Understanding and Planning Home Remodel Projects

Hi everyone, Beth Dodson here with HomeZada. I hope you're having a fabulous day on this lovely day, and thank you for watching our Facebook Live video. And for all of you who will watch it later, thank you for coming back to watch it. We really appreciate you doing this. So what do we want to talk about today? We want to talk about understanding and planning for your home projects. And we are coming up into late spring. Late spring is generally a time of year when snow is gone, um, rains are kind of stopping where it's a very heavy rainy season. People are getting really excited for the summer, and it's not quite summer yet though. And so we have this really late springtime— excuse me— and we can get projects going in our house. And a couple things start happening. The first thing we start doing is we start looking at repair projects. And we take a quick analysis of our homes, and usually we do this when we're spring cleaning. So a lot of people do this when they're cleaning out garages and getting organized and spring cleaning. And one of the things that we talk about is walking through the house, getting an assessment, and determining what you need to repair in your house. So that's the first thing: getting all those repair projects done, and how are you actually tracking them? Step 1. Step 2, some people, um, need repair projects, but they also have maintenance projects, uh, slightly different than, than pure project, project type of information. But these maintenance projects could lead to repair projects. So maybe an overview of your heating and air conditioning systems that may run into some problems, and you may find out that you need to replace the whole system, which, um, is a replacement, not just a repair, but it then is the next step to, um, repair and replacement project management. So that's one type of project and one way to get started. And usually those projects are things that we need done. So a good example of that is if you've got a heating and air conditioning unit that is not working, that could cause problems in the summer and make your family extremely uncomfortable. In some cases, the heat temperatures get so high it actually could, it could end up causing some damage for people or actually end up in death due to heatstroke. So it's really important that we make sure that these repair projects are done. The second thing that you may want to think about is hot water heaters. I personally have experienced a hot water heater that offered me cold water. That was not pleasant. So every one of my showers was freezing. Now the good thing is we're coming up into the summer months, So a cold shower may be like jumping into your pool in the backyard if you have one. But personally, I prefer a slightly warmer shower so that I have a comfortable environment and I'm not rushing to get all clean before I head out. So that's another thing to take into consideration. Some other repair projects may be taking a look at your windows. Maybe you have some damage to some windows and maybe you need to get them repaired. Sometimes the seals on the windows break, especially if you have double-pane windows, and condensation gets inside, which can cause some damage and also create inefficiencies in your heating and air conditioning systems. So making sure you try to check those things out. Maybe you have a filter in your house somewhere, whether it's a water filter or even a pool filter, that needs to be repaired for some Reason. So those are also good projects to get done. These repair projects are easy to plan for. Let me rephrase that. It's easy to, to plan for when you know or expect these repairs need to take place. When you don't know, it becomes unexpected. So one of the suggestions that we make at HomeZada is to reserve about 1 to 4% of your home's purchase price depending on the age of your house. The younger the house, The lower the percentage, the older the house, the higher the percentage, to reserve in your bank accounts for maintenance and repair projects of any sort. Some repair projects are expensive, obviously. If you need to replace an entire heating and air conditioning unit, that's expensive, that's in the thousands. But if you just need to repair a coil, that might be maybe less than $100 or maybe $200. It all depends, but we suggest that you keep a budget between 1% and 4% of the home's purchase price for any type of maintenance and repair projects set aside annually. So this is annually, and that changes as your house ages as well, because older houses just need more care. They need more love and attention. So the second type of project we want to talk about is design projects. So when you have design projects, you're looking at making modifications, whether it's repainting walls, whether it's changing out furnishings, whether it's— I'm trying to think, maybe you just wanna add new accessories. Maybe you want a wallpaper project. Maybe you wanna add new draperies. Just things that will change or enhance the look of your house. Some people like to do some of these projects seasonally because they like to change things out. They wanna have a fresh look to their house, which I think is fun. Unfortunately, I don't do that. I just don't have time for it, but a lot of people I know love this aspect of changing out their house seasonally and with a few little things. It could be like throw pillows or some trinkets around the house, but nothing too crazy. But if you do have a major design project that you want to take on, one thing you can do is work with a designer to help you get that organized and they can help coordinate all the information. Or you can actually track the project in a wish list type capacity inside HomeZada or any other type of system. that you want to use to start getting information about what you'd like in that room, whether it's sample photographs of other rooms or whether it's items that you're considering using for those rooms. If you're looking at furniture for rooms, I highly recommend you take a look at the size of the furniture and how it relates with everything else. I have a little project that I like to do. I need a new coffee table in my house. It's gonna take me a little while though. Um, I'm looking for something very unique, uh, but very large in capacity. So it's something almost rectangular in size, but it's also very large, um, because I have a large space for this, this table. So I'm constantly updating and reviewing sizes of tables because I don't want something to come to my house And then it