7 Strategies to Follow Your House Renovation Timeline

When you're renovating your home, there are many components that must work together so that your house is fully finished on time. It might not seem like it before you start, but it's a big task. You need to coordinate a contractor or multiple contractors, and you also need to make sure that all of your materials come in on time. You should make contingency plans for when something goes wrong, and you need to be sure that you schedule all of the contractors in the right order. And, of course, there's always the possibility that you'll find things lurking behind the walls that can slow you down even more. The point is that there are plenty of ways that your home renovation project can get derailed, but there are also some strategies that you can use to get the project back on track and running smoothly.

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1. Hire a Contractor But Still Keep an Eye on Them

Hiring a general contractor when you're working through a big project is definitely a good idea. This is especially true if you have a job that you need to go to every day. When you hire a contractor, you have someone who has the experience to know how to plan ahead so that you hit fewer snags. But you also need to keep an eye on your contractor. Although they have the experience necessary to foresee more problems and avoid them, they might also be working several jobs, and you need to make sure that the contractor that you hire is giving your house the attention that it deserves. You should make sure that you check in with them regularly so that you know about where they're at during any point of the renovation process.

2. Make a Detailed Plan

One of the first steps to renovating your house is to make a detailed plan about who needs to be there and when. You should also know where you'll get your materials, especially if you have to special order cabinets, countertops, or other unique items that will go inside your house that you can't find just anywhere. You'll also want to plan out exactly when you need your permits in hand.

3. Get Permits Well in Advance

Your contractor should have a strong sense of which permits you need, but make sure that you get them well in advance. Nothing slows up a major project like waiting on a permit that you should have had a week before. Not only does this slow down your timeline because you have to wait for the permit, but it can also cause scheduling problems with your subcontractors. Most people in construction, plumbing, electrical, and other types of contractors take on multiple projects, and they won't be happy if you find out that you don't have the permits when they're scheduled to work.

4. Plan That Your Plan Will Go Off Track

We all know that the best plans can go off track, and that's entirely true whenever you're doing significant remodeling to your home. Even when you make a plan and get everyone else on board, a package might be late in shipping, or your granite countertops might come with a crack in them. What do you do if one of your contractors has an emergency? One way that you can mitigate some of these unforeseen challenges is to have more than one project that can be worked on. For instance, if you find out that your bathroom vanity cabinets aren't coming in on time a couple of days before they're supposed to be installed, can they work on grouting the shower tile? While there are some projects that need to be done in a certain sequence, other jobs can be done in more than one order.

5. Stick to Your Plan

If you want to finish your renovation, you need to come up with a plan, but you also need to stick with the same plan the entire way through. Many homeowners change their minds in the middle of the construction, and that can significantly derail your timeline. Say, for instance, you were remodeling your dining room and replacing the sliding glass doors that lead into the backyard with French doors. It's easy for a homeowner to add a few jobs to their overall project by expanding the area that they want to make new. In this case, the homeowner might decide that they want to add some new stone pavers in the backyard, which can add to the timeline.

6. Find Structural Problems Sooner Rather Than Later

One of the first things that you should do is find structural problems sooner rather than later. In older homes, it's fairly common to open up a wall and find asbestos or outdated electrical or plumbing. If you find these things when you open a wall, most states require that they're brought up to code in the area of the wall that you opened. Unique Design Kitchen Designers can help you figure out what might be behind the walls. If you aren't aware that you have other problems awaiting you underneath the wall, then you won't make an accurate timeline. You can make your timeline more on target by learning about some of the potential setbacks that you might encounter. You can do some research on what kinds of products were used when your home was built. You can also find out if any renovations have been done on the house by previous owners.

7. Find Materials Nearby

Since it's common for materials to come in late or damaged, sidestep that possibility by shopping locally whenever you can. It will save you time when you already have everything, and if you have a problem with an item, you can easily go back to the store to resolve the issue.

Whenever you're going to do a major home renovation, make sure that you have a timeline, then expect that you'll lose track of your timeline. There are a lot of possible bumps in the road, but with some tight time budgeting, you can keep things on track.