Summer is finally here and for many homeowners it is a time where our thoughts turn to home improvements and renovations. The longer, brighter days provide an excellent opportunity to plan, design and remodel important parts of your home. Perhaps your kitchen is showing signs of age and needs more than just a makeover. Maybe you are thinking of installing a south facing conservatory to take advantage of the improved weather and relax as well as adding value to your home. In this article, no matter what renovation you are planning, some key tips will be explored to ensure that your plans come to fruition and your design dreams are realized.
Make a realistic budget
It is worth considering that for larger scale renovations a key planning aspect is an accurate budget for the work you want to complete. It is a fact that only one in fiveremodelling projects come in under budget. This can be for a variety of reasons such as underestimating the time needed to do the renovation, inaccurate estimates of material costs and uncovering problems during a renovation that require extra work to rectify. It is of paramount importance to get realistic and up to date quotes for all material costs. If you are planning to hire builders to undertake the work, insist on accurate quotes, projected timescale to complete the work and gain a range of prices from several building firms. It is important to note that quotes from builders that are way below those offered by other firms should be treated with caution. It can be easy for a firm to offer a competitive price that undercuts all competitors only to find that costs begin to spiral when the initial quote is found to be unrealistic. It is good practice to add 20% to your total budget forecast to ensure that you can cope with unexpected additional costs in the renovation work.
Raise finance
Once you have undertaken a detailed and comprehensive budget for the work and allocated additional funds for any delays or issues it is time to decide on how the work will be paid for. If you have sufficient savings this is simply a case of ensuring that they will cover all work and arranging payment to the contractors upon satisfactory completion. For many homeowners they may not hold sufficient savings to do this. Loan companies such as Sachem Lending specialize in providing finance specifically for home construction and projects and offer competitive interest rates. It makes sense to talk to a range of lending companies to ensure that you get the lowest rate of interest on your building loan.
Talk to your neighbors
If you live in a neighborhood where many different renovations have been carried out on other properties, it is well worth speaking to your neighbors about their work done. Ask them how the process went and if there were any unexpected problems or issues. Some large-scale renovation work can have unexpected issues during the construction process and understanding what went well and not so well in your neighbors’ projects may give you valuable information for your own. It is also polite practice to write a renovation letter to your nearby neighbors to inform them that work will be undertaken on your property, especially if it is likely to be noisy during the project.