just doesn't work. I'd rather know that when it does get to my house, it's going to work. I'm going to be fine with it. It's going to be perfect, um, or close to perfect. But take a look at the size of your furniture, the room, because some things may not be able to get through the room. Or— and also take a look at doors. This happened to me one time. It was quite funny. Um, I ordered a sofa in my previous house And I could not get it through the front door. It was quite funny. However, lucky for me, I had sliding glass doors in the back of my house, and the space where these sofas were going, they actually went into that room where the sliding glass doors were. So we had the furniture delivered in the back of the house, which fortunately there was a road in the back of the house, and we had to remove the sliding glass doors. Let the furniture in and then replace the sliding glass doors. And I had to do that when I moved as well. It was quite funny. But take a look at the size of the furniture, the size of your doors, the size of your rooms when you're thinking about these design elements. Same goes for draperies. If you're looking at draperies, blinds, anything like that, make sure you're taking a look at sizes as well. Um, what else do we want to talk about? Oh, major projects. Major projects get very tricky. So when we start talking about major projects, we're talking about remodel projects. We're talking about converting an attic into a bedroom of some sort. We're looking at doing a complete redesign or remodel of a bathroom, a kitchen, an addition. We're looking at maybe you wanna add a pool to your backyard. That's a big project. Maybe you wanna add more, Landscaping. Sometimes that can be a big project depending on how big your yard is and how much work you want done. Maybe you want to add stonework outside to enhance your landscaping. Maybe you want to add more patios. Maybe you want to add a full-on outdoor kitchen or bar area to your outside. There's a lot of different large projects that you can consider, and when you are managing them, it's really important that you take into consideration time, So that's your schedule. You take into consider your budget, and you also take into consideration the quality that you want. So those are our three kind of pillars to the stool: is quality, time, and budget. So you can buy really high quality items. However, your budget may go higher than you anticipated. You can also work with really detail-oriented, like, tile work if you want to. And if you start working with tile and you have a lot of designs on floors or, or bathroom showers or what have you, then those designs could take more time, which could result in more money because your labor costs are going up. So it's really important to understand these 3 pillars and to make sure that you're considering this when you're talking about remodeling projects. Just taking a look at some of the notes that I have here because I want to make sure I'm hitting everything for you is, uh, we talked about budgets. Really important to think about not only budgets in the sense of what you want to get done, but also in the sense of all the different items. So we've talked about this a lot at Hamzada, and that is, um, many people look at a lot of the large remodel projects And they consider the big items, the really cool items that everyone can't wait to replace and have fun with. And that goes for things like toilets and, and new sinks and new tiling on floors and then showers. It also goes back to appliances in your kitchen, so a great new refrigerator. Or it also goes into Maybe new countertops. Maybe you want to get rid of tile cabinet countertops. Yes, countertops. And you want to put in these amazing granite or marble countertops. Maybe you want a butcher block, a solid butcher block on your island. So, um, all of those types of things. Or you're looking at building an island. Many people remember all these really big items because they're really exciting and they can change the dynamics of a room very effectively. One of the things that a lot of people forget is that when you are in these spaces, you need to consider some other elements. So for instance, in a bathroom, you do need to consider, um, are you going to keep your shower heads where they are? Do you need to go buy more shower heads? So you want to change that out. Or faucets. So maybe you want a new brand new look and feel to your, um, your bathroom, but you forgot to get the faucet in the budget. The faucet can be as expensive as some of the sinks. And, uh, do you have new mirrors? Do you have new lighting? Do you have an exhaust fan? In your bathroom. In the kitchen, are you looking at not only appliances, but are you looking at garbage disposals? Do you have 2 sinks and maybe you need 2 garbage disposals? Are you looking at backsplash? Are you looking at grout when you're actually laying tile? A lot of people forget about that, and a lot of people forget that, okay, grout isn't that expensive, but the labor to add grout is expensive. So every time you add a little element there's more labor, labor to install it, and that labor can happen from a variety of different sources. You may need different types of contractors, or you may have a general contractor to actually manage the entire process. So take into consideration all the little details. It's one of the reasons why inside HomeZada we add templates for a lot of design, fix-it, and remodel projects, especially the big remodel projects. We recognize that there are a lot of homeowners out there that really struggle with understanding all the little details of their projects. And because they forget those, all of a sudden their budgets are well over what they anticipated, and they either may need to halt their project or they may need to come back to their project and get more money somewhere else. They may either need to take out financing that they didn't think they had to take out, or they may need to dip a little bit further into their savings, which they didn't care to do either. So This is helping you not be surprised about where the money's going when it comes to your projects. I told you what you know you need to know in terms of all your different items. What else do I need to? Oh, selection process. We always want to talk about selection process. So you have the ability, and this also applies to budgets. You have the ability to. Choose different project— different, different items for your project, as many people know. And sometimes people want like this really great item for their, their