Give Me Back My Five Bucks

13

Guest Post: Lessons I Learned From Renovations

Posted on September 29, 2011 in guest post  

Hello! I’m Clare from youngandthrifty.ca.  A fellow Vancouverite and a fellow PF blogger!  I was honored to be asked by Krystal to guest post on her blog.  I am a huge fan of Krystal’s blog – it’s one of the only blogs I read religiously.  If you have been following my blog, you’ll know that I recently became a homemoaner home owner in Vancouver.  After 6 months of searching, we found a cute older home in a great neighbourhood.  It needed some work though (both structurally and cosmetically) and we were prepared to renovate.  We also added a basement rental suite to help us pay down our mortgage faster.

I learned some tough lessons from renovations, so I thought I could share them with you so you won’t make the same mistakes I did.

Lesson #1

You know how they say to budget 25% on top of what you were quoted?  At first I thought that was all exaggeration, but it’s unfortunately true (if you’re doing anything structurally).  The contractors won’t know what’s underneath (even the home inspectors can’t) until they look underneath.  We ended up deciding to replace the water line because the pipes were rusting.  That cost us an extra $1000.  It’s like looking at the tip of the iceberg and finding out there’s a massive slab of ice underneath.

Lesson #2

Changing your mind costs money.  Make sure you know which room is going to be your main bedroom before you add baseboard heaters.  BF and I had thought we were going to sleep in the larger (though more irregularly shaped) room, but then we decided to sleep in the smaller room with the walk-in closet.  We had initially decided the smaller room was going to be our guest bedroom/ office so we had the electrician install a baseboard against the wall.  Then we changed our minds and wanted to sleep in the smaller room so we had to move the baseboard heater or else our bed frame would sit against it (um, can you say fire hazard?).  This cost us another $100 or so to move the baseboard heater.

Lesson #3

Make sure you get a quote for everything the contractor does – and write it down.  Our electrician is a nice guy (he’s a big softie).  He added flood lights (and the associated wiring) for our back porch, he added a carbon monoxide/ smoke detector for both the upstairs and downstairs (which is necessary of course).  We made the mistake of NOT asking him how much these minor upgrades would cost us.  We assumed it wouldn’t be very much because they were small, seemingly menial tasks (though I suppose wiring a smoke detector, cutting a hole in the ceiling etc. isn’t very menial).  When the final bill came, my eyes widened- $400 for the smoke detector installation ($200 for the smoke detector materials and $200 for his labor).  Yowza.

Lesson #4

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.  I had some grandiose visions for our house.  I wanted this and that done.  I wanted to make our basement suite look as good as the basement suites on HGTV’s Income Property.  I had wanted our contractor to build a cabinet so that the washer and dryer would be enclosed in the basement suite.  In the end, I decided it wasn’t worth the extra money to do that (I’m also not very handy and neither is my boyfriend haha).  Our basement suite still looks good despite not having the cabinet.  There are sacrifices that need to be made in the interest of a limited budget, although we would probably all like to, we can’t live in our dream home from the get go.

I’m happy.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love love love my new home now.  We’re on the final touches of the basement renovations (just need to move that fridge in, patch up some dry wall, and clean up) and we’ll be ready to list it.  I had wanted to list it before September so we could rent it to students, but that’s another lesson learned- your timeline may not happen if you’re waiting for your local electricity provider to come and upgrade your electrical service and it takes them two months to do it!.

Have you ever had trouble with renovations?  Any other revovation lessons I might have missed?

Read More Posts

13 Responses to “Guest Post: Lessons I Learned From Renovations”

Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts in the comments

  1. Echo says:
    Thursday, September 29, 2011 - 06:49am at 6:37 am

    Nice post, Clare! One of the reasons we bought new was to avoid costly renovations. In the end, we got what we wanted at the same price as we would have spent on an older home with reno’s, and our roof, appliances and furnace (etc) are all brand new.

    That said, you can go overboard choosing all of your upgrades and customization with the new house too.
    Echo´s latest post —> Treating Your Marriage Like A Business (Financially)

    Reply
    • youngandthrifty says:
      Thursday, September 29, 2011 - 07:46pm at 7:51 pm

      Thanks Echo! I totally agree- I think going new or renovating, depending on your taste, one can easily go overboard. My colleague decided to renovate her house (she was going to buy new) and her renovations are going to cost her $300,000. She lives in a bungalow but she is redoing the entire house pretty much. Our renovations cost $60K. But it still looks cosmetically decent (well except for our floor in the basement but thats another story lol).
      youngandthrifty´s latest post —> Freedom 65? Keeping your Senior Insured (Safely)

      Reply
  2. ImpulseSave says:
    Thursday, September 29, 2011 - 09:28am at 9:13 am

    So many important lessons to learn. I think that the smaller repairs (the smoke detectors) are the most important to keep track of. You don’t expect the small things to cost so much, as opposed to a major overhaul. But, as you have witnessed, they can be a real chunk of change!
    ImpulseSave´s latest post —> The Anatomy Of An Impulse-Buy: Those Darned Khaki Pants

    Reply
  3. Kelly says:
    Thursday, September 29, 2011 - 02:25pm at 2:12 pm

    I’m in the same boat right now! Moved into my 1st home a month ago and I have had to really reign in my ideas to suit my budget. Even small decisions like changing light shades really start to add up. And my local hardware store has replaced my fav clothing store as the place that gets all my spare change!

    Reply
  4. My Own Advisor says:
    Thursday, September 29, 2011 - 06:32pm at 6:44 pm

    Nice post!

    Clare, one thing you forgot to really reinforce – add more time! Whatever your reno timeline might be, add at least 50%. Over-estimating will make you feel really good when the job is done, just over the expected timeframe :)
    My Own Advisor´s latest post —> Weekend Reading – Dividend Growth Index edition

    Reply
  5. Gordon says:
    Friday, September 30, 2011 - 01:32pm at 1:20 pm

    In regards to lesson #2: you could have saved money by not installing permanent baseboard heaters, and instead purchased portable baseboard heaters. They can be moved from room to room depending on where you want to heat and they have built-in programmable thermostats so nothing needs to be wired.

    Reply
  6. Si says:
    Saturday, October 1, 2011 - 03:50am at 3:47 am

    Nice post.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv badge

As seen in…

- Personal finance
- Financial management

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives

Quotes for long term care insurance rates.
- Know typical credit card offers before deciding on a credit card.
- Credit repair & debt solutions
- Get your Cash loans today.
- Search for the best coupons with Coupon Croc
- Some thoughts about money
- Fast and easy Payday loans
- Insurance Services provided by USAA.
- Check out paydayloans.org.uk for help.
© 2012 Give Me Back My Five Bucks. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress | Made by Guerrilla | Hosted by BlueHost