Do it Yourself Home Renovation Success
September 14th, 2008Recently I bought a house that I am living in and renovating in my spare time. This is the first time I have tackled home renovation and I must say it is a lot more time consuming than I had imagined. I knew it would take some time to fully renovate my house with the little bit of spare time I manage each week but what I thought might take weeks looks like taking months. Even though my do it yourself home renovations will take much longer than I anticipated, the work is definitely a satisfying process.
There are a number of keys to do it yourself home renovation success but first and foremost is to enjoy the journey and realize you will make plenty of mistakes along the way especially if it is your first attempt at home renovating. From the moment I first walked through the property with the real estate agent I knew this was the house I wanted to buy if I was able to negotiate the right price. Eventually we agreed on a price, I paid a deposit and finally the keys to the house were in my possession.
Before I moved into my new home I had the old bathroom professionally renovated by a licensed builder. The existing bathroom was a mess so I had the builder completely gut the old bathroom walls and all. After I finished work each day I went around to the house to keep an eye on the progress of my new bathroom and was amazed at how efficiently my beautiful new bathroom began to take shape. Over the course of a few weeks a gloriously tiled bathroom emerged. I began to think my own do it yourself home renovations would be a generally simple and speedy process. How wrong I was.
Firstly I am not a professional builder and when it comes to home renovations and general handyman work, I really do not know what I am doing. The builders who built my bathroom made it look so easy assembling the bathroom from the ground up.
Even things like painting which I thought would be a piece of cake, require careful preparation. The first day I was about to start painting some new doors I realized the doors needed to be sanded down before I painted them, primed with wood primer and then undercoated before I painted them the color I wanted them to be. A painting job I originally thought might take a couple of hours took a week working in my spare time at night and on the weekend, sanding, priming, undercoating and eventually painting. On top of this, each time I painted I had to allow time to clean up which is another job altogether. Painting looks easy but it is extremely messy, time consuming and tedious work to say the least.
Although I am an inexperienced home renovator I believe the key to do it yourself home renovation success is to not put a time limit on getting all of your renovation jobs completed. That is of course if you only have a limited amount of spare time like I do. It can be a bit boring at times but renovating my own house does give me tremendous personal satisfaction seeing the house begin to take shape and resemble the vision I had in my head before I began each renovating job.
I have a long way to go to finish my home renovations but if nothing more I am learning a lot of new tricks in the process and having fun applying myself to a whole host of new and interesting tasks along the way. The end result I expect will not only be personally rewarding but should increase the value of my investment in the long run.
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