Weird things during renovation
Home renovations are just a part of life, right? Not for these cases, where people started digging down or opening walls and found things they would have never imagined.
Witches Potions
It’s said that witch’s bottles full of things such as finger nails, urine and the likes were hidden in the walls of homes to fight off witch’s curses!
Inside the bottle was some urine, finger nail clippings and a small heart shaped piece of leather that was pierced with a nail. Researchers even managed to discover that the urine contained traces of nicotine!
A living board game
Beneath the carpet was a giant monopoly board, and not some artists creation but an actual replica of the board with everything from the Pass GO sign to jail. There were a couple of extras though, can you spot the naked women silhouette – hey, like we said, no judgement
A Mummified Cat?!
We’re not actually the superstitious kind here at STORED, but these findings have got us thinking. Okay, this one isn’t strictly renovation (or not at all) but we couldn’t resist including it!
Renovation Nation: Things to Consider When Making Changes to Your Home
There are a lot of reasons you might buy a home. Maybe you love the kitchen or the feel of the master bathroom. It could be the big backyard that gives your golden retriever a lot of room to run. And the schools could be great as well.
As many great reasons as there are for loving any particular home, they’re almost never perfect. Maybe you’d like to knock out a wall between the living room and kitchen to create a more open floor plan. Maybe it’s a matter of putting a skylight in the bedroom so your kids can sleep under the stars. You might want to redo that ugly, lime green bathroom that’s straight out of the ’70s
Goals
You really need to determine your goals at the onset, because it’s going to drive everything else you do. The first thing to figure out in terms of goal setting is who this is for.
Budget
One of the first remodeling considerations should be what you plan to spend. This determines the scope of the project. It may also help with determining if the renovation is cost effective compared to other options.
Cost of Materials
Once you know how much you want to spend, it’s time to budget in the cost of the materials. The hard part can be getting an accurate estimate of what’s required for the job. How much hardwood or wallpaper will be needed for your particular project?
Tips When Renovating An Older Home
I’m in the renovation business and business is booming. Everyone is renovating, which is one of the reasons it’s so tough to find a good contractor. Consider the age of your house when deciding on kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations, home improvement renovations and house additions.
Asbestos & Home Renovations
Many older homes and buildings today still contain asbestos. When we started demo on the River House on Holmes+Holmes, we realized that there was asbestos. When asbestos fibres are disturbed they get released into the air, and if they’re inhaled they can get trapped in the lungs and cause serious health issues, including cancer.
Get To Know Your Wiring
If you are using about the same amount of electricity as people used in the 40s and 50s, then there may not be any issue with your wiring. But that is rarely the case. Old wiring was designed for different amperage, when people just didn’t use as much electricity. Most insurance companies won’t even insure houses that have knob and tube wiring.
How Can You Tell If The House Has Knob & Tube Wiring?
In older homes, one plug was usually all you got in a bedroom. If there are two or three outlets, you can bet there is old and new wiring patched together.
New plugs installed with new wiring to make it look like the entire wiring was replaced. Sometimes it could be attached to old knob and tube about four inches away inside the wall.
Any time you find surface wiring run along the top of the baseboard and around the door casings, it’s likely you have new patched into old.
Other Problems In Older Homes
When budgeting for a home renovation, I always recommend getting a pre-reno home inspection done. A home inspection can alert you of safety issues prior to starting work, so you can budget appropriately. It will point out deficiencies in your home. Here are some other issues with older homes:
Rusting pipes
Rotting beams
Mould and termites
Water damage
Hazardous framing
Uninsulated walls and ductwork
Undermined foundations
Damaged exteriors, such as cracks in plaster
Smart ways to pay for home renovations
Let us guess: Your dream house has Pinterest-worthy landscaping, a modern kitchen, 2.5 spacious bathrooms, gleaming wood floors, and enough room to give everyone in the family a little privacy when they want it. And, unfortunately, that’s not the home you actually own.
Homeowners are very busy renovating and improving these days, according to a HomeAdvisor survey. The homeowners surveyed had spent an average of more than $6,600 on improvements in the last year, and almost half of them were thinking about doing more.
What’s driving all this home improvement? Part of it is that, with home prices so high, a lot of us are buying places that need work. And with too few homes to choose from, we’re remodeling instead of moving when we want more or better space.
Consider this if you:
Also have a separate emergency fund saved
Can save what you need before repairs become critical
If you had a pile of cash, you probably wouldn’t be reading this post! But still, we have to say it: the best way to pay for a renovation is with cash, so you can keep your overall debt to a minimum. Put yourself on an automated savings schedule and take the opportunity to cultivate that virtue called patience.
Of course, patience can wear thin when core rooms like the kitchen and the bathroom are way past their prime. And waiting until you have cash isn’t always realistic — or even smart. Case in point: don’t delay critical repairs for too long. A leaky roof would fall into this category. Neglect a problem like that, and it might turn into a bigger, more expensive one.
Renovating My First Home — Here’s What I Learned
The first time I walked into the quaint white colonial house with black shutters, I knew it was going to be ours — despite the overgrown landscaping, butter-yellow hardwood floors, and retro pink-and-blue bathroom.
It was going to take a serious amount of work and several large-scale renovations to turn it into our dream home, but we were ready.
PAYING IN CASH CAN PAY OFF
We tried to pay cash whenever possible and ended up getting some great discounts in the process. The savings is real, people!
THINGS WILL GO WRONG, SO BUDGET ACCORDINGLY
This goes for time and money.
For example, we hired a general contractor to do several smaller jobs around the house for a great rate. Then his wife went into labor early, and we had to work around a new baby-dictated schedule. (Ironic, we know.) In the end, it took an extra month to finish the work.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO BARGAIN
Despite all its troubles, our new master bathroom is easily my favorite room. It now has white and gray herringbone marble floors, a spacious double vanity and the biggest shower we could fit. At $15,000, it was also our most expensive room.