Major Renovations

Why It’s Worth Hiring A Builder For Major Home Renovations

You have decided that you want to renovate your home. You have got a design that will suit your needs. The next decision is the big one for many Kiwis with the can-do attitude we have.

Do you do the renovations yourself or do you hire a renovation builder to do the job?

Many Kiwis have DIY in our blood, and so the temptation can be a strong one to make the plunge and do the renovations to your home yourself. But before you do make that decision, you need to bear in mind a few key factors.

What is your experience with major house renovations?

You need to be absolutely honest here.

Even if you have plenty of experience with home improvement projects, like changing doors, installing interior walls, or renovating your kitchen, with a major renovating or house extension project, there are some serious challenges that even professional builders face.

Put simply, some tasks will be too hard to handle on your own. Erecting exterior walls, making them weather-proof, installing a water-tight roof, these are just a few of the big tasks you will face with a major home renovation.

How much spare time do you have?

A major house renovation or building an extension takes a lot of time. For example, a team of four qualified tradies working all week might take three months on a house extension. If you can only work on it at weekends, or in the evenings, say 30 hours per week, your project will take a nearly 18 months to complete, assuming no big problems along the way.

Will you get insurance cover?

These days the insurance industry is becoming even more restrictive and expensive. They are insisting on renovation works being up to the current building code to get insurance cover on your home. Most building work now needs to be signed off and certificates of conformity issued. If building works do not meet the current standards, then they will decline insurance cover.

How much stress can you and your family handle?

You may have seen building renovation programmes on TV, and the huge amounts of stress and emotional turmoil that families go through in the renovation project. Even when you hire an experienced renovation builder, there will still be stressful times for you but those families you see on TV are the norm for self-renovation building works.

How flexible is your funding for your renovation project?

It is essential to understand the difference between a budget and expected expenditure. People will cost an extension or renovation project, and decide on a budget they can afford. Yet almost every house renovation project has unforeseen issues, errors, and schedule over-runs. All of these cost extra. Then there are the design changes that many people make part-way through the buildings works. These usually cost more too.

As a result, almost every major home renovations project goes over budget. Therefore, you need to have flexible or additional finance of some sort in place before you start in case you do have to call on that extra funding. This one task alone can save a huge amount of stress knowing there is something in reserve in case tings do go wrong.

But for many people, their budget is close to the limit on what they can spend. In that case you are going to want a costing that is close to the likely ultimate price so that you know with a high level of confidence that your renovations can go ahead and be completed close to your available funding.

Hiring a builder for major house renovations can solve those problems

Expertise and experience in major hour renovating

The main benefit of hiring a recommended house renovations builder is they bring expertise to the table. A good builder will have sufficient experience working on large home renovation projects so they know what to look for from the beginning reducing the number of nasty surprises along the way. There will inevitably be some issue but by hiring a professional from the start, they can point out likely problems so they can be built into your budget which will reduce your stress levels and financial shocks.

If you try to carry-out the building works you are likely to make mistakes which means spending even more money on fixing those mistakes. A professional has the expertise and tools to get the job done right the first time around. It’s not for nothing that builders say, “Measure twice, cut once.”

Save time and money with access to proven sub-contractors

Few building companies employ tradespeople for all the different tasks in house renovating. For the DIY-er, they have to look for and then verify that potential tradies are competent for the job. By hiring a professional house renovation builder, they will already have their own approved set of people for the specialist jobs like plumbing, electrics, even decorators. This alone can save you a huge amount of time in looking for suitable tradespeople.

This can also save you a lot of money if you are doing a self-build because you might mis-time when you need a particular set of workers. If you have booked the plumber but your framing is not finished, you will be billed for the time, and then again when you call them back when they can do their job. A professional builder will know the right time to book the various trades, and in the right order too. Idle labour is expensive.

The right equipment for home renovations

Let’s not forget too that a builder has access to the right equipment and tools. The chances are you only have the most basic tools, which means you probably can’t do certain tasks. You might have to buy expensive equipment for a limited usage, or more likely hire tools. That is expensive too. A builder will already have the necessary tools, thereby saving you money.

Home renovations built to schedule

Working with a builder saves a lot of time too. As we saw, a part-time self-build job could take 18 months or more, but hiring a professional you can still focus on your day job, and leave the hassles of the building work to experienced, and more efficient tradespeople.

Not only that but you don’t have to take time away from your family to do anything related to the renovation.

A good builder will agree a completion schedule with you before the start of the job subject to certain constraints. This not only gives you peace of mind, but it also gives you reasonably strong targets for your temporary accommodation, decorating ideas, and stability with an end-date in mind.

Summing up

You can see that an experienced home-renovations building company can help you with many of those problems outlined above. While you might enjoy undertaking the occasional home improvement job up on your own, a house extension or major home renovation is an entirely different concept for which you should consider hiring a professional builder.

Hiring a house-renovations building company will save you time, money, stress, and mean you get certification for your insurance.

Do make sure that you hire a builder who has worked on projects similar to yours. Ask to see their portfolio, and get references from previous clients.

If you want a one-hour, no obligation chat about your home renovations or house extension project, feel free to call us on 021 209 2214 or email at admin@feverpitchbuilding.co.nz.