kitchen, they think they can't afford it. But if they start looking at this one item and they really need to have it because they really love it, and why not, then can they make adjustments in other areas? I'll give you a good example of something Personally, I did. I had to have like this specific stove in my kitchen. And, um, I love to cook. Love it, love it, love it, love it. And I love experimenting. But I wanted to have this really great stove, and I loved it. And I had this beautiful fume hood, and, you know, I love the industrial look of it. So it was really important to me. But what I noticed is my budget in my kitchen was going to be extremely high because of this one stove. So I had to come down and I had to find ways to come down. So I looked at my sinks, I looked at my faucets, I even looked at my tile because I have a lot of tile in my kitchen, and I found lower priced items that still looked good, that still looked, um, like it matched the room, but at the same time I could save some money. And that was really important because I had to have a trade-off. For that giant stove, which I just love. And I wouldn't trade it for the world. I love it. And everything worked out and it was beautiful. So I have really beautiful tile that looks more expensive than it is, and I was fortunate, and it's easy to care for. That was the thing that happened in the end, is the tile was really easy to care for. Same with the sinks and same with the faucets. So it was a win-win in the end. What else am I looking for? Really make sure you pay attention to the details before you get started on some of these projects. Like I said, repair and fix-it projects are hard sometimes to do that with, but I gave you a scenario where if you save 1 to 4%, or set it aside, of your home's purchase price each year, then you can kind of manage the maintenance projects. And if time happens and you don't end up using it, you can save it for the next year, which is really good. One of the other things we want to talk about is the different phases of projects. Some people think that I want this project and I'm just going to go do it. I just like to recommend some small little tips that we have talked about, but just go through them in detail. So first of all, there's ideas and concepts, just staying connected to the different things that you want and documenting your wish list of ideas and concepts so that when you do work with a designer or contractor, they— you have a better way to speak to them and they can see kind of where your style lends to. The second thing you get into is the actual design phase. So you're either working with a designer or you are doing this on yourself, yourself. And there are also online tools that you can use to help you design a space, um, if you want to do it both, uh, for design purposes or for remodel purposes. You can play around with systems like that out there and You start looking at, in the design phase, you start looking at not only the color schemes that you want, you start narrowing down your selections, but you also start looking at the size of items and you look at the types of quantity of items that you want in your space. So let's say you have a family room and you do want a television, but you don't want chairs. You would rather have just a sofa and a loveseat. And you would like tables for people to rest drinks on. And so you can do that. If you want added added seating area, you can add little cubes to other areas around the house or even slide them underneath coffee tables and/or end tables, side tables in your house where they're not taking up a lot of space but they can be pulled out when you need them. So those are all different types of design aspects that you can play around with. And you can also ask a lot of the retail stores and manufacturers for their advice because they have some of that as well. And then you get into product research, which goes back to the manufacturers and, um, the retail stores. Some people want to go online and they want to hunt and search and they want to do all that. Some people would prefer to go into a store and touch things and see things and feel things, and it sometimes varies. I'm one of these people, I can do a lot online. I've purchased an entire dining room set online and some people thought I was crazy, but I loved it, and I just had faith. Blind faith, but I had faith. And I knew what the return policy was, so that was a good thing. So, um, I did do that. And some people prefer to touch things. They want to go into the store, they want to see it, or they want to at least see a sample. You can also get sample woods, sample paint, sample wallpapers, sample, um, uh, cloth for furniture if you want to send that back to yourself. So that's also something that you can get, or a designer can help you with that. So that's the next phase. Then you start getting into, um, the product research. Then you start getting into the budgets. So at that point, you've got to establish your budgets. Inside Homes Auto, we do have our templates. We can help you with getting some of those budgets established, but you definitely need to do some research. And then you need to manage through those budgets which items you're going to buy, and that means executing on your project. So now it's time to get the project done, hire the right contractors if you need them, hire the right delivery people if you're delivering furniture, get the information to you. This also has an impact— a lot of people forget about this— if you are doing a major remodel or, um, a rebuild or a design project, even a repair project, you need to also consider Removing items. So in a remodel project, like if you're taking down a kitchen, like you wanna gut the whole thing, you gotta take into consideration demolition. If you're in a design project and you want a whole brand new family room set, you've gotta do something with the pieces that you're no longer gonna use. You can sell it off at consignment, you can sell it on eBay, you can put it anywhere if you wanna sell it, or you can donate it to family members or what have you, and then— Then that enables you to bring in the other furniture so that can fit. Same thing goes with repair projects. Sometimes organizations will take the old units off of your hands and they will dispose of them or deal with them, or you can work with your refuse company. Sometimes they have areas that they are willing to take things off your hands. The other thing that I like to recommend is there's a lot of companies out there that will take things off your