Good afternoon friends. Well we’re one month into our renovation in Charleswood. A lot has changed in the house! We’re waiting on bated breath for the painting stage to make us look closer to done. It’s a fun project but can be stressful. Here’s a few reasons why:
- Change orders leading to growing budget. Our budget has grown. I spoke about this a bit in our previous post, but we’ve made decisions that reduce long term stress, but increase upfront costs. This has expanded our budget.
- Finding one more thing to rectify. I keep running into “one more thing I wanna fix”. Eventually I realize I have to cap that, but there’s always a few more things I want to fix “while I’m here”.
- The combination of the above issues lead to scope stretch and timeline changes. Some of the added fixes I’ve wanted to work with have cost us time as well as everybody’s tasks increase a little bit. So our timeline has expanded a bit as well.
Now these aren’t all bad things. I’ve been careful to explain that these are changes I’ve made to increase costs or timelines. Some of the decisions can’t be made either until you run into a problem. I didn’t expect all of the problems, but I sure expected a few. For example, when removing the paneling I expected to have to spend time pulling nails and patching those holes. I didn’t expect wall paper behind all the paneling. Another example would be expecting to re-pull wiring, but not expecting raising the service height. These things do tend to add up.
The thing that’s best served Gina and I this renovation is to just be relaxed about it. We know we’re going to live in the house a long time. We know that we do want it to be done right in the end. These stresses of extra costs or extended timelines are expected and are easier to deal with when you can keep the excitement of the big picture in mind!
So my one chunk of advice for couples renovating is this; keep the big picture in mind. Keep the excitement of building or renovating a home at the top of your mind. Keep the enthusiasm for building your home together at the forefront. Whenever stresses, costs, or extended timeline issues come up stop and ask yourself 1) Will this bug me in five years? 2) Can I do something about it? 3) Will this adversely affect the quality of living in my home for the next decade. If the answers are no, then the big picture still is looking positive! Chin up, we’re almost done! 
