The 4 Very Real “Home Truths” When It Comes to Renovating Your Home

Home renovations are hard work, but there are a number of common misconceptions people can make about renovating a home. It’s not just about the DIY itself, but it’s the setbacks and the emotional ups and downs that can really have an impact on an individual. Here are some home truths in renovating a property that anybody should be ready for.

new apartment interior during renovation process in daylight

You Will Want to Give Up Very Quickly

In most people’s minds, the idea of doing some renovation work may involve a lick of paint and potentially a few other aesthetic changes. The reality is far different. Unfortunately, you can’t put a time limit on renovating a property, and when you do this, it automatically ramps up the emotion. We end up feeling incredibly jealous of those people who have already got on to the property ladder or they’ve managed to have it made instantly in life and settled into luxury resort living and are living a higher quality of life, and when you are stripping wallpaper and filling holes for what seems like days, if not weeks, that temptation to give up looms large. 

Not only this, but you will feel so jealous of people who have gotten onto the property ladder way before you, you can feel like it’s not worth it and you should rent forevermore. However, this is something that everybody experiences, especially when we don’t know the ins and outs of DIY. You learn very quickly and you realize that stripping wallpaper and filling holes is what will give your home the foundation. Once these tasks are done and you start to see the home take shape, you can finally feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t give up, especially when you are stripping microscopic bits of wallpaper for 8 hours at a time! No matter how physically difficult it is, it is going to be worth it!

You Cannot Put a Time Limit on Certain Things

When you attempt to put a time limit on getting something done, there will be setbacks. The fact is that most of us find DIY incredibly physically strenuous. You might think that you can get a whole room ready in the space of a weekend, but when you start to break down the things you need to do to get this room ready, it becomes apparent that it won’t be done in a weekend. 

After stripping wallpaper and filling holes, you will have to sand it down, then do a base coat of the paint, and then more sanding down to ensure those bumps are even, and this is before you even start painting the walls! This is, of course, the worst-case scenario, but if you are trying to get your home perfect, you have to be prepared to spend a lot more time than you think is necessary for doing up the home.

If You’re Not Organized, You Will Struggle!

If you are fixing up your home from scratch, the sheer volume of things that need doing becomes apparent very quickly. Aesthetic changes can be time-consuming when you don’t know what you’re doing, but a few weeks in, it becomes apparent how long these things will take to do because you either get into a system or you finally have an understanding of what needs doing. Being organized is always a good idea because if you are installing a new bathtub and you’re trying to fix up as much as you can by yourself, as well as purchase new items for the home, trying to keep tabs on everything will be incredibly overwhelming.

The fact is that most of us don’t have the luxury of taking time off work to focus on fixing up our homes, and we have to do it around school commutes, evenings, and weekends, and eventually, we feel like we’re burning out after a couple of weeks. Being organized is the best way to have some control over the situation. You’re going to have contractors tell you they can only come at a certain time, and this means that you’ve got to stop what you’re doing just to hang around waiting for them, and then they won’t turn up on time anyway, meaning that you get frustrated because you could have been doing something else.

These frustrations are all too real, and we have to make peace with the fact that things will fall behind, and if we have a deadline in place, the fact is that we may not be completely settled by then. But if we’re organized, it will certainly take the edge off and make us feel like we are tackling the task one bit at a time.

Remember Why You Are Doing It

There comes a time when you don’t just feel demotivated, but you feel completely disinterested in the process. It can be difficult to know where to begin when we’ve hit problems that we have no clue how to solve. When we encounter a major problem, for example, we don’t know how to make it safe to live in, it can be tough to know what to do. If you have one contractor telling you that you have to completely tear the walls down to the brick, this can be a lot to hear. 

It’s important to remember at this point that when you are working with certain contractors, they can thrive on giving people the worst news, either in the hopes of scaring people into hiring their services right away or the fact that the contractors are covering themselves should something happen. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and when you encounter problems, whether it’s renovating your kitchen or upgrading your living room, you can always benefit from having a number of different opinions and actually doing your own research online. 

These massive problems that we encounter can feel insurmountable, but these are the ones that end up being the most rewarding and help us get the result that we are striving for, and when we look back, we will feel immense pride that we did it!

There are a lot of home truths when it comes to renovating, and while it can be hard, it can be infinitely rewarding! Don’t give up!

Krystal | Sunny Sweet Days
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