Which room to renovate first?
When you’re planning to undertake a staged renovation of your home, you might be wondering, which room should you renovate first? Do you start with a room that won’t have a big impact on your life while you’re renovating, like a bedroom or study? Or, do you jump in the deep end and get the kitchen done first, so you can start enjoying it sooner?
There’s no right or wrong answer here, but we think the question of which room to renovate first can be decided by considering just 3 key factors…
What’s the cost vs. impact?
When thinking about which room to renovate first, it’s important to consider cost versus impact. While the cost of knocking out a structural wall and adding the required beams and footings to compensate may be a big-ticket item that feels exorbitantly pricey, the difference it could potentially make to the flow and functionality of your home may make it worth the cost. On the other hand, spending big on the lush carpet or the designer tiles imported from Spain may make you feel good in the short term, but ultimately, you’ll still have a home that functions the same way. It just looks a little more stylish. That’s not to say you shouldn’t spend money on quality finishes or designer touches that make you feel good, it’s just about balancing your priorities.
Typically the rooms that have the biggest impact on your day-to-day lifestyle are the living areas. Though, equally, they’re usually the most disruptive renovations to undertake! So you should consider whether you’re able to deal with the disruption now to improve your lifestyle in the long term.
It’s important to spend money on the things that are really going to make a difference to your life.
How long do you want to live in your home?
You’ve probably heard about painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge: as soon as they finish painting at one end, they have to start again at the other end. It’s such an epic structure that the paint only lasts as long as it takes to paint it from top to bottom.
But how does this relate to your suburban reno, you ask?
Well, it can be a similar situation with renovating over longer time periods. Particularly if you don’t plan for longevity from the outset.
For example, a budget kitchen or bathroom renovation might look amazing in the short term, but after 5 or so years, things can quickly deteriorate. Cheap tapware will start to fail, low-quality joinery will begin to look battered, and on-trend tiles or colour schemes will have had their day. That’s not to say you can’t design a bathroom or kitchen that will still look and function fantastically in 10+ years, but if you’re planning a staged renovation over several years, it’s wise to ensure you plan for this and invest in quality fixtures and fittings that will stand the test of time.
This way you won’t end up spending your resources on redoing the dated bathroom before you’ve finished renovating your whole home!
So, by establishing how long you want to live in your home and how long you expect the full renovation to take (then add a few years because, hey, plans change!), you can stage the work accordingly and invest in the required level of quality.
This ties into the next, most important, point…
What’s your master plan?
The most important thing to do is to ensure you have a master plan in place, so you tackle your renovation in the right order and achieve the best outcomes.
Working room by room renovating your home without a master plan is like taking a long-haul flight piloted by Stevie Wonder. It’s an expensive way to end up in a hot mess.
While eventually each room in isolation might look and feel better, the home as a whole will be no better off. And this is a huge mistake many naive homeowners make.
As an example, we’ve seen people tackle a bathroom renovation first. This seems like a discrete project which will make a big difference because the original bathroom is in dire need of replacement. A whole mission brown mosaic tile and amber shower screen situation.
But, without a broader masterplan in place, they update their bathroom while leaving it located in the most inconvenient part of the house! It blocks access to the outdoors, it’s on the north side of the house, so it gets all the best light, and it’s the wrong combination of oddly shaped and sized which means it’s both too big, yet strangely still feels cramped.
Renovating this bathroom stifles future possibilities for updating and improving the layout of the home because so much money has been invested in the bathroom already. It seems a waste to pull it out and start over!
But this costly mistake would never have happened if these homeowners started with a master plan.
Instead, the master plan might reveal you should put up with your bathroom for the time being and invest in a new kitchen and dining area to start. Or start with the bathroom, but in a different part of the house (with the benefit that you won’t be without a bathroom during the works)!
We get it: you’re excited to get cracking on your renovation dreams! But, avoid the temptation to rush in before you have a solid plan in place. This is a good stage to speak with an architect, who can help you balance all your long-term plans and ambitions with your lifestyle and budget to develop a master plan and staged project that’s ideal for your needs.
Your architect will take into account your lifestyle now and how things might change for you over the coming years. A good architect will also help you get clear on your priorities by helping you develop a brief to document your ‘must-haves’ and ‘nice-to-haves’. Similarly, your architect can help you with cost estimates so you’ll understand how much you will need to invest in each stage and better plan how you will roll out this reno.
With a master plan in place, you can feel confident launching into each stage knowing that it’s bringing you one step closer to your ideal home.