Great start! You’ve decided enough of this dull, old house and you’re completely ready to restyle and revamp your entire house, throw away the old kitchen, the grimy bathroom and drab walls – out with the old….in with the new.
But wait, before you go and pick up a whole stack of interior decor magazines, its important you consider these 5 things:
1. Plan your end game: starting with the budget, you should work out how much you have to spend and what this will get you, even if you don’t have enough of a budget to do the entire house, phase each section but have an end goal of what you want the entire refurb to look like so you don’t end up with mis-matched furnitures or traditional look in one room, modern contemporary in another without a seamless flow.
2. Once you know your budget, start interviewing different contractors, interior teams, decorators you want to work with based on their previous works – select a minimum of 5-7 professionals from high end to budget. For high end designers who offer complimentary meetings, it is a great idea to get a feel for what luxury options exist, because they can give insight into trends and ideas you would never think about and can actually adapt some of these ideas into your budget. Overall. you want to speak to as many people to help you define what your end game is. (Now, you can go and buy the interior decor magazines and sift through since you are more “informed”)
3. Select your power team and ensure you get the right contracts in place, go over the specifications clearly, understand what each category in the quotation refers to – For eg. if your work scope has a line item quotation for a new window, understand where exactly it fits and check the dimensions against the space and ensure its not too small or too narrow as vague/ basic specifications are a great way for contractors to eventually blow through your budget completely especially once you realise what you signed up for isn’t quite suitable so understand what you are signing up to!
4. Get an interior designer!! the simple fact is they know what they are doing and get great trade discounts which they can often pass over depending on your budget. They are fantastic at sourcing unique products and helping you create a cohesive and tailored feel that truly represents you. Having a good conversation about layout and your lifestyle with the designer BEFORE the refurb commences will allow for you to adequately plan for spaces, for instance, a simple question “where do I store my/my visitors coats?” (do you want a small anteroom created or will you just have it in the hallway, if so, where? so you don’t have contractors putting in electrical switches, points or wires obstructing the area).
5. Decide from the onset to keep your cool, this is more “airy fairy” but renos and refurbs can be very stressful at the best of times so you need to be mentally prepared for delays, errors, misunderstandings, cost overruns and general issues that will almost always crop up, so get ready and keep in mind “it will all be completely worth it at the end..”
