How to Renovate your Home

Most of us in India, usually buy our dream home only once in our lifetime. It becomes imperative that we keep on renovating and remodeling our home at adequate times to keep it as charming as it has been in your memories. Old isn’t gold every time. Even old homes and apartments can come with their own set of headaches when it comes to maintenance. In such scenarios, renovation of the house becomes unavoidable. Another reason for the requirement of home renovation is that you find that your amenities are simply not meeting your growing family’s needs. Not only this, there can be several other reasons for wanting or needing to renovate your home. A few of the reasons behind home renovation could be:

• You may wish to sell your home and want to increase its saleability and market value.
• You might want an image makeover for your home, making it look more modern and luxurious.
• Safety and security related issues can be another reason for home renovation.

Whatever your reason may be, every house must be renovated at a decent time to assure its durability and to tackle many small and large maintenance issues. Home renovating can be a daunting task regardless of whether it is the small renovation of a particular room or you are renovating the entire house. Through this article, we will try and help you make your home renovation a less tedious task.

Renovation is a voluminous exercise that requires a lot of resources like attention, time, money, etc. It is very easy to get overwhelmed while looking at all the requirements and things needed to be done. This can easily be avoided by simply breaking down the entire project into micro manageable tasks. We are listing down some of the steps to help you make the process easier.

• Start by identifying the problems that require urgent attention and make a rough plan in your mind regarding what type of renovation you are undertaking.
• Secondly, hire professionals. Unless you are an architect yourself or some interior designing whizz, always hire professionals. They will help you avoid unnecessary wastage of time, money and effort. 
• Once you have sat with your architect or interior designer and finalized a plan as per your requirements and liking, chart out a budget. Take a note that home renovation isn’t a quick and easy task. Although you have set aside a budget, keep some room for changes. You might choose some costlier options than the predetermined budget.
• Fix up a timeline. Ensure that all the parties involved in renovating your home are well aware of the timeline and try to stick to it as much as possible.
• Decide upon all the existing things that you are going to replace and make arrangements for the old stuff to be moved, sold or donated to the needy. 
• Once you have a clear cut plan of execution, give your go-ahead to the hired professionals and start renovating your home. 

Renovating your home is not always as picturesque as you might believe. Most people encounter a few unplanned challenges due to a lack of proper knowledge and insight. We are indexing a few commonly faced challenges with an intention to assist you in avoiding them.

• Cracks in the foundation: visible cracks in the foundation of the building are usually a primary indication of structural damage to the house. Ask a structural engineer to inspect your home and find an ideal solution for the same.
• Damage due to moisture: One of the major problems faced in old properties is of water seepage. The water may seep in from the roof, the walls and from the leaky plumbing lines. Make it a point to appoint a waterproofing consultant who can identify the faults and seal them up to avoid seepage in the future.
• Damaged electrical wiring: The electrical wiring of an old building cannot take the load of modern home appliances. Take guidance from your hired electrician for making the necessary changes in the existing wiring.
• Flawed plumbing lines: Many times the water seepage issue occurs due to faulty plumbing lines or damaged plumbing lines. Try and replace all the existing galvanized plumbing pipes with the new PVC pipes.

To conclude, we can safely say that while renovating your home isn’t an easy affair, it can be made less tiresome if planned and executed properly.