Top Home Improvement Mistakes to Avoid:
Whether you’re a first time home buyer or you’ve been living in the same house for 20 years, every homeowner goes through different renovations at some point. Improving your home’s quality can bring a lot of new personality and feng shui that your home was lacking before. A home is somewhere you spend a lot of time, so on occasion, you have to change it up a little bit. For some, this means getting new furniture, or maybe even painting the walls a different color to set a new mood. For others, it means taking a sledgehammer to those cabinets that you’ve hated for 10 years and remodeling a whole kitchen.
No matter what your situation is, don’t let your eagerness and excitement get the best of you. Jumping the gun on home improvement projects can turn out to be a true disaster, or a financial nightmare, if done incorrectly. Carefully consider everything and create a thorough plan before swinging the hammer – you wouldn’t want to create an irreversible mistake.
There are a few careful considerations that even professional home flippers tend to forget. Remembering these quick tips can mean the difference between an award-winning house and total bust.
Ignoring The Time And Money Factor:
Of course, time and money should be first and foremost in the discussion of home improvement, since they are perhaps the most valuable things to us besides family.
How time is spent on a home greatly affects how much money is spent, and vice versa. Every professional will tell you that whatever your initial budget is, it’s most likely going to be exceeded. Taking the extra steps to find your price point is a no brainer, but allocating a safety net of 15-20% of your budget on top will save a lot of grey hairs later on. Remember, time is just as important as money: the longer you take to complete a project, the more it will cost in labor, material, and overall effort.
Missing The Small Things:
Here’s a worst-case scenario: After completing a project, you sit back and bask in its glory. Craving a well-earned beer, you go to the fridge. You swing the door open, only for it to knock against something. You’ve placed a permanent cabinet where the fridge door is supposed to go.
This is every home improver’s nightmare, because it could mean having to tear a lot of work down just to fix a small detail. Save stress, heart break, and money by going over every little detail that comes into play. The more you check before the work, the more you save during the work.
Forgetting The Big Picture :
Nothing is more exciting than shopping for new furniture, appliances, carpet, and paint. Imagining your newly outfitted house is truly exciting, but it can also be extremely stressful. There’s a lot that goes into making a home look great, and too often we find ourselves in a form of tunnel vision.
Tunnel vision is dangerous during home improvement, because it typically involves purchasing big ticket items. Getting it right the first time can save a lot of disappointment. Don’t forget to look at the whole landscape and consider every angle of your home when buying an expensive item.
Forgetting About Functionality:
Everyone loves a picture-perfect design and set up. When everything is executed just right, and the house looks like something you’d find in a model home, it can be addicting. What may not feel good, however, is realizing that you didn’t take into function into account. Everything might look great, but that doesn’t matter if your sink overspray onto an electrical outlet, your dishwasher won’t open all the way, and your pantry is now tiny. Avoid this by double-checking your plans before finalizing!
Being Too Ambitious:
There’s a hilarious disconnect between us home improvement nuts and reality. We really think we can handle anything, don’t we? One of the most common mistakes that home improvement enthusiasts make is forgetting that they’re only one person. We constantly think about projects that are clearly way too big and intense for us to handle alone. Engaging one of these projects is a great way to drain your bank account and render your home unusable. Here’s a rapid-fire list of things you should reconsider before starting yourself:
- Anything plumbing-related
- Anything that involves digging into the ground
- Roofing work
- Changing any structural component of your house
- Fencing (you can probably do this yourself, but you need to check with any adjacent neighbors first.)
By hiring professionals for things we can’t handle ourselves, we actually save money in the long-run. Not to mention our marriages.
Home improvements are great for turning a house into a home, and a home into a palace. You spend a lot of time in your home, and you deserve to see it transform with you over the years. You also deserve financial security and peace of mind, so be sure to check your plans, your budget, and the scope of the project before committing to any demolition.
