It’s fundamental to communicate with the people working on your home, especially if timings change. What we can learn here is to understand the lead times for trades’ availability at the same time as estimating the project scope and how long jobs will take. The homeowners featured in our real-life readers’ stories often highlight that delays from one trade have ricocheted onto the next, leaving them frustrated if the next contractor can’t be on site when needed because they’ve got other work on. Be prepared for things to end up taking longer than planned. Plus, every major project is at the mercy of notorious UK weather. In a renovation, you’re dealing with an old building that can throw up problems nobody was expecting. This is just another example of why speaking to the right experts and possibly to building control in advance of doing the work is crucial – you don’t want to have to undo things because they aren’t up to scratch. This could involve details that you hadn’t considered, such as fire doors and a sprinkler system as part of a loft conversion. Have been completed by the time they return.ĭon’t forget that you’ll need to follow the Building Regs. Once they’ve finished a section of their work, you should agree with them exactly when they’re going to be back on site and what jobs they expect to
#HOME BUILDING PROJECT PLANNER FULL#
There’s no point in scheduling an electrician for a few days’ work only for them to turn around and tell you the house needs a full rewire, and the job is therefore much bigger (and more expensive) than you’d planned for.Īnother trick to keeping things on schedule is to make sure you understand exactly what each trade needs from others and when. We’ve highlighted the importance of this in past features in this series, but it’s always best to speak to professionals to establish how extensive individual tasks are likely to be. For a guide to the order in which things need to happen, see the box opposite. So, if you want a snazzy span of glazed doors in your new kitchen-diner, schedule for these to be installed before the new kitchen cabinets go in. Remember the house needs to be weathertight before you focus on internal works (they’ll be ruined if the building isn’t dry). “We moved out for 10 days while the kitchen was being installed, but that was it,” she adds
“We were just trying to save money, even though we were told it would extend the length of the build, which it did.” Things were manageable while the extension was being built separately, but when it broke through to the original house, there was no keeping out the dust and the noise. It was dreadful to be honest,” says Julia. Julia and Nick Keem stayed living in their home during the 18 months that their 16th century farmhouse was renovated and extended. This might have destabilised the walls, which would now need to be fixed.
#HOME BUILDING PROJECT PLANNER WINDOWS#
One key example is where (now dated) plastic windows were fitted to replace original timber units without due consideration to lintels. Learn more: 11 Common Period Home Renovation Mistakes Other common problems to look out for include incorrectly specified products that were installed by previous owners and are actually damaging the building. Addressing major structural issues, such as rotten rafters and damp issues, should be top of the list. Every building naturally deteriorates over time, but if a property has been empty for a while then it’s likely to need more than simply an aesthetic facelift. The first thing to prioritise in your schedule are any jobs that will prevent further damage. Perhaps a middle ground would suit you better – ie doing a few sections of the house simultaneously because you’re running the same flooring in two rooms and the adjoining hallway, for instance. Or is the scale extensive enough that you need to take a whole house approach? This would probably be the case if you’re doing major structural updates and changing the plumbing and electrics throughout.
Think about whether it makes sense to tackle one room at a time (it could if you’re going to live in the house during the works).ĬOMPLETE RENOVATION GUIDE PART 3: dESIGNING A RENOVATION Look at the project as a whole and have a clear order of jobs written down. Here are some key things to remember when planning your schedule. The trick to setting up a smooth project is understanding what needs to be done when, and keeping in communication with your trades when delays crop up. Every home building project is unique, but planning a renovation takes a different approach to when you’re constructing a new property from scratch – largely because you’re working on a pre-existing structure that already has its individual quirks in place.
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