If you’re property mad, then the idea of buying a home to fix up, put your own stamp on and turn into your dream home is probably really exciting. It’s so worth doing things this way too as you can save money and the end product will be more personal- as nice as it is moving into a completely finished home, you’ll always pay more for the privilege and it can be harder to add your own unique touches too. After all, there’s no point ripping out perfectly good elements just to change them. But when you renovate you get to make all of the design decisions along the way, and what you’re left with at the end is something that’s personal to you. Here are some ideas for going about it!
Layout
If you’re renovating an existing property, there should be some scope to remove walls and change the layout- although you’ll need to be careful about this. Any supporting walls will need to have strong ceiling beams installed to keep the integrity of the building and this can be expensive. If you’re wanting full scope to design your own layout, it might be worth going down the building your own home route, sites like bloomdale.com.au have land for sale and you can have an architect create plans for the structure to your specifications. But if you only want to make minor changes or are flexible in what you’ll do then renovating an existing property still gives you lots of opportunities to get it looking how you want it.
Walls and ceilings
Depending on the condition of the property you’re renovating, you might be able to get away with wallpaper stripping, minor patching, and painting. If the project is bigger then you might need to pull everything back to the bare bones and have all of the walls boarded and re-skimmed with plaster. You might need to replace all of the woodwork around the walls and ceilings such as coving and skirting boards too, this is a satisfying step as it can actually make quite a big difference. If you’re going to be tiling walls like in the kitchen and bathroom, spend time choosing the tile design- you want something that will last and not look off-trend in a year or two. Once the walls are finished, you have the fun job of choosing paint color and wallpaper!
Flooring
The flooring is a big choice in any home, especially if you’re going to invest and get stuff that’s going to last. A good option is to choose a hardwearing floor covering throughout the whole of downstairs since it will be easy to clean and long-lasting. It works well in the kitchen and dining room and in the living room you can lay down some large rugs for comfort. Upstairs, go with a good quality carpet that feels comfortable and will last- many types are stain-resistant these days and can even be cleaned with bleach! Perfect if you have kids and pets and don’t want to have to replace it every few years.
