Home Remodeling Plans, How To Remodel

Home Remodeling Plans: Budget and Costs

We are strong believers in planning and budgeting for any home remodeling plans.  Our article titled “Planning Your Home Remodeling” covers the planning process.  Now let’s tackle budgeting and controlling costs for your remodel project.

We don’t know how you run your families finances but the first step in any home remodel planning has to be to determine how much you are ready and willing to spend on your remodel. Give this serious thought.  You may want to browse the local home improvement stores for ideas and to get a feel for costs.  How are you going to pull the money together?  Have you saved for the even, do you need a second mortgage or are you going to use a credit card.  Home improvement stores frequently run no interest promotions that may come in handy.

Next you have to determine the scope of your home remodel. What do you want to do?  If you see our article “Home Remodeling Plans: Material List” the chart there will give you a guideline for determining the scope of your project by listing the room you plan to renovate and then listing under each category the items you plan to change, alter or redo. Then ask the tough question – Does your scope match your budget? It is important that you are brutally honest with yourself on this. What if the answer is no?

There are a number of ways to reconcile scope and budget for a remodel project:

• First review the material and see if there are lower cost alternatives that will provide the same look and feel.
• Second look at parts of the remodeling plan that can be deferred without too much difficulty.  A good example is deferring the replacement of a light fixture to a later date, this can be done without impacting many of the other things.
• Third consider the parts of the remodel plan that you can live without and still feel good about your project.

Finally you need to make a commitment to control scope and costs as you move along.  Many well intentioned home remodeling plans have gone over budget because of scope creep – the process we like to call “might as well”. You know, “well as long as we are doing this we ‘might as well’ ….” Avoid that syndrome conscientiously, plan ahead and work your plan!