Being a relatively new employee to Rossmark Pty Ltd and also someone that has recently lived through a renovation I was asked if I could share any lessons learnt after our renovation.
There are so many facets to renovating and it can be a really exciting process seeing your existing home transform in front of your eyes but it can also be daunting living amongst the chaos that a renovation can bring.
So some of my lessons learnt:
Having the architect/draftsperson work closely together with the builder is a very important step. However you choose to do your build these two roles working closely together will save a lot of time and money in the long run. Take your time in the planning phase.
Research should be a major factor for anyone doing a renovation as it will probably be one of the biggest spends you will do on your house other the purchase. The Internet has so much information and it has never been easier to research the companies you are thinking about working with. Have they got customer testimonials? What do their build sites look like? Are their customers’ happy post- build? Not social media happy but genuinely happy living in the house 6 months after completion.
This is a little more difficult to do but ideally if it is possible, reach out to some of their previous customers for feedback. In my experience people are generally really happy to talk to you about their renovation. If there is a completed build that you like ask the company if they can facilitate a site visit with their customer.
Having visuals of renovations you like will help immensely and eliminate any ambiguity. Take pictures of builds in the area that you like. Simple things like windows, doors, lights and any parts of a house that stand out to you. Create a story board for your builder. Scroll through websites like Houzz, visit Pinterest, Instagram. This made it very easy to communicate what we were trying to achieve with our renovation.
When It comes to the budget we found being able to see a detailed breakdown of our renovation costs showed us where our major costs were and it was a great way for us to really cement our priorities for the renovation. Opening up and extending our living space and creating additional rooms was of a higher priority than selecting costly finishes.
And really important for us was to minimise the disruption to our normal family life. Having a builder that understood that was fantastic. We were very grateful and relieved to walk in at the end of every day to a site that had been tidied up. 
It sounds very simple but it will make the world of difference after a few months.Lastly, the single most important factor to our most recent renovation was having a single point of contact that kept us updated regularly, our contact answered any questions we had and handled any problems that cropped up through the renovation.
This one person, if it’s the right person, can make or break a renovation. We were lucky with our renovation and this made a world of difference to changes and questions we had along the way.
Happy Building
K.