hands and they'll recycle it. I did that with a bunch of TVs and monitors. That really came in handy because they take electronics and they, they recycle everything, and then they can give it to either schools or they can, they can sell it and give it to other people. So I'm a big firm believer in making sure things are constantly being recycled so that we don't have a lot in our landfills, but that's just me personally. And then once the project is executed and you've made it through— so during the execution, please breathe, breathe, take a deep breath. Remember, it's not life or death. And I only say that because I know projects can be very stressful and they can really take a turn on people's activities. Make sure you're getting your walks in, doing your yoga, whatever it is that you need to do to de-stress. I highly recommend it. Um, Because I've gone through a lot of projects myself, and I try not to stress too much. Try not at all, because it really, it really is good in the end, even with all the challenges. And if you do run into challenges, I'm gonna give just one slight piece of advice. This is the— this is personal. Everything else, something we stand by at HomeZada, but personal advice. Come up with a lot of options. So, um, during a lot of my projects, uh, my contractors came to me and, and would say, listen, we forgot this in a plan, or we forgot to do this in this scenario. And I'm like, okay. So I start asking the contractor for their options, and they usually give me one or two. I bring more options to the table. Have we thought about this or this? My husband will also bring options to the table. So we're in the options of about 3 to 5 options that we can choose from. And what we then do is discuss it with the contractor and specifically ask for, okay, how long is this going to delay the project? How much more is this going to cost me, or is it going to cost me more? And what's the downside if I choose to move this, this option? And what's the upside? And, um, I'm a firm believer if you can ask those questions of your contractor and really dig deep into all the different options, then you actually might come up with something that you didn't think would be really great. And that happened to me a lot in all the different projects that I've had, uh, managing my house. And so things just end up working out. Like I said, it's not life or death. Um, you want to make sure you have a beautiful experience. You are spending a lot of money. That is really important. But remember, take it all in context. And if a project doesn't go exactly like you, you like it, then definitely add some elements that make it fun for you and personal. And that's what I do. Um, and also, when it comes to your project, just because you finished it doesn't mean you need to decorate it or, or go through everything all at once. I loved doing phases of projects because it gave me something to look forward to the next year. It was so exciting. And then you're closing out your project. So, um, closing out your project means, um, doing your inspection, getting your final— final— um, thanks Daryl for that good heads up, I really appreciate it. Um, make sure you get your final inspection, and it's also making sure that you're making your final payments to your contractors. Uh, most Contracts, our final payments are usually made upon completion of the tasks and any updates, or what we refer to in the commercial construction world as punch list items. So there may be some little things that need to get fixed. Make sure you get those fixed before paying out your contractor, if that's in your contract. And I'm sorry to all the contractors who may not like me for saying that, but I'm saying it. Make sure everything's fixed before they have to go off to their next job. That's really, really important. And make sure you test everything. So when you're closing out your project, make sure you test it. Make sure you're running water faucet— you're running them, you're running your faucets, you're making sure your hot water is connected, you're making sure there's no leaks. So open up the cabinet doors no matter where you are so you can hear if there's any leaks anywhere. Make sure your stove operates properly. Make sure your fume hood operates properly, your showers. Make sure there's no leaks in your shower doors. Sometimes people add the glass doors and there's a leak, so make sure there's no leaks. Just make sure you're going through everything with a fine-tooth comb, and then you're closing out your project. And then once you close out your project, keep your documents. Um, I— this is why I use HomeZada, because I don't put my documents in a paper-based file. I put everything in HomeZada. But keep your documents. Because if ever you're in a position where you want to sell your house, depending on the state that you're in, there is a period of time prior to selling your house that you can allow projects to act as tax deducted tax deductions or investments into an asset, your house, that you're actually getting ready to sell. So you're going to make some money. On your house, but at the same time you've already made some investments. So there's tax capabilities that you can see and receive if you are— um, what's the word I'm looking for— if you are keeping your documentation. I am going to preface this: you need to check with your accountant on exactly how this works, and you need to check with your state laws because they're all different. and maybe even your county laws. So just stay on the lookout for that because you don't wanna give away money that you don't need to if you've taken on some responsibility. So that's what we do with closeout. And that's it. That's a lot about projects. I talked about a lot of different aspects of projects. But they are, there are a lot of different projects. I wish you the best of luck on any project that you're doing this year. I just did a, repainting of the inside of my house, which I loved because it's nice and fresh. But now I have to go hang everything back up, but that's a whole different story. I'll get to it when I get to it. But if you like this video, please share it, please like it, tell everybody all about it, and we hope you enjoy this information on projects. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for watching. And let us know what other subjects you'd like to hear about from us at HomeZada, and I will be sure to put it on the list. and make sure I get you what you need. So have a great day, enjoy, happy projecting this summer and spring, and, uh, we'll talk soon.