Strategy

Home Renovation Realities

Here’s the thing – a home renovation will always end up being more work than you plan when getting started on it.

Yes, I’ll just break that reality to you right now.  The amount of that extra work is probably linked to how much of a perfectionist you are, but more often than not there will be items you did not plan for from the jump start.

The Little Things Add Up

In all the renovations that have been done on my properties it actually wasn’t any big thing that threw a large amount of extra work on us.  For that I am happy and even blessed as there are so many people with war stories about having to completely redo things like electric or plumbing when it was not expected.

However, little things add up and just when you think you are done they rear their ugly head.  This is what tends to happen to me and for the most part it is cosmetic things which are easy to fix, but still need to get done in order to show a property at its best.

This is especially true when listing for sale as opposed to just renting out.

Show Ready Details

I’m currently finishing up a renovation on a property I plan to sell.  There are a bunch of little details I would probably not worry about if I were just renting it out again, but these are the little things that retail buyers notice and impact whether they like or dislike a property.

Thus, when I realized all the door knobs don’t match in the property, especially the two on the french doors for the master bedroom I thought, ugh we aren’t done.

This isn’t something major and only costs a couple hundred bucks and a couple hours of time, but it is an example nonetheless and when you couple it with two more similar type tasks you now have almost another full day added to your renovation just when you thought you were finished.

How I missed something so simple, well it happens.  All the door levers were gold, so when you are blasting through the more important work you miss some smaller things.

Punch Out List

This is why there is punch out at the end of a renovation.  Items like these get taken care of.  For this renovation I happened to be out of town the last two days of reno otherwise I may have notice some of the items as I walked through, but I am noticing them now.

It’s not something my contractor would have taken care of because why would he if I don’t ask for it?  The door levers work fine, they just look bad.

Since this property is in a nice community that needs to be HGTV level pretty to compete, it’s something I need to address.

Again, this is a rather simple example, but it lets me express the point that there will always be more items than you expect on a renovation.

For me, it is usually more cosmetic detail stuff at the end that went unnoticed.  I’m fine with this because it means I’m doing a good job recognizing and planning for the larger renovation items that are needed.

Anyway, don’t forget if you need a guide on many other aspects of being a rental property owner you can always grab a copy of ScaredyCatGuide to Investing in Rental Properties.

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