Some Great Home Remodeling Tips
Follow these home remodeling tips as you plan your home remodeling project and we guarantee you will be delighted with the results.
Get a Professional Design
Above all, you should have a complete and professional design done at the outset of your home remodeling project. This is the only way to guarantee that you will:
- Use and enjoy the space like you intended.
- Avoid misunderstandings which result in a much higher final cost than you expected.
- Get it done on time and on budget.
- Get the best value for your money.
- Maximize your return on investment upon resale.
Our design experts provide you with a blueprint with 3D renderings that ensure you get what you want. Design Your Basement has created designs for entire houses including kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms and more.
Here’s why:
Use And Enjoyment
How do you feel when you think of unfinished or poorly designed space in your home? Dark? Cold? Dusty? Cluttered? Maybe even spooky? Do you like to be in that room? Chances are, you’d rather be somewhere else.
So our first home remodeling tip is to come up with a design that removes the those stigmas from your space. You must change the look and feel to that of another living level…an inviting and seamless extension of your home.
Resale Value
You probably would not have embarked on this project if you planned to move soon. But we live in fast times. You never know. So resale value is important.
Hard data for home improvement resale values is hard to come by. After all, these costs aren’t itemized in resale asking prices and you can’t buy a space like a finished basement separately.
Fortunately, there is help in this area. Remodeling Magazine surveys realtors throughout the United States to get estimates of home improvement resale values. For example, resale values for finished basements range from 37% to 115% of original cost nationwide.
The factors that most influence finished basement resale values include:
- How well your lower-level space complements your main living areas.
- The basement should feel like it was built when the house was and have the fun additions that the main floor might be missing.
- Inclusion of key features like bedrooms and bathrooms in your design.
- The scarcity of homes in your area.
This is just one example, but think about it. If your main living area is a four-star hotel and your basement is a truck-stop, you will obviously not realize a high return on your investment. If, on the other hand, you convert your 3-bedroom home into a 4-bedroom home by including a cozy bedroom and full bath in your lower level design, you will pull top dollar.
Finally, if you follow the “use and enjoyment” principles we noted above and insist on high-quality design and construction, you will further maximize your resale value.
In our FREE Homeowner Protection Guide, we show you how “saving” $10,000 on a $40,000 finished basement can actually cost you $8,000-$18,000 in the end. Or, looking at it another way, how that $10,000 could bring in a 275% to 625% return on investment when you sell your home.
Getting The Best Deal
Every expert in our industry will give you the same advice: get multiple bids to make sure you aren’t getting ripped off. That’s good advice.
But the fact is, people still screw up this step badly—but not because they fail to get multiple bids. Rather, it is because they have no idea if the bids they received are at all comparable.
Using a square foot price to determine what your basement might cost is a flawed and misleading method. Here’s why: If you have a nicely designed bathroom that costs $5000 for instance and you have a 500 square foot basement, that bathroom costs $10 per foot. That same bathroom in 2000 square feet is only $2.50 per foot. So if a contractor tells you a square foot price without actually basing it on an accurate design, that one room alone can have a margin of error of as much as $7.50.
If you want to learn how to solicit and compare bids properly, get our FREE Homeowner Protection Guide.
Avoiding Change Orders
If you want to avoid costly change orders, disappointing results, or both, you must get an accurate and professional design before you sign your contract.
Your design should include 3D elevations and renderings. This is because what happens above the floor is especially important—and challenging—in finished renovation design.
Designing a room is harder than you might imagine. For example, basements pose unique design challenges:
- How to conceal pipes, poles, soffits, HVAC, plumbing, and electrical.
- How to provide adequate light and safe egress.
- How to deal with stairs, water heaters and furnaces that are in the way.
- How to create inviting areas that complement the rest of your home.
But the biggest challenge is combining all these things in a way that doesn’t look like a cheap retrofit. This is almost impossible to do with just hand sketches and 2D elevations. If your design does not include 3D elevations and renderings, you may not discover important problems until it’s way too late.
Summary On Design
Complete, skilled and accurate design is critical if you want to use and enjoy your home space as intended, maximize resale value, get comparable and reliable estimates, and avoid costly change orders. Don’t short-cut the process.
Hire A Company With Genuine Design-Construction Expertise
Great design doesn’t happen by accident. It takes skill, experience, and attitude.
So when you evaluate contractors for your finished renovation addition, resist the temptation to chase the lowest bid or hire the “nice-guy” handyman. Look for a company with proven design-construction expertise.
Please look for more home remodeling tips on our blog and in our Homeowners Protection Guide, we talk about why we are uniquely qualified to do this work and how we make the process of planning and contracting your job as easy and risk-free as possible.