How To Start a Home Renovation
Making dreams a reality can be challenging, but dreamers can also be doers when they have a willingness to set goals, plan, and work hard.
You’ve been scrolling through Pinterest, saving your favorite ideas to your Dream Home board, and now you finally want to renovate your home so that it is just like the one you’ve been dreaming about for months. The problem is… Where do you start?
The good news for you is that we have just the answer to that question! This post will help you to narrow down your hopes and create a strategy for how to approach the coming adventure. At the end of this post we will also give you two bonus tips to make this renovation everything you hope it will be.
So without further ado, lets get started!
Narrowing Down Ideas and Setting Goals:
Before you can do anything towards renovating your home you must narrow down your dreams and set realistic goals. Often people get enamored by the beautiful homes they see on pinterest and then before they know it they’ve started a project and they are in way over their heads. Suddenly the dream just feels like a nightmare and they are left floundering with no idea of where to go or what to do.
To save yourself from this nightmare you must set realistic expectations for yourself. To do so you must ask yourself a few key questions. Questions like:
How much money do i have to give to this job?
What are the most important things that you want to have when your renovation is done?
Are these things I can do on my own or do i need to hire a professional?
How much time and mental effort can i give to this renovation and is right now actually a good time?
The first question you will want to ask yourself is; how many of the things I want to do in this renovation are actually feasible and what what might i need to let go of to make this process go a little smoother?
If you’ve got a hundred ideas for what you would like to do, maybe you need to break it down into chunks or eliminate the less important things from your list. Maybe start with 5 or 6 ideas and then if after finishing those important things you feel ready to take the next step, then go for it, but don’t let yourself get in too deep.
Budgeting:
The next step is budgeting. This is a big part of narrowing down your goals and setting realistic expectations for your project. If you start a project and haven’t first sat down and decided whether or not you have enough money to complete the project then you could be in a lot of trouble. In fact Jesus speaks about this in Luke 14:28-30: “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?”
When beginning to budget for your renovation you need to look at multiple things:
Supplies and tools
Hiring contractors
Margin for error and/or problems
Calculating the costs involved in a home renovation can be exhausting, but still necessary. Find people you can trust to help you work through the problems and challenges to help you achieve your goals.
When calculating how much you can set aside for supplies and tools you need to try and plan for everything. Budget your screws, nails, powertools, trash bags, etc. The more precise you can be the better. You will also want to think about timing in this area as well. If this project won’t begin for a couple of months you will need to remember that due to inflation or other factors pricing could very easily go up for your supplies. Budgeting extra money for this issue as well as for things you may have forgotten to add to your list is a must.
If you plan to hire a contractor to do all, or even just parts of the job, then you will need to figure out pricing on that. Call the contractors in your area and get a quote for your jobs.
Lastly you will need to give yourself plenty of room for error and margin. Very few, if any, renovations go exactly as planned. You need to stay ahead of the game and set aside money for issues that may arise. Sometimes you will uncover issues with plumbing, leaks in the roof, mold, or other unknown problems and you need to be ready.
Planning step by step:
Get the help of people who are qualified to help you plan and move your project to completion.
You are almost there. Now that you have your dreams narrowed down and your budget figured out, you can look at the step by step for how you will accomplish the goals you have already prepared.
If your renovation is going to be spread throughout multiple rooms of your house then you need to figure out which areas of the house you will need. Renovations can be very messy so you need to make sure that certain areas of your house are sanctuaries from the mess. You will also need to think through what you will do while your kitchen or bathroom is out of service. Do you have a second bathroom or a seperate space you could use as a makeshift kitchen during the process? If not, then take some time to think ahead of those issues and decide how you will handle those things.
After you have designated certain areas as sanctuaries, and you have made a plan for which rooms you will start in and go through, then you can get into the more minute details. If you are replacing the floors in your kitchen then think through how you might do that. Maybe you need to move all your appliances and cabinets to one side of the room and then begin ripping up and replacing the floors on the cleared half of the room. Then after you finished one half of the room you can move everything over to the finished half and start the second half.
You should develop a strategy for how you will begin and finish each room. The more focused you are in your approach to the renovation, the easier it will be to attack the project with confidence. Just like with narrowing down your dreams, if you haven’t thought through ahead of time how to approach your project you can easily become discouraged and bogged down by the project.
Bonus Tips:
You are almost there! As a bonus we thought we would leave you with these last two tips to help you on your journey. Here are our two bonus tips:
You will experience problems. If you go into the remodel expecting to find issues, then it won’t be nearly as hard to work through them when you find them. Your budget might be a little wrong, you may have an issue with a contractor, but when you expect things to happen you will be more ready when the time comes to fix them.
Make sure you let yourself relax a little. If you don’t give yourself enough time to get it done you will stress yourself out. Often the journey is just as important as the completion. Make the process fun. If you try to do too much or to do it too fast you will end up losing your religion.
Conclusion:
Congratulations! You are now ready to approach your remodel with confidence. You’ve set your goals, you’ve prepared your budget, and you created your plan to reach your goals.
Leave a comment below and tell us what you found most helpful and how you plan to use the info you learned from this chapter on your remodel!
Also, send us some of the pictures or your remodel and give us some details on what you are doing here! We would love to hear about your remodel and home building projects! Who knows, maybe your remodel pictures will be featured on an upcoming post!
Best of luck on your remodel!