Quick Tips for a Renovation

Renovation can be a way to breathe some life into a home that’s grown stale, and it can also be a tool to improve the value of your property. However, if not done prudently, it can yield some less than desirable results. Here are some quick tips on how to renovate like a pro.

1. If a wall is coming down, or if adding on to the exterior, hire a civil engineer

We cannot stress this enough, please do not take down a wall or add on to the exterior without hiring a civil engineer. Sometimes people have this idea that renovations can be DIY projects, and for very, very simple renovations they can. Simple renovations mostly covers surface level renovations like flooring, cabinets, counters, and vanities. In the worst of cases, knocking down the wrong wall can cause a house to collapse if not done correctly.

The more common issue is with something that seems more benign, like adding on a porch to the back of your house. While less destructive than knocking a wall down, and simple from a construction standpoint, one should consult a civil engineer before doing this as well. Every home is subject to regulations from the town, and these regulations change every once and a while, almost always being tightened. Normally when a town changes the regulations, existing homes are grand-fathered in, meaning they violate the new regulation, but they get an exception because they existed that way before the new law passed. When you change the bounds of your home (like adding on a back deck), you nullify this grand-father clause in most jurisdictions, subjecting not only your deck, but your whole house to the newest set of regulations, whatever they are. Without getting too deep into the legalese of it all, hire an engineer before changing the bounds of your exterior structure, because you may get a call from the town telling you to destroy it afterwards or be fined, costing you a lot more money than a meeting.

2. Do not get everything from Home Depot or Lowe’s

Although many of their commercials feature renovations, this is not always the right idea. This is your home you are working on, and the truth is that these megastores do not always have great product on hand. The advantage they provide is in their convenience and sometimes their pricing, but not quality.

They’re particularly bad with specialty products, which you will want to order directly from the companies that produce them. These specialty products include things like cabinets, vanities, flooring, etc. Essentially, anything that gets a fair amount of use, you want quality so that they don’t lose all their luster within a few years of buying them.

On the other hand, these home improvement warehouses are great for raw materials like wood, nails, etc.. Small renovations shouldn’t need that much in the way of materials, and they shouldn’t be building anything especially load-bearing either, so the convenience and price actually end up being optimal for renovators despite the low quality. To their credit, this is just usually the case. If you know your stuff, sometimes you can find higher quality supplies there, but you need to know what you’re looking for.

3. What parts of your home can you change yourself

We addressed earlier the importance of not knocking down walls, and unfortunately that is not the only dangerous activity an individual can undertake during renovation. We’ll quickly list out elements of the home you can and cannot change by yourself, for both reasons of safety and legal complexity.

The only item on the cannot list that isn’t legally or physically dangerous is tile flooring. For those who wish to try, you can do it, but it will probably yield less than desirable results, especially with bathroom tile.