minute costs. As mentioned before, the survey may cause some unexpected costs.

DIY or professional help?

Before you pick up a sledgehammer to start knocking through the lounge and kitchen – are you qualified to tackle large DIY projects? Before undergoing a renovation project, it’s always sensible to prioritise allocating both professional and DIY work. If you are stretching the best of your abilities for the sake of budget, it’s important to know that a big mistake could cost you even more in the future. For example, deciding to do your own re-cabling or structural changes could not only be dangerous for both you and your family, but undoing your handiwork could end up being a logistical nightmare. Some structural fundamentals such as wiring, plumbing and adding insulation might benefit from the hands of a qualified professional.

Consider Flooring From LVT Floors

Painting the walls of your home can be transformative, as they provide an instant burst of colour or light. Switching up the flooring in your home can have the exact same effect. Whether you’re after stone flooring in your kitchen, soft carpet in your bedrooms or smooth wooden flooring in your living room, be sure to source your materials from a company that specialises in quality in variety such as LVT floors. This is because LVT Floors will provide the underlay for your home as well as a number of flooring options to choose from.

The garden

It’s easy to get preoccupied with the interior of your home when you’re giving it a large-scale overhaul. However, if you finish the renovation only to realise your garden is still in a less than desirable state, you will regret not having the foresight to complete your property in its entirety. Here are some tips for overhauling your garden in a way that leaves you plenty of time to focus on the house:

• Tear out troublesome shrubs: If you have plants that constantly wreak havoc on your garden by overgrowing into other shrubs and taking up space, then it can be a good excuse to tear them out. If they’re not adding any value to the aesthetic of your garden, it might be time to bring out the garden waste bags.
• Stone and marble features: these instantly add classy sophistication, and according to your taste, can improve with age. Stone and marble sculptures add sophisticated class to your garden, as well as structure. You can use them to create a focal point, or somewhere to plant shrubs and flowers around.
• Night-time lighting: nowadays, adding lighting to your garden doesn’t have to run up your electricity bill. You can now invest in solar-powered night-lights, which will illuminate your garden in the darker hours – perfect for summertime garden parties.
• Reclaim where you can: if you have an old patio or wall that’s formed of red bricks, or if you have old paving slabs that need to be taken up, try to reclaim these for a different garden feature. You might be able to create flower beds or hem in new flowerbeds or sections of your garden.
• Grow vegetables: creating a small, tiered vegetable patch in your garden could create a palpable value in your renovation. Being able to reap the rewards of a home-grown vegetable patch could just be a sensible investment.

Period features

Depending on who you talk to, you’ll find that some people will lovingly restore period features, whereas others may heartlessly tear them out. If you talk to a period-feature purist, you’ll hear that you simply won’t be able to replace old sash windows with plastic replacements. If you can’t bear to affect the appearance of your period features, whether that’s wooden timber frames, or an old fire place, you may need to find a service that has expertise in renovating and restoring pieces from that period.

If, on the other hand, you are aware that your house once had a period fire place, which has since been torn out, you can actually reinstate it. You’ll find surrounds in all sorts of materials, including cheaper metal designs, which will create the illusion of an original period features.

Bathrooms

It shouldn’t just be left to makeup-fiends and those who love a bath to prioritise bathroom placement. Regardless of how much time you spend in the bathroom, you may regret not putting more thought into the placement of bathrooms. Having to run downstairs in the morning to shower, or having to show guests upstairs to the only toilet in the house could be quite frustrating – particularly if you’ve only recently renovated your home. It’s also important to think of ensuite bathroom placement. Ensuite bathrooms offer an element of privacy, as well as convenience. Not having to trundle downstairs in the middle of the night might be worth the price of adding a few extra walls to your property.

Natural light

In order to make the most of each room you renovate, you should be placing a priority on how much natural light is entering the room. Natural light will only help to emphasise any structural or design changes to each room. If it’s at all possible to do so, adding larger windows will help to flood each room with brightness during the day. If it’s impossible to add more light, then ensure you use light colours to bring out the most of the limited natural light you have.

One of the best places to make the most of natural light is round the back of your property. Adding patio doors at either the end of your kitchen, diner or living room will almost help to extend your property into the outside.

Difficult rooms

If you have oddball or less-than-pleasing rooms in your house, it could be a good idea to prioritise these in your renovation project. You’ll know if you have a difficult room to renovate, because it’s probably the least-used room in your house. Small box rooms or spare rooms that are difficult to attribute a purpose to can easily become filled with junk or clutter. When you start drawing up the plans for your project, try and deliberately focus on the worst room in the house. After all, you probably already have large plans for your main rooms such as the bedroom, living room and kitchen. Have a think about what would vastly improve its appearance, and what you would change if you could.

Appliance upgrade

If you have the budget to do so, upgrading your appliances could be a wise move in your renovation process. Newer appliances will not only have a pleasing visual benefit to your property, but they will be far more cost-efficient in the long-term. For example, kitchen appliances that use up a lot of energy could be swapped out for newer models that have a higher energy efficiency rating.

If you don’t have the funds to go round replacing all of your white goods and appliances, then it could perhaps be a good opportunity to think more specifically. While you may not have the budget to buy new white goods, a brand new boiler could have more practical benefits. Not only could it benefit the efficiency of heating your home, but it could also be a long-term investment. It’s said that implementing a new boiler could add around £8,000 to your home.

Time

When you start updating and renovating your home, one of the biggest factors to take into account is time. Getting a sense of how long the project will take can help you to plot your life around the renovation. After all, a number of months may have to navigate around letting builders in, certain rooms being out of action for weeks at a time and maybe even alternative sleeping arrangements. You may wish to set out a time and cost plan, and even sign a contract on pre-arranged times and costs.

Disposal

It’s inevitable that, when you begin a process that involves fundamentally changing the appearance of your house, you will produce a lot of waste. While it can be tempting to start knocking down walls, tearing out wallpaper and binning unwanted items, you will need to allocate room for disposal. You may wish to book a skip to cope with the large items, and order in green waste bags for garden projects. Before you order in disposal containers it’s a good idea to estimate how much waste you will create. If you are throwing out furniture and tearing out old house features, you may need a container with a might higher volume. You must ensure that your renovation doesn’t damage the environment or effect your neighbours negatively.

Patience

When you start planning out your dream renovation, it can be easy to get carried away with the idea of what living there will feel like. Of course, your dream renovation should propel you into pushing the project forward. However, patience allows you to manage realistic expectations. This will put you in a better place to cope with any setbacks that may occur during the process, and rationalise them with a level head. Your renovated home might not appear as soon as you would like it, but patience enables you to accept that and maintain your excitement.

House renovations can be incredibly satisfying projects to sink your teeth into. While it can be frustrating and tiring to lose sections of your house for periods at a time to building work, the end product should make the sacrifices all worth it. One of the best ways to ensure that your renovation is successful is to plan it out as extensively as you can beforehand. Getting your budget and finer details sorted before you start should prevent any unpleasant surprises from rearing their head. Most importantly, you should remember to have patience; renovations aren’t quick, but the final product will be a testament to how much time and effort you ultimately put into it.