Renovating Requires a Personal Skills List
Time, Money, and Safety are Compromised by Poor Skills
Renovating any room or area of the home can add value to your home providing the work completed is quality craftsmanship. There is no sense in completing a project if the work is going to be inferior. This only lesssens the home's value. In order to assess your personal skill level, break down your project into renovation categories as follows:
- Electrical
- Plumbing
- Painting
- Carpentry
- Flooring
- Ceramic/Stone/Marble/ tile Installation
- Carpet
- Finished Carpentry
- Rough-in Carpenty
These categories represent the major areas of renovation that should part of your personal skills assessment list. As you review the list, any area that you feel is beyond your comfort level requires either the assistance from a contracted professional or removing it from your project. For example, in your renovation project, you wanted to add new eletrical service for a workshop to be added at a later date. Your comfort level is only with connecting receptacle boxes and attaching light fixtures. The new electrical service can either be removed from the project want list or contracted services can be used to complete this portion of your renovation plan. Another example may involve finished carpentry versus rough-in carpentry. A comfort level with rough-in framing carpentry may make your personal skills list while finished carpentry such as baseboards, crown molding, and door trim, may not make the list. Again, this would require the services of a contracted professional for completion. The most important aspect of the personal skills list is to be honest about your personal skill level.
Renovation projects usually falter in several areas. First, homeowners overestimate their personal skills to complete the project and find themselves overwhelmed by it. Because personal skills were overestimated, the timeline of the project is now underestimated and the project drags on. The project is now controlling the homeowner rather than vice versa.
Second, the cost of the project is oftenunder estimated for one or more reasons. The project may grow due to changes and add-ons. This increases costs and timeline, as well as the homeowner's frustration. The cost estimates of the project may have been poorly assessed because of incorrect measurements or square footage calculations. Remember to use the free services of many home improvement stores to estimate product costs for your project. Many offer free worksheets to use in calculating square footage for floor and wall coverings.
Renovating your home can be a rewarding experience. However, home renovation projects take time, patience and proper planning to assure a successful outcome. If the project is going to be a weekend working project, it is paramount that all the stakeholders in the project sit down and fully discuss the project's projected timeline.
The project may involve being inconvenienced. It is important to communicate with each person who will be affected to minimize frustration. Have fun with your project and, above all else, take the proper safety precautions to keep everyone safe.
BATHROOM RENOVATION
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