Renovating your home is always going to be expensive and you’ll be working to a strict budget. You plan everything to the letter and work out exactly how much it’s going to cost, then you get to the end of the project and realize that you’ve overspent by quite a bit, but how can that be? It might be a mistake in your calculations but more often than not, you’ve just missed some costs off your list. There are all sorts of hidden costs involved with home renovations that people usually overlook and it ends up throwing their budget out of whack. Next time you’re trying to cost a project, make sure you don’t miss these things.
Small Appliances
When you’re doing your kitchen and fitting it out with all new appliances, you’ll make a list of the oven, refrigerator and worktops and price them up, but is that everything? There are so many smaller appliances around the kitchen that people just miss off the list but the cost of them adds up and can easily push you over budget. Remember to factor in things like an extractor fan, light fixtures and a garbage disposal. They’re all things that you’ll put in the kitchen and pay for but it’s easy to miss them off the list.
Bathroom Items
You can easily make the same mistake when you’re decorating your bathroom; chances are you’ve already got the bath, the sink, the toilet and the shower on your list of costs, but have you thought about everything else. There’s all the small stuff like shower curtains, the rail to hang it on, soap holders etc. If you miss all that stuff off your list, you can easily end up exceeding your budget by hundreds of dollars.
Clean Up
Making a big change to your home is an exciting time but make sure you don’t forget that you’ve got to deal with the clean up afterwards. Any major structural changes to the house are going to make a lot of mess and you’ll have to sort that out. That means finding a skip hire company and then loading up the skip with all of the debris that’s left over. The builders will sort some of it out for you but you’ll have to pay for that so remember to factor it into your budget.
Landscaping
Another thing that people often forget is that lots of building work on the house is going to mess up the garden as well. Regardless of how careful the builders are, there’s always going to be a bit of damage. It’s down to you to restore everything to its normal state after the work is done. That means you’ll have to pay a landscaper to come and do your lawn again, especially if you’ve been storing building materials on there during the renovation. You’ll probably have replant any flowers that you had out there as well.
Even though these are all relatively small costs, they’ll soon add up and they can push your budget over by quite a significant amount. That’s why you’ve always got to make sure you’ve thought of every single detail before deciding whether you can afford to make renovations.
