Have No Fear

I have heard that one of the big fears in renovating houses, besides losing money, is that people are afraid they are going to make a mistake. A good renovation is not a flawless renovation, although no one would object to everything going as planned! A good renovator is a person who can problem solve quickly.

According to Wayne, “There are hundreds of small decisions to be made everyday. Its important not to dwell on the small things, make a decision and move on and if something goes wrong fix it quickly.”

At Zuni there have been a few issues that have come up so far. First, Denver recently had three days of down pour rain. Since we are in the middle of a renovation the house is not sealed completely which meant that water got into the house. Issues like this are a blessing in disguise. It is better to have issues come up while you are still renovating so that you do not have to tear up new floors or break new tile to fix the problem.

To fix this issue we found where the water was coming in from and discovered that the gutters were pushing water towards the house. We redirected the gutters away from the house to prevent this issue from occurring again. The water from the basement was dried using industrial fans.

In the last blog entry we planned out the flow of the house. This involved removing wall’s… unfortunately this does not always work as planned. One of the walls we wanted to remove in the basement ended up being cement instead of just drywall and 2x4’s. This means that we destroyed a perfectly good wall for nothing and we had to re-plan the basement. This issue can also come up if you find that one of the wall’s you wanted to remove turns out to be a load bearing wall. This is why quick thinking is very important when you are renovating. Your workers have to stop work until you figure out how to fix the problem or find them another project for them to do.

Its always good to have a back up plan in case something comes up and you can not work on a specific project that day or week. If you can not think quickly you are just wasting your time and money until you fix the problem. You can always call a Realtor that has renovation experience if you have a problem that you can not figure out. If they can not help you fix the issues chances are they will know someone who can help.

The important thing is to have no fear! Its ok to mess up but the difference between a good renovator and a great one is how they handle these issues. Until next time, Happy Renovating!