Managing home renovations or undertaking a big DIY job at home is no small commitment! It can take many months of dedication, planning and hard work to get your home looking exactly the way you want it to.
Renovations can cause big upheavals in lifestyle
Not only are renovations costly, but they’re also time-consuming and disruptive. There’s nothing quite like waking up in the morning to a house full of tradies or a kitchen covered in dust and drop sheets.
Research has shown that home renovations are genuinely stressful in people’s lives. They’re almost right up there with divorce and bereavement in terms of the stress levels that people reach.
What can you do to make your home renovations go with a swing? And what does that even mean?
Well, if you’ve never renovated a house, you probably don’t realise that the best-laid plans don’t always run smoothly.
This is especially true if you’re managing renovations at an older home. Plans which you make in advance don’t always work out.
This can be due to unexpected issues arising within the fabric of your home due to budget constraints – or a combination of the two!
So, some of the best tools you can use before renovations are a can-do attitude and a flexible approach.
Planning your renovation – going from idea to reality
Let’s imagine you’re renovating your kitchen. Maybe it’s old and dated, or you just want a change. Whatever your reasoning, you must have a very clear idea of what you want to achieve.
And remember, not everyone thinks the same. So when you say you want a spacious, contemporary kitchen with a vintage twist, some people will assume you want very little personality in the fittings and fixtures and that you’ll add the vintage twist with accessories.
Rather than speaking in designer speak, look up plenty of reference material and find the exact look you’re after.
Show this to everyone who will be involved in the renovation. Whether you’re DIY-ing it or paying contractors, you should have a very clear look in mind and share that – right down to the exact paint shades.
Rip it up and start again
Ripping out the innards of a room is never as easy as we think it will be. Things can get complicated once you start hacking into the body of a room.
Before you begin, try to find out if any asbestos is present. This is extremely important – most houses built post-1950, and pre-1995 will have at least some asbestos present.
If you haven’t received a recent survey to check, it might be a good idea to do so.
Asbestos even hides in floor tiles; if you don’t want you, your family, and your tradesmen exposed to it, you’ll need to ensure it’s not present.
Your safety is paramount when managing renovations.
Rubbish preparation
Renovations create a terrifying amount of waste. It will always be too much for your weekly collections, and for most of us, it’s too much to take to the dump.
Managing renovations creates a steady stream of rubbish, especially if you do more than one room.
With each wall that’s cleaned of paper, with every cabinet and tile you remove, there’s a growing pile of junk, dirt and debris to dispose of.
The best way to manage this is, without a doubt, skip bin hire. Skip bin hire is cheap, convenient and easy to manage.
When you book a skip bin, you can decide on the hire terms. For example, if you know that a lot of messy work is about to be done over a few days, you can make sure you keep the skip bin for that time.
Once the skip bin is full, it’s taken away again. You can even arrange for the skip hire company to leave an empty skip each time a full one is collected.
There are also multiple choices about size and waste type. This means you can order a smaller skip bin during times of less waste, which makes skip bin hire financially sensible. You never need to hire a larger skip than necessary.
