You Want to Renovate Your Home - Where Do You Start?
Your home is a functional disaster and you’ve been living with it for as long as you could. You want a home sanctuary that you love to be in, which means it’s time for a change, and that means renovating. You’ve jumped over the first hurdle of making the decision to renovate, but now you’ve hit the second one – where do you start?
The First Step in the Renovation Process
The best place to start is figuring out how much of an investment is needed to transform your home the way you’d like to. This means talking to a professional, typically on a discovery call.
Could you Google it? Yes, of course, but Google doesn’t know your specific and unique project, especially for your exact city, which means you’ll get a wide range of estimates. A professional such as myself can help to come up with a plan (what we call a scope of work) and create a realistic budget that works for you.
Should I Talk to a General Contractor First?
This is something I unfortunately don’t recommend unless you have a trusted contractor already. I highly recommend speaking with a design professional first who will create a detailed scope of work document, and will think through all of the various design decisions that need to be made before creating an estimate for you.
One of the worst things that I see all too often is a client getting an estimate from a general contractor that doesn’t take into account the level of finishes that the client wants. This results in them receiving an ultra-low, and unrealistic, estimate number.
Once they start selecting all of their fixtures and finishes, their investment amount suddenly doubles (and this is if anyone is actually keeping track). I have seen the scenario where the project is completely finished and the contractor sends the bill for double the initial estimate and the client had absolutely no idea because their contractor didn’t tell them that their selections would cost them more.
How to Finalize the Investment Amount
I don’t want this scenario happening to you, and this is why I believe in going through the entire design process with a design professional. This allows you to properly finalize the investment amount so you know exactly how much your renovation will cost. This number can’t be finalized until you select all of the finishes and fixtures for your new space.
Does this mean you can’t have any realistic budgetary numbers until the entire design phase is complete?
Of course not. When working with a design professional, such as myself, the first step will be creating an initial budget based on your scope of work and using this to define our selections. We’re also honest with you if you cannot get what you want for what you’re hoping to pay. Our clients pay for not only our expertise, but our honesty.
Our overall mission is to collaborate with you to create a design that you will absolutely love, and to transform your home from uninspired to inspiring.
What’s Next?
Your first step is booking that discovery call with a design professional to start the planning phase of your renovation. You can book a free discovery call with myself by clicking on the button below.
