Which Calgary renovations home building ideas will save you the most?

Calgary renovations home building ideas that focus on cost saving can really make a difference to your project budget! Doing home renovations can be much like taking a trip to Costco, you went in with the intention to spend $100 and come out having spent $500! This doesn't have to be the case though and with discipline and a clear plan, you can keep in control and stay on budget. A great place to start is to identify some of the most common areas where you can save cost.

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1. Structural

The cost for making structural changes can range from small to very large, depending on the complexity of the work involved. Always remember just because you are only planning to change the main floor, does not mean that the floor above or below that area will not be implicated. Load is always transferred down though the structure of your house and ultimately has to have sufficient support by the foundations. As you change point loads above, so the original structure and foundations below may no longer be sufficient (or you can not prove this so they will need upgrading). It is prudent therefore to always consider more than one option to achieve a similar result in terms of overall design, as one way may be considerably cheaper than another. Getting a consultant to give you initial ideas and ultimately a structural engineer to provide detailed solutions should be done before the project gets too advanced. If you want to save money don't simply rely on an initial idea a designer may have come up with, but find out what really is your best option.

2. Design

Over the years I have seen designers come up with some phenominal designs only to discover the budget has been blown by 2, 3 times or worse! Now a good designer should be budget conscious, but you may not find this out until it is too late and then experience the frustration of going back to the drawing board. Over designing is not an uncommon problem, as designers want their projects to look amazing, as this looks great in their portfolio. Don't get too married to a design until you have a good handle on the estimated cost. Getting the right balance for design in relation to your budget is critical. Significant costs can be saved by making the design having the smallest impact on the existing structure and roughins, as well as ensuring new elements are not too complex and costly to build. Unless the exterior needs updating or the new can't function without changes, try to avoid the need to alter windows and doors.

3. Roughins

Probably one of the most over looked areas in a home renovation. After all you don't see HVAC, plumbing or electrical roughins when you renovation is complete, so they are usually considered a low priority. However considerable cost savings can be had by careful investigation and planning in these areas. Unless you are not changing any rooms layouts or plumbing locations within a room, you will you most likely need to figure out how need plumbing or heating runs will be accommodated. The problem is heating ducts and cold air returns, as well as plumbing drains in particular (more so than water supply) take up a lot space and if you move them a new route may be hard and costly to achieve. If you want to save cost, always get a good understanding of how your roughins will work, before getting too advanced in your project. Also there is nothing worse than have an ugly bulkhead right in the middle of your new renovation because someone never took the time to figure this out how to deal with the roughins first!

4. Plumbing fixtures

Plumbing fixtures can really add up when you do a renovation. However while the fixtures themselves can be vary quite a bit in cost (so it pays to do your research on this), you may not realize the overall impact to some of your choices are making. For example you may really want a steam shower. The likely result of this decision is not only buying all the plumbing fixtures needed for the steam shower but now your are likely going to be faced with needing to upgrade your electrical and plumbing supply side. Steam showers need a dedicated high capacity electric circuit (usually 50 amps) to power them but more importantly from a cost perspective, you also need a very high capacity hot water system for them to run properly. This often means you have to upgrade your hot water supply to cope with keeping up with a mutli outlet steam shower, so now your costs have really started to spiral! To help keep your costs down, always find out what the overall impact of your decisions are and this means understanding what needs to happen when you connect them to your current systems.

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5. Mill work

Cabinets are a very important part of your renovation and likely the most expensive trade too! You need not only to think about how much mill work you are planning to do, but also what door styles, paint or stain grade, what cabinet interiors, which type of pulls, how many accessories and a whole host of other price influencing choices. With ceilings becoming higher in homes, also consider how high your cabinets will go, remember how high can you practically reach and decide what makes sense for your home. Although what goes inside your cabinets is important, you need to decide the right balance between form and function. If I have one piece of advice to try and save money on your mill work, don't get too carried away with all the fancy accessories, they are cool but really add up fast!

6. Flooring

Flooring might not seems on the face of it a particularly important item, as maybe the various options you are looking at are separated by a few dollars a square foot. However when you multiply this over two or three thousand square feet, this becomes a pretty big number quickly. Also some areas the cost between floor types vary a lot more. For example take stairs, the cost for installing hardwood versus carpet become drastically different as now each individual treads and risers has to be made and installed separately. Also floor prep and the sub-floor material needed should be looked at so you know the overall cost for prep, sub-floor, supply and install. This will also be different on a main floor from a basement, as the structure below is different. If you are looking to keep costs down be sure to get the overall cost before you make the final choices.

7. Exteriors

Exterior finishes will vary a lot in price from vinyl siding at one end of the spectrum to more exotic wood sidings, which are many times the cost per square foot. One thing that can tend to get overlooked though is when you are not planning to change the exterior, but have to move windows or doors for your new renovation layout. Now exterior repairs become and necessity, but not all exterior repairs are as simple as others. If you have old siding sometime matching profiles can be hard, even relative new siding will vary in color over time and leave a potentially obvious patch. Also don't just assume do can do a tiny patch, often you need to repair a much larger area to do it properly. Worse still stucco is almost impossible to match, as it is extremely hard to replicate the original texture ad blend it in on the transitions. Also when you remove windows remember that the nailing fin which is used to attach the window to the wall, is under the first couple of inches of the wall, so when you remove the window you will do damage to this area. To save cost be sure you are aware of the implications of what you are doing inside your renovation, has to the outside!

8. Primary versus secondary areas

It always good to consider return on investment when planning your renovation, as there are certain areas where it pay most to put more into, where other areas are less important in the grand scheme of things. Kitchens and master ensuites are 2 key rooms where you will see high returns, but when you are doing your renovation it is easy to get carried away in every room! Many times I have seem people spend very substantial amounts on high end laundry or mud rooms. Not that there is anything wrong with that if that is what you really want, but don't lose sight of the wood for the trees, as some rooms don't necessary need the same level of finish. After all do you really sit in a chair and look at your laundry room? Probably not, but you sure will be seeing a whole lot of your kitchen. So if you want to save money on your project, stay disciplined and look to spend only what you feel is what appropriate for that particular area and don't get carried away in the emotion of the moment.

Want to talk in more detail on Calgary renovations home building ideas? Or may discuss other ideas or aspects that may be unique to your project? Why not get in touch with the Calgary renovation consultant. Take a look at the great consulting services that will really benefit your home renovation.

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