You can listen to this article as Episode 98 on the Parenting in Real Life Podcast. Hear more stories and more detail about our home renovation best tips.
We recently went through a major home renovation. We hired our contractor in January 2020 and were supposed to start in March 2020. Well, we all know what happened in March 2020, so our renovation came to a quick halt. In July we finally found a bank that would give us a construction loan. But it took them 6 months to process the loan. So in January 2021, we started construction. Now in November 2021, we are just about done. It’s taken that long!
It hasn’t helped that we did a renovation during a pandemic, but we learned a lot from the process. And if we ever do a renovation again (we don’t plan to), we would definitely run things a little differently. That being said, we love our house! We finished our basement and added 2 bedrooms, opened up our living room, redid our whole kitchen, replaced all the flooring, and redid the master bedroom and master bathroom. We hope to never have to move again! So we made our house a place we can stay forever. It fits our family and we can make it a gathering place.
But now to our home renovation best tips.
Home Renovation Do’s
Keep track of the budget – We had a budget set by the loan we got. There is a 10% contingency that the bank adds that you can pull from. We did add a few projects and some prices went up. Our contractor kept saying that most of the projects would be covered in the contingency, but we weren’t keeping track and it turns out, neither was he. But we thought he was! We ended up going way over budget and paying way more out of pocket than we wanted.
Get a general contractor for big projects – there are definitely pros and cons about working with a general contractor. One big pro is that they work with different subcontractors that are willing to do the work because the contractor will keep giving them business. But make sure to get all the phone numbers for all the subcontractors and be the project manager. Chances are, your contractor is involved in a couple of different projects and probably won’t be super organized if they don’t have a project manager. Walk through the plan and create a schedule with your contractor and know when all the contractors need to show up. Then start getting them scheduled! And make sure they know because it makes their job easier when they come in the right order too.
Do the renovation and don’t buy new – We considered just buying a new house rather that doing our renovation. But with the price of homes and what we wanted, our mortgage is definitely less now with the new renovation loan than it would be if we would have bought new. And we got to keep our big yard and fun neighborhood.
Home Renovation Don’ts
Don’t do a renovation during a pandemic – You can’t always control what’s going to happen during your renovation, but during the pandemic the prices went up and things were back ordered and took a lot longer to show up.
Don’t always go with your contractor’s opinions – Trust your taste and do what you want! Our contractor would give suggestions of things because that’s what they’re good at or what they would rather do, but this is your house so make sure you do what you want. If you aren’t sure and need help, hire an interior designer to help you. I needed some help with the layout of our living room and so I hired an interior designer and it really helped me visualize what I wanted.
Don’t assume contractors are going to show up when they say they will – we learned that contractors are always shifting jobs or fitting in other ones and there were many days people said they would show up and then didn’t and it would push out our schedule sometimes by weeks. So follow up as best as you can, but also add wiggle room in your schedule because things are going to take longer than you think.
So these are our home renovation best tips. Are you going to renovate your home soon? Or have you already and have additional tips? Comment below!