You have likely seen the commercial where the homeowner – an attractive young lady – waves her arms and her house suddenly changes before your eyes from old and worn to new and modern. Guess what… it does not work that way.
Here are a few tips to make it easier.
- Do the items that have the most impact. Sometimes just painting can make a huge difference.
- Decide if you need a professional. You may be able to DIY but how long can you live at a construction site. If you are tearing out and entire kitchen, for example, doing it SSH (Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays) can prolong a project and strain the most patient family.
- If you are remodeling is the plumbing and electrical infrastructure of the house up the remodels. If you remodel the kitchen and older home and add appliances like dishwashers, electric stove, side-by-side refrigerator etc and the electrical is not up to handling the additional equipment you can run into a large unexpected cost as you add circuits or even a bigger panel. Get expert help in these area. I had a customer one time who had his uncle repair the shut off valve on the water supply to his near 100 year old house. The new valve allowed in so much new pressure he had leaks all over the house.
- Do not take down walls without a thorough understanding of the structure. That short wall your though meant nothing may be holding up a beam that is holding up the second floor. I watched a home being remodeled across the street from a home I was working on. There was a dumpster in the front yard and every evening for a week it was full with plaster and lumber from partitions. Over the weekend the roof collapsed into the second floor.
- Make sure all your remodeling efforts work together. I know a countertop installer who went to install a granite counter on cabinets the homeowner had bought a Swedish big box store and installed himself. A week later the counter top installer had to go back because the sides of the cabinets were bowing out and near collapse.
