Who doesn’t salivate at the thought of a sparkling new kitchen or a luxurious new bathroom? We both do! Sarah even has three scrapbooks full of clippings from shelter magazines like Veranda and House Beautiful with images of her dream kitchen, bathroom and home office. A girl can dream, right?
You can right-size home improvement projects so they don’t upend your already-full life.
But let’s get real about home improvements. Looking at pretty pictures in a magazine is one thing. Committing to and then living through a renovation is another thing entirely. There’s a reason all those home-makeover shows do so well in the ratings. They let us enjoy the visual payoff of a room or house transformation without actually having to lift a finger. But taking on a home improvement is no small feat; it requires time, money and, if you want to conserve those first two elements, organization.
Adding the management of a home-improvement project to your overflowing to-do list can be just the thing that pushes you over the edge.
So take a breath.
It doesn’t have to be so stressful. There is a way to right-size home-improvement projects so they don’t upend your already full life. Here are five ways to keep any project, big or small, under control — and yourself sane.
1. Know before you go. If you don’t have real clarity on project priorities before turning to an expert for guidance — whether a magazine, blog or interior designer/architect/contractor — things can get unwieldy quickly. Industry experts tend to err on the side of “all details are important” if you don’t tell them otherwise. So step one of any project should be: decide on what the real priorities are. For example, if you’re working on a kitchen, you might prioritize cabinets and counters over appliances and light fixtures. Clarity on priorities means that, when the inevitable budget-busting options are presented, you’ll know how to choose .
2. Don’t give out any cookies. There’s a marvelous children’s book called “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” which is about a boy who gives a cookie to a mouse, who in turn keeps asking for additional things. It’s a good metaphor. If you give a contractor the OK to expand the scope of the project once, he or she will likely keep asking to do more and more things as part of the project. If you’re not careful, what starts small can easily become an unwieldy, expensive mega-operation.
Before you hire one person, set foot in a home-improvement store or sit down with a decorator, designer or architect, get very clear on the limits of the project and the budget. Write them down. Give copies to everyone involved. Not only will this save you money, it will also save you time. You’ll be able to cut short discussions related to work that is outside the scope of your project.
3. Make a Gantt chart. It’s a bar chart that shows the general flow of a project, from left to right. You can create one by hand, or use a computer program like Excel or PowerPoint. In the left margin of a page, generate a list of tasks required to get the job done, estimate how long each will take and whether any one is dependent on another being completed first. Then put dates across the top of the page. Then simply map out when each task can be done. To keep a project on time , you will need to pay close attention to any and all dependencies as the job progresses. If you’re hiring a contractor or other outside expert to manage things, this is a great thing to ask him or her to complete as part of the bidding process.
4. Make “option” selections in bulk. Walk into any home-improvement store and you’ll be struck by how many options there are. Who knew that knobs came in so many shapes and sizes? It is very easy to get bogged down by details, especially if you deal with them as they come up. Remember that one email or phone-call interruption costs you more than the five to 10 minutes it takes to answer the question. It takes your brain a few minutes to settle down after the interruption and get back on track. So rather than making decisions piecemeal, designate a few hours on one day to make all of the decisions you need to make regarding knobs, light fixtures, door handles, paint finishes, fabric selections and the like.
5. Keep it together with a project folder. There is always lots of stuff that accompanies a home-improvement project — from estimates to swatches and the like. Keep it all together in one binder and you’ll likely save yourself hours, not to mention blood-pressure points.
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