Home Remodeling

Home Remodeling – Before You Get Started

Although I am by no means a professional remodeler or carpenter, I will tell you that I do have years of experience in messing up home remodeling jobs in my past. Yes, I have found myself in some sticky situations and downright frightening predicaments in the past. It is my hope that you might find some humor in my tale, as well as some insight into what it takes to complete your own home remodeling jobs with decent results while not killing yourself in the process.

One of the first things that I ask anyone planning on doing any sort of remodeling around the house is, “how solid is your relationship with your wife or girlfriend?” After all, what’s the sense in doing some grand remodeling project if you’re only going to wind up living there alone as a little side benefit? I am being completely serious here and even the strongest relationships take some sort of a hit as a result of doing home improvements.

There will be disagreements over how things should be done, the quality of your work, whether you should have hired a professional to do the job and comments will be made about your ancestral heritage at some point. Things won’t be completed as quickly as you might like and definitely not as quickly as your partner would like to see. Things can get tense and often things are said as a result of these tensions so you really need to be sure that your relationship is on solid ground before even considering doing any home remodeling. If nothing else, expect things to get heated at some point and talk to you partner about this beforehand. I’m being serious here.

Next, do you have a solid plan laid out for what you hope to accomplish and how you hope to achieve the desired outcome? It doesn’t matter if it’s something as simple as painting a room or putting an addition onto your home. You need to think through how you envision your home and every step along the way to bringing that dream to reality. There is often a lot of prep work that needs to take place before any home remodeling job and thinking things like sealing off rooms and protecting your furniture and the other rooms in the house from damage should be paramount in your mind when planning the steps that you will take to complete your remodeling job. If you don’t, you will wind up with more work and more expense in the long run before you’re done.

Do you have the right skills and tools to complete the job? While you might not be an expert at many of the skills that you might need before starting a home remodel, a little understanding, education and patience in learning these skills goes a long way and can save you a lot of money. It’s called sweat equity and although it might take you a little bit longer to wire an addition, if you wish to learn about electrical work, for instance, you can do as good a job as an electrician.

Be sure that you have the right tools for the job also. You might try to make do with what you have on hand in the way of power tools but matching the right tool for the job is a secret of many craftsmen and it will bring you better results in the long run. Sure, you could pound a nail into a wall using your shoe but taking the time to go get a hammer will probably give you better results, wouldn’t you agree. The same goes for cutting wood with any sort of precision, painting walls to give you a nice finish or sanding wood floors in an efficient manner. The right tools will save you time, trouble, aggravation and give you better results. If you don’t have the right tools you can borrow from friends or rent the right tools from a rental center. It’s really worth the effort and you can thank me later.

I give this little piece of advice because safety is very important. I have, myself, done stupid things and tried to complete seemingly simple home improvement projects without the correct tools for the job only to find myself happy to be alive. There’s nothing like the feeling of being three stories up on a ladder that’s just not tall enough, pressed up against the side of the house, clinging for life with one hand and painting the soffit of the house with a paintbrush duct taped to a stick to make you realize that sometimes it’s just not worth risking it. The right tool for the job in this instance would have been a telephone to call someone that wasn’t afraid of heights and a ladder that was about five feet longer. Don’t repeat my stupid mistakes. Learn from them.

Also, check with your local zoning or code enforcement office to find out if you need a permit to complete the job that you are planning. These people are paid by your tax dollars and they have your best interest at heart. They will help you to be sure that your plan is solid and it doesn’t endanger you or your household, if it requires a permit, and they will inspect your work and tell you what needs to be changed for it to be up to code. Don’t take the advice of well meaning friends or family members who tell you carte blanche that you don’t need a permit. If something were to go wrong and your house were to burn down, for instance, thanks to a faulty wiring job that you had done that was never inspected, your homeowners insurance wouldn’t cover you. It’s always better to be safe than sorry. AZ granite and remodeling has the best granite remnants in the state of Arizona, you can ask around.

Above all else, have fun at working around your house. Home improvements can be and should be enjoyable. Make it so! Working together with your partner to make your home what you wish it to be should bring you happiness and not make you swear that you will never do another home improvement job again. If you don’t find joy in working around your house, hire someone to do the parts that you don’t like. If you hate painting, hire someone to do it. If you love painting then dive right in and bring joy into your life. It’s your home. Make it the way that you and your partner dream it should be… together!