How to Keep Perspective During a Renovation
If you haven’t gone through a major renovation before, let me tell you…
It is one of the most stressful things you can undertake.
It interrupts your life.
99% of the time there is at least one unexpected expense.
You’re making big money decisions that you want to get right.
It will keep you up at night.
So what do you do?
My obvious answer to this is to hire a professional (ie: me haha) but even then, I can’t make all the decisions for you (unless you’re like hey make it awesome, make it happen and our budget is unlimited but that hasn’t happened yet).
So how to you keep perspective and make decisions - regardless of if you have a design professional alongside you?
spend on what is important
The first thing I always say is spend the money on what is important. The things that are difficult to change, have a higher price tag, or are foundational to the design. There are always ways to get creative with some of the other elements if you need to or to take on the smaller projects yourself if budget is an issue but time isn’t.
I consider important decisions to be things like your flooring, your windows (and window coverings), your kitchen cabinets and countertops and appliances. Those are items you don’t want to cheap out on because you likely aren’t going to be able to (or want to) change them again for at least 10 years. These are the things you want to stand the test of time.
Also consider situations when something has to be “opened up” - make sure you’ve thought about the scenarios that might occur in the future and spend the money now to ensure you’ve put everything in that you need to while it’s open (electrical and plumbing are mainly what I’m referring to). Need an example? So say you are renovating your kitchen and the plumber already has to open up part of a wall to add some new water lines to your fancy new fridge. And you’ve always wanted a pot filler above your stove, but it’s going to mean more drywall being opened up and extra plumbing costs. In that situation, I say do it. You’re already going to have to patch drywall and the plumber is already there. So the cost of doing it now is less than it will be in 2 years when your kitchen is finished and you’re like, “ugh I really wish I had installed that pot filler.”
But maybe a pot filler is a passing thought. You saw one on Pinterest and thought that might be fun, but also you’re already over budget and to match your other plumbing fixtures and have it installed is going to be say $1000 more. That’s when I implement my future self technique.
Future self technique
In 2 years, is it going to be more important to me to have had that extra $1000 or to have a pot filler that I’m not even sure I’ll use that much? Your answer will completely depend on you.
One of the times we said no to the upgrade was with our shower fixtures for the bathroom we added to the second floor of our home. We wanted to splurge on a good rain shower head and had just gotten back from Spain where we enjoyed a huge rain shower in our Barcelona hotel. (I’m not joking when I say huge - the shower head was at least 16-18” in diameter and it was amazing). We wanted this bathroom to have some spa like characteristics and knew that we wanted to spend a bit more on the shower. The set we found that we liked had an option of an 8” or a 12” rain shower head. But upgrading to the 12” was significantly more. Did the larger one look more luxurious? Yes. Were we truly going to notice the difference of a few extra nozzles? Maybe? Would the smaller one look too small in our shower? Nope - our shower was already small. Could we put that extra $ towards something more important to us down the line.? Hell yes.
So we passed on the 12“ one and settled for the 8”. And I’m here to tell you, two years later, that I have no regrets with that decision.
You know where I do have a small regret though? Window coverings. We have 22 windows in our little home, 9 of which are on our main floor. We did splurge and get Hunter Douglas Silhouettes (I mean it helps that I sell them obviously) but we decided to not do the PowerView operating system. We thought, oh is it really that much effort to go around and open all the blinds manually? We were already spending so much having to put window coverings on all our windows and at the time, the thought of spending even another $1500 to upgrade the main ones to PowerView just seemed like it was too much (and at that point we were really over budget). But if you asked me now (2 years later) what I would go back and do…
I would have upgraded the living room and office windows for sure.
Bart’s answer is different, mind you.
Keep perspective
Remember to step back, breathe, and think these decisions through. Hire a professional if you need that extra support. You’re in the middle of one of the most stressful things you can do and it will all be okay. Just remember to think about what really matters to you in terms of the function and design. And also how you’ll feel about a splurge in 2 years.
Kierstin Smyth Design
Edmonton Interior Design Consultant