Planning a DIY home project? Maybe you’re excited, overwhelmed, or a combination of the above.
It’s inspiring to imagine your soon-to-be upgraded home. Power washed siding, a fresh coat of paint, new light fixtures, upgraded flooring, or a kitchen remodel can increase the value of your home and make your living space more enjoyable.
On the flip side, a lot can go wrong with home renovations, whether you’re attempting DIY or hiring a professional. It’s stressful to consider the potential pitfalls. How can you make sure your project goes smoothly and turns out well?
Thankfully, you don’t have to let that worry keep you up at night.
Learning the following five key mistakes to avoid when completing a home project will help you execute a foolproof home renovation.
1. Failing to Prepare Properly
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”~Benjamin Franklin
Be sure you have a solid understanding of the tools and techniques needed to execute your home improvement if you decide to tackle it yourself.
Making a special effort to gather the right tools and materials nearby so they’re there when you need them means you won’t be halfway through painting your cabinets when you realize you don’t have the right sized hinges to reattach the doors.
2. Attempting DIY While Lacking Skills and Experience
Our first recommendation is always to hire a licensed general contractor to do work at your home. However, with the right experience and proper preparation, DIY home projects can turn out beautifully. If you’re going to attempt the home project by yourself, be sure you pull appropriate permits and hire licensed pros to help you where needed.
On the other hand, if you don’t have much expertise in home improvement, you can run into overwhelming roadblocks along the way and finish your project unsatisfied with the results. Even worse, you might be hit with a disastrous setback and be unable to complete your renovation.
If you’re not confident in your ability to undergo a home renovation project yourself, the best course of action is to hire a knowledgeable contractor to make sure your end result is aesthetically pleasing and functional.
3. Using Low-Quality Materials to Save Money
Completing a home renovation can be a large financial investment. It’s understandable to look for ways to save money, to help cut down on overall cost. While there’s nothing wrong with seeking out a good deal on materials, it’s important to go about this carefully.
There’s a big difference between getting a great price on high-quality products and settling for lower quality to save as much money as possible. If you complete a major home project with poor-quality materials, it opens the door to a domino chain of complications that will require expensive repairs in the future. When that happens, all the money you saved up front will be lost when you’re trying to mitigate damage that occurred because the project wasn’t completed with hardy materials.
To avoid this pitfall, learn what type of products your project really needs to be completed with, in order to function properly and last a long time. Then, seek out a good deal on those items by purchasing second hand or at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore location.
4. Underestimating the Time Needed to Complete the Project
It’s easy to underestimate how long your home renovation will take if you’re new to DIY projects. When you do that, however, it causes unnecessary frustration when you can’t finish your project in the amount of time you expected.
Nobody wants to plan for eating out over a weekend only to realize their kitchen will take several more weeks to complete and they have nowhere to prepare meals in the meantime.
Professionals work full time on their contracted projects, while you likely have evenings and weekends to work on yours.
If you decide to go ahead and complete your home project yourself, be realistic about how much time you have to devote to the work and plan accordingly.
If you want your project to be completed sooner than you can do it yourself, consider hiring a contractor like Carolina Power Washing instead.
5. Choosing the First Contractor Who Gives You a Quote
Once you’ve decided to hire a professional for your home project, it might be tempting to book the first contractor who gives you a quote that fits your budget.
It’s important not to do this, because you could end up paying far more than fair market value for the work if the contractor is price gouging. Or, on the other hand, you could pay much less than average for a professional who turns out to have negative client feedback and do lower quality work.
The best practice is to get quotes from several contractors, get a reference from a trusted family member or friend, view samples of their work, and read reviews before making a decision. A contractor who charges a fair price and has excellent client feedback is typically the best choice. Even better if they come with a recommendation from a family member or friend.
Carolina Power Washing offers free estimates for all your power washing needs, including concrete, deck, fence, gutter, and house cleaning. The best part is, they have hundreds of positive reviews on Google with a 5-star average rating.
Now that you’ve learned the five key mistakes to avoid when completing a home project, you can rest assured that your home renovation will go as planned and turn out perfectly.
There’s one type of home project we have left to cover, however –
If you’re selling your house, and you know you need to check for and repair any problems before listing, but you aren’t sure where to start – booking a pre-listing home inspection might be the perfect solution for you.
Freedom Home Services offers pre-listing inspections for sellers.
With a pre-listing inspection, we examine the components of your home and property and make note of anything that appears unsafe, in need of repair or replacement, or not up to your state’s standards in the inspection report. Then, you can move forward with confidence because you were able to address any discovered problems before listing your home for sale.
Not all home inspection companies are created equal, though. We at Freedom Home Services go above and beyond state standards to ensure client safety and satisfaction.
Larger companies are often forced to push too many jobs on their inspectors. This leads to shorter and less thorough inspections, where critical problems with the property may be glossed over or missed entirely.
Compared to most 2-3 hour home inspections, our inspections last an average of 5 hours without costing more than competitor rates.
It’s important to us to make the closing process easier for realtors, too, so we offer a personal online portal for each of the realtors we work with. There, they can schedule an inspection, view and download inspection reports and photos, make repair lists, and request re-inspections once repairs are completed – all in the same place!
We offer a 2 business day scheduling guarantee. We know the closing process is time-sensitive. For that reason, when you request an inspection, we promise to schedule your inspection no more than two days out from agreeing to book with us or we’ll offer a $50 discount. We look forward to serving you!
Get in touch:
Freedom Home Services LLC
1015 Charlotte Ave #330
Rock Hill, SC 29732
Phone: (803) 693-5927
https://freedomhsllc.com/contact-us/
