Measure twice, cut once – home improvement planning

There’s an old saying in the building trade. Measure twice, cut once. It’s both time and money saving. And it’s also safer to take your time and make sure everything is done properly (a rushed job is a potentially dangerous job). In fact, home improvements are a leading cause of accidents each year (along with road traffic accidents, of course – find a local motorcycle accident lawyer if you have been affected).

That’s why we’re going to look at home improvement guidance, to ensure that things go smoothly and safely at all times.

Create a budget and stick to it

They say that rules are there to be broken. However, that particular saying only applies to arbitrary rules that weren’t needed in the first place. When it comes to your budget, you need to plan out your expenditure down to the last nail in the wall, because any rule breaking on budget can mean not only that your project gets put back, but may even mean that your home improvement project becomes financially unfeasible. We’ve all driven by homes that are undergoing extensions, with ugly blue plastic used as a temporary roof over what will be a new garage, or something, and we’ve all driven back past that same house months later only to see the work is still going on. Almost always, the delay is down to lack of proper budgeting at the outset.

Draw your vision

You already know what you want your home improvement project to look like when it’s finished. You have an idea, at least, in your mind’s eye of how everything is going to fit together once the tools have been put back in the garage and the place has been given a spring clean. That’s why you must draw your vision, as a sort of road map to the goal you desire. Without a solid idea of how you want things to look, on the spot decisions can be made that won’t necessarily tie in with other decisions, detracting from the original vision.

Think about storage

Home improvements are an opportunity to increase storage space – something that is highly sought after in all homes (storage is one of the things that realtors enjoy pointing out to prospective buyers as a stand out reason to consider purchasing a property). If you can envisage a closet or a cubby hole, make it happen – you won’t regret having extra space to put your things, but you will always regret missed opportunities to create more storage.

Fix all maintenance issues (don’t just paint over them)

Hairline cracks in your paintwork, for example, may be due to serious underlying issues. Where these issues are not addressed and instead you choose to paint or plaster over the obvious signs that something is wrong, the problem has the potential to return with much more devastating effects further down the line. Always make sure you get any issues checked out and corrected as and when you spot them during renovations.