Smart Renovation, Dumb Renovation
The Not-So-Obvious Issues
A couple days ago we talked about renovations in terms of selecting a home to renovate.
Now let’s get down to brass tacks. As home designers and experienced builders and renovators, we think of renovations as two types – “smart renovation” candidates and “poor renovation” candidates.
A smart renovation candidate is one which minimizes the structural work on the existing house and allows you to easily add rooms with relative ease.
A poor renovation candidate is one which requires a great deal of interior restructuring to meet your needs.
Making a determination is a matter of having a solid tentative plan before you buy a home and hiring a company that has completed renovation work to give you a reliable and rough estimate of the cost. This sounds tough, but it isn’t really hard to get this information- it’s vital.
We see renovations much differently than most people do. We see a very unattractive house from the outside and understand what can be done to make it attractive. Often you’d be surprised. Take a look at these before and after photos of exteriors. Each one was done in a way that added substantial economic value to the home. Each one created a home which the owner was happy to come home to and very pleased to have friends visit.
Each of these was classified from aesthetic and value as smart exterior renovations:
Exterior renovations are pretty simple. We rarely find a house in which we cannot create a much more attractive house design.
What about interiors?
More than exteriors, interiors can make a house a poor renovation candidate. It is a matter of understanding what you want to create in terms of living areas.
We’ll ask you many questions about your proposed renovation of an interior before you give you an opinion as to whether a house is a smart or dumb renovation candidate. Here are a few of those questions.
- What rooms do you need?
- How large do you want each room to be?
- What rooms exist now that you don’t need?
- What rooms are missing?
- Do you need an informal family dining area – for example, a morning room.
- Should the house plan include more bedrooms?
- Should the renovated house plan include more baths, second floor laundry?
- What is you approximate budget?
- Do you have an idea of the finishes?
Hopefully this gives you a better understanding of a “smart renovation” candidate and a “dumb renovation” candidate. There is a lot that goes into a renovation and although it seems as if anything can be renovated, there is a lot more that goes into the renovation process. Home renovations give you as the home owner a house that suits your needs and is aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
The process of deciding if your house is a “smart renovation” candidate is a phone call away, so before you decide that you want to renovate your house, preparation work is crucial.
Hunter Roberts Homes and Wellington Chase Homes design home plans, renovation plan. We build traditional, modern and contemporary new homes; do renovations, remodeling and home additions. We do the architecture including interior design details as well as new home plans. We manage all phases of the new home construction and renovation work. We build throughout Oakland County including Birmingham, Berkley, Bloomfield Village, Bloomfield Hills, Bloomfield Township, Franklin, Sylvan Lake, Beverly Hills, Orchard Lake, Bingham Farms, Huntington Woods, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak, Berkley, Ferndale and Troy. Our work can be found in neighborhoods such Quarton Lake, Poppleton Park, Midvale, Holy Name, central Birmingham and other fine areas.
