Five lessons I learnt renovating my home

A renovation is always going to be a learning experience, as there’s only so much you can know about a property, and yourself, before you start.

These are just some of the lessons I learnt from renovating my own home.

1. Changing plans can be costly

We started with grand plans to knock down half the house and rebuild, but decided to scale back the project to cut costs.

But keeping existing walls, roofing, plumbing, electricals and flooring meant remediating, not rebuilding. That meant spending money on maintenance, rather than high-impact visual changes that would appeal to future buyers.

Scaled-back plans also meant working with the existing bathroom and kitchen, which both needed a lot of attention.

After initially planning on simply updating bathroom fixtures to save money, we decided a full bathroom renovation would result in a better home overall. Bathrooms are notoriously expensive, so this blew out the budget significantly.

2. Avoid re-renovating

Rather than demolishing rooms and starting fresh, the plan now involved peeling back decades of previous owners’ bad renovating decisions. 

The original front rooms were ancient but well-built and required minimal work, but the rear revealed odd decisions of previous renovators long ago.

It also took a surprisingly high number of coats to conceal the deep purple paint from the 1980s with a crisp, modern white. Next time I’ll buy the big tin of undercoat.

The existing bathroom layout was awkward, owing to a previous owners’ decision that it would double as the laundry too. A full renovation allowed for a better layout with more space, albeit at the added cost of rerouting plumbing.

In hindsight, a younger home in original condition would have involved less work correcting the mistakes of the past.

3. The cheapest quote isn’t the best

While we did a lot of work ourselves, we hired tradespeople for specialist tasks, but sometimes placed too much emphasis on cost rather than quality.

Most of the tradies were great, but there was one whose quote had seemed too good to be true. It was.

He was out of his depth, failed to communicate and overall did a poor quality job.

He was paid for work that was done and relieved of his duties, and a more skilled builder was hired to redo the job and correct his mistakes. Hiring the better builder to begin with would have avoided the added stress and expense.

4. Get a range of builders’ opinions

When we bought the property, we did the right thing and arranged a pre-purchase building and pest inspection.

Building reports explain the condition of the home and highlight potential problems. But don’t expect information on costs for repairs, as this rarely falls within the scope of a pre-purchase report.

If I were to do it again, I’d make a list of the jobs that need most attention and ask the team of vetted tradies I now have on speed-dial for rough quotes. It’s a lot more accurate than doing the sums on the back of the brochure.

If you have a good relationship with a builder, you might even be able to convince them to inspect the home with you, provide their suggestions and even a preliminary quote, depending on the size and scale of the project.

5. Don’t underestimate the mess

I’d been warned about how much waste is generated when renovating, but I must admit it took me a little by surprise seeing it first-hand.

I foolishly thought a couple of dustpans and bins could keep the place clean until about day 16 when I caved and gave our trusty household vacuum cleaner a death sentence by forcing it to inhale all manner of particles generated by drilling, sanding, cutting and scraping. 

Next time I’ll buy a proper worksite vacuum cleaner before starting. I’ll also plan better to make sure most of the messy work is done first.

If it sounds like I’m turned off renovating forever, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m actually looking forward to putting these lessons into practice on the next project.