Tips for Planning Your Next Home Renovation
With the cold quickly creeping in at night waving goodbye to warm summer days, now is a great time to start planning goals for your home in 2018. A new year is a new fresh slate on which you can accomplish anything you set your mind to; with the right planning, of course.
If you’re a homeowner who is looking to move in the not too distance future or one who appreciates smart investments, it’s an easy realization that home renovations can add a large amount of value to any property. Consumers love new products, and what’s a better feeling than having a home that looks and feels freshly built?
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Assess Your Property
It is important to know your property’s strong and weak points. Maybe your home has an amazing garden that is the envy of the neighborhood, but it still has an unfinished basement. Your home is possibly in great condition, except the window frames which are slowly decaying. Or, quite often as we see, homes are wonderfully decorated inside but have a completely ignored exterior.
Something we frequently find are properties with decks in varying states of decay. Replacing a deck is no easy task and something that many homeowners decide to take on themselves and quickly find out what a large amount of work is involved. There are always actions to take, but it is best to plan what the most effective strategy for your home is first.
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Be Realistic
If you are not a handy person yourself, you may find the DIY approach to be tougher than expected. This is why it’s important to properly budget your renovations for the year and understand the true costs behind upgrading your home. Things like the cost of labor, materials, permits, and unforeseen circumstances (which will happen more than you’d think,) all add up very quickly. Home improvement is almost always a great investment, but it has to be the right investment for you at the moment. Make sure you can afford what you are setting out to do.
Our professionals will gladly help assess your property and give you a free quote on some upgrades for your property.
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Tackle It in Stages
Looking to replace your deck, all the windows in your home, and completely finish your basement? Excellent! Don’t expect to get this all done in the course of a month. It’s important to set realistic timelines, both for budget reasons and to have lax project timelines to account for unexpected issues. Properties are complicated objects with a lot of interconnected parts and aspects. Always try to account for the unforeseen. However, this will be easier with the help of trained professionals who already know the typical routine!
It’s good to have a handle on when to do what type of home renovation as well. You may find it easier to try and renovate your home interior during colder months while renovating your exterior in the warmer months—for obvious reasons. However, consider the reverse: during the winter months, contractors usually have more availability, and along with that comes lower costs (both of labor and materials!). It’s always important to get as many quotes as you can to best understand your project, what it entails, and when the best time to go ahead will be.
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Be Cost-Effective!
Rebates can be your friend — upgrades with energy efficiency in mind can help you qualify for rebates on the municipal, state, and federal levels. These rebates can add up quicker than you think and add a nice little chunk of cash back from what you are spending. Transforming your deck into an insulated sunroom can actually earn you money! But, keep in mind that to be eligible for these rebates you will first have to have an energy audit which will lay out the foundation for how much your home has improved after your renovations.
On top of rebates, consider the true impact of properly insulating your home. It’s a long-term investment which will definitely save money over time, by offering benefits such as your own energy bills will go down, your home will stay cooler in the summer months and retain heat better in the winter months.
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Have a Vision of Success
Make sure that ultimately, as the home/property owner, you have a complete vision of what you’d like to achieve from your property and what you’d like to be able to get out of it. If you’re selling, you may only be interested in mostly giving it a “face-lift” so it looks great to new buyers. If you’re planning on living here for an extended time, the features of your home matter more than not. Do you want a great deck to host the best summer BBQs for all your family and friends? Looking for a guest house for when the in-laws come over, so you can have a little privacy? Or maybe you need a home office but don’t have enough rooms to make it happen. Whatever your goals, with the right amount of planning, they can become a reality! It’s just important to feel out exactly what you’d like to get from your property.
Feel free to contact our experts here at Canton Aluminum, we’ll gladly take the time to talk about your property, the goals you have, and how we can help get you in motion for a better home. Give us a call or come visit our showroom today.