Planning any kind of home project is a case of trial and error. You could be thinking of taking the roof off and replacing it, or ripping the entire bathroom out and relaying both the tiling and the plumbing, or you could simply be thinking of rearranging the living room and maybe getting a new sofa.
These projects are all of different requirements and skill levels, but none of them can be done without any forward planning!
Because even just buying a new sofa needs you to know the exact measurements of your living room, as well as the orientation of the new layout you’re thinking of. If you don’t have these details to use when you go shopping, you can’t be sure whether or not you’re about to buy something that fits in the space!
And it’s this kind of preparation that can prevent a bigger plan for upgrading your home from becoming too frustrating and overwhelming to deal with.
There are a lot of problems you can run into, like the wallpaper you’re using to redecorate your bedroom being discontinued, or a wall removal project revealing a lot of structure damage underneath the plaster. If you have to deal with more than one in a single project, you can quickly lose your mind with the whole thing!
But with a little bit of prep for potential problems like these, you could eliminate these sources of frustration from the home upgrade you’re keen to get started on. And with that in mind, here’s the kind of tasklist you should follow before you get the paint rollers out and slip your dungarees on.
Always Buy Extra Materials
No home upgrade can be done without a few spare items lying around somewhere. You can never be sure you’re going to have everything you need to get your project finished to a standard you’re happy with.
It’s why you should always work with a budget that’s got a little bit of wiggle room in it; if there isn’t still a couple hundred bucks left in the pot when you’ve bought all the right tools and materials, you’re going to need to add that extra bit of cash right now!
And if you don’t have what you need and something goes wrong, you’re going to have to down tools, make sure the ‘worksite’ is safe, clean yourself up, head out to the store, grab some extra plaster, grouting, paint, etc., and then come back to get started all over again. Even just writing all that out feels like a hassle!
So let’s try and avoid an issue like this to begin with. Buy more than what you need and save the spares for another day.
Even if you don’t need to use them during the initial work, there could come a time in a month or so from now when you need to replace something or other. If you know you’ve got just what you need already stored away in the garage or the loft, you can just nip out to grab them and have the task done within the hour.
But how much extra do you need? Let’s go through a quick example:
If you’re retiling your bathroom, always buy around 25% more tiles than you need. This way, if you end up needing a few more tiles to finish covering the wall around the doorframe, or you need extra tiles so you can cut some smaller shapes out of them, you’ll have everything you need already in the house and you don’t have to halt work.
And remember, there’s always a chance you’ll drop and smash a tile, or even crack a couple just bringing them home from the store! But if you’ve got a little stock of extra tiles available, these problems won’t have to be problems at all.
Extend Your Project Timeline
Taking your time when conducting a home upgrade is always the right way to go. When you have some spare time on your hands, you’re not going to run into trouble trying to beat the clock.
Many a home DIYer have had an issue with this; they’ve dived headfirst into a project, tried to get it all done within a 2 to 3 day turnaround, and had to face massive complications as a result of the rushed work.
Try to double the timeline you’ve set yourself and see how that works out. If you want to be done in 48 hours, set a deadline of 96 hours instead.
Not only does this give you twice the amount of time to clear out the room, strip things back, lay the groundwork, apply the new coating, and then move everything back in.
It also means you can actually be done in 48 hours like you always wanted, but you weren’t rushing and being a bit careless about it. You had more time, you worked more carefully, and you achieved what you wanted without the added pressure that often turns us into clumsy creatures!
And if the project you’re working on doesn’t require you to leave your house or expose potentially hazardous materials to your family, there’s really no harm in taking more time. You can go as slowly as you like and make consistent progress each and every day.
Try Not to Take on More Than One Room at Once
An entire home remodel project is a thing of beauty! You get to fix up your entire home in the span of a couple of months, making sure every single room in your property is exactly how you want it to be.
You can change the inner layout, the decor, the function of the rooms, and you can even split the rooms into two or remove walls between them to create an open plan space. Getting all of this work out of the way at once sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? And it can be!
But it’s not one to take on lightly. If you’re the kind of person who likes to do DIY and never wants to call someone in to get the job done for them, remodelling your home without any professional help is just going to overwhelm you.
It might be fun at first, but the project will get away from you and will leave you with rooms still covered in dust sheets with open cans of paint in the corner 12 months from now.
That’s not a nice way to live! And every time you look at the job in progress, that shows no signs of being done any time soon, you’re going to feel even worse about the look of your home. So don’t let yourself get carried away here; try to focus on only one room at once and keep the workload light.
This will even grant you much more time to focus on that single room, which can lead to a much better all round result when you finally step back and say you’re done. That’s the kind of satisfactory project we’re after here!
Be Ready for Things to Go Wrong
It’s rare to get started on a home upgrade without something going at least a little bit wrong. Even if the paint color isn’t quite what you wanted, and you have to take it back and replace it with another tone, something in fact went wrong. It was a little bit of extra hassle you didn’t want to have to deal with, and that can add to the mounting frustrations of a job like this.
Never go into a house project thinking it’s all going to run smoothly. Try to play your expectations a little, and prevent your hopes from climbing a little too high.
Remember that you’re dealing with a structure that could have any number of problems going on behind the scenes, and it’s within human nature to forget to turn the water off before you try to take a pipe off the wall!
Knowing you can forget about things like this makes it a lot easier to create a pre-work checklist to do beforehand. Make sure you write down everything you might forget to do that could result in something annoying happening and then work your way down the list.
Don’t Let a Home Upgrade Get You Down
Home upgrades are hard work, and they’re never not going to be! But they don’t need to be overwhelming projects you never quite get around to finishing. You can prep yourself for the work ahead by entering it with the right mindset regarding potential problems, and by having plenty of backup materials in stock.
You should also take your time in getting the upgrade fully complete; if you feel the need to rush it all in a weekend, you might be biting off a lot more than you can currently chew and setting yourself up to fail without realizing it. Stop that from happening by being more mindful about your process from the get go!
