Demo day is such an exciting day! It’s a day that clearly stands out in my mind because it is full of major changes. It marks the day that you decide “out with the old & in with the new!” ….and…. actually do something about it! We hired a family friend to be our general contractor since we figured it would be difficult to monitor the work of contractors when we had no idea how things should be done. We thought it would be best since we both work full time we wanted to ensure that things were done correctly and would stand the test of time.
Going into our renovation, we had a vision of what we wanted things to look like. We knew which walls we wanted to take down, where we wanted to add windows, where we should open up to create higher ceilings & larger walkways. Since we knew what we wanted we were very concise in telling our contractor what we wanted when getting an estimate. Creating a vision does not come easy to everyone, and if this is you then start with creating a list of things that are important to you in your home. Is it natural light? Bigger living spaces? Larger bathrooms? Create a list & walk through the house with your contractor to figure out if the things on your list are feasible with the floor plan of your new house.
After creating your list of “must-haves” keep in mind that there may be things on your list that might not be feasible, or out of your price range. Your contractor will be able to help you come up with ideas based upon your list to help you achieve your vision. After your walkthrough, it will take the contractor a few days to give you pricing for the work at hand. From there, you can decide which items are an absolute must and which you can live without. If you are having trouble coming up with a vision, create a Pinterest Boards for each room in the house like “kitchen”, “master bath”, “living room” and you can begin pinning photos of rooms you like categorizing them into which room they are. Once you have collected a few pins for each category, go through the pictures, and see what all the photos have in common. Do all of your kitchen photos have huge kitchen islands? Are they all similar in paint color? Do they have the same “look’ or “theme”? Draw conclusions from your Pinterest board to create a vision of your dream!
Below is a list of things we learned from our “demo-day” that turned into “demo- weeks”! We hope that you learn from our mistakes & whatever you do remember to be patient.
7 Tips Home Renovation Tips for Demo Week.
- Things are always going to take way longer than you expect them to. The week of Thanksgiving, our demo guys were scheduled to begin, they said it would take about a week to get rid of everything we wanted out of our house. Thinking that it would take about a week, we left town to visit family for the holiday & when we came back, an extremely excited Me wanted to go by the house to see it! The anticipation was killing me I could not wait to see what they got done in the 5 days we were gone! We walked up to the house and when walked in &…… nothing was touched…. nothing happened. It looked 100% the same! The demo guys never showed up to start the job which in turn delayed the demo process. Fast forward to a whole 2 months, our demo is finally complete! That is exactly how long It took for them to finish the job, oy vey right? So just keep in mind that some jobs may be bigger than they seem, be flexible, and patient whether it’s going to be your demo week, month, or a couple of months… it will get there!
- Things are going to be more expensive than they say it’s going to be. When you are receiving price quotes remember to add a few extra hundred dollars to the total. This way, if unexpected expenses come up you will have some money allotted to upgrades or issues that may arise.
- Not everything will go according to plan. Our house was built in the 1970s and there was SO much wallpaper. We thought that we could save money by removing the existing wallpaper and replacing it with new wallpaper. As our contractor began work, the wallpaper had been so old that removing the wallpaper was taking the sheetrock with it. The wall was essentially unsalvageable so instead of calling us to ask if they should continue to work, our contractor decided to just take down and remove all the sheetrock & walls in the rooms that had wallpaper. This, of course, was another expense we did not foresee in our budget.
- Plan to have more trash than you EVER could have imagined. During the demo, we ordered a huge industrial-sized trash container. We both thought that we would only fill this container once during the whole process of construction. This was a gross miscalculation, that trash container was dumped 3 Times & filled up to the brim every time we needed to dump it. So be prepared to have a lot of trash, and to account for expenses for dumping the trash.
- Create a list of must-haves. Use Pinterest or Houzz if you need inspiration!
- Make copies of all your quotes, and invoices. Keep them all in a binder or folder, so you can always keep track of how much you have already spent on your total budget.
- Don’t pay contractors in full until things are fully complete to your liking. Be protective of your money, make sure that no one runs off with your money leaving your project half completed.
I hope our little list has been helpful to you! Check out some photos of our renovation after our demo month below! XO Jeannie
Here are our week by week photos of our Entryway
We kept all of the original wainscoting, removed the wallpaper, and raised all of the openings into each room including the front door from 8 feet to 10 feet, in order to create a more open and airy feel.
The Kitchen was by far the largest transformation. We removed the wall between the living room & the original kitchen and dining area and opened the walkway from the kitchen to the formal dining room. Removing this wall allowed us to create a more open floor plan.
The definite “splurge item” of our demo was opening up the original breakfast area bay windows into a large 14 foot opening with a massive sliding glass door. We were able to bring in so much natural light into our kitchen & living room area!
Stay tuned for more photos & updates! We can’t wait to share the rest of our renovation with y’all!
