1. Spending too much on your home renovation:
Want to turn your old kitchen into something to rival the set of Master Chef? Before you splurge on the latest kitchen bling, appliances and stainless steel everything, run the numbers and see how how much you can spend first, there is nothing worse than getting half way through a project only to realise half of it will look like Oprah’s kitchen the other half will look more like a soup kitchen for the homeless.
Many homeowners get a tad excited and blow $50,000 when they could have spent $15,000 on a makeover and not had to go into debt. It is super easy to spend thousands mindlessly especially in the era of pay wave and interest free finance, but if you do your research, you can avoid spending more than you should. Focus on attaining professional finishes that will please most potential buyers (If you intend on selling any time soon). Never spend more than an appropriate percentage of the home’s value.
2. Following ‘architectural’ fads, magazine messiahs and TV show trends:
Step away from the paint roller, ignore what Tara Denis and Scotty Cam area preaching. Aubergine may be one of the hottest colours for 2016, but that shouldn’t insight a spending spree on a million litres of purple regret, splashing paint on the walls like it’s water in a house fire or buying up expensive trendy furniture in this seasons must have hues.
Less is often more, whilst it is tempting to blindly jump on the latest copper and concrete bandwagon or put your unique stamp on your home, it could actually devalue your property. Fashionable “featurism” dates insanely fast, so rather than turning to this months home beautiful magazine for inspiration (“Inspo” if you must) look to the past, the classics what has stood the test of time. There are many 1930’s modernist houses in California and even locally on the Sunshine Coast that look as thought they were conceived 80 minutes ago not 80 years ago, a simple pallet of materials, neutral and timeless elements that won’t turn off potential buyers.
3. Renovating only one area at a time.
If you only have $10,000 in your dream home budget, you may be thinking of putting it all into a new kitchen. But it is not always the greatest strategy bling-ing only one room and ignoring all the others could reduce the overall value of your home. Renovate a few spaces at once, or at least in a small timeframe, to ensure a consistent quality it might also reduce overall costs too as getting the same trades back and forward for multiple small jobs generally adds up to a larger costs, paying twice for hiring /set up cost for scaffolding or skip hire for example.
