When You Should Start Your Home Renovation (& Other Big Questions)

When asking ourselves when our dream home renovation (or really any significant change in our lives) can finally come true, we consider the recycled messages of the elusiveness of time:

There is no better time than the present.

There will never be a perfect time.

If not now, then when?

However, when redesigning a home, there sometimes are better times to renovate than others. Still, this should never hold you back from committing to a project or change. It is possible that there won’t be the perfect circumstance for your home makeover, and that’s OK.

If your desire to replace the carpet in your Living Room coincides with your hope of adopting of a rambunctious, untrained puppy, then maybe you should consider holding off on one of the two. The key here is to not wait forever; that will only postpone your happiness.

And happiness is the root of it all, really.

The question is not: When is the best time to redesign my home?

The real question is: When is the best time to really, finally be happy? For this, the answer is always: Now. 

You hate your Living Room and you want it to feel and function better, but you don’t know where to start. You’re not the only one. At the end of the day, home redesign is a financial, emotional, and time-conscious venture that in turn is an investment in your daily wellbeing, perspective on life, and overall happiness. Yeah, it’s a big deal.

So, let’s take this step-by-step.

How much money are you willing to put into your home renovation? This is the first question we ask our clients to gauge where they feel most comfortable in regard to the security of their wallet.

Maybe you’ve been saving up for this for a year. Maybe you decided just today that it’s finally time to commit to change, and your savings are a little slim. Wherever you are in your monetary timeline, be considerate of what you can and cannot financially commit to at this point in your redesign journey. You don’t need the break the bank to make your dream space a reality.

If your dream space consists of replacing carpet with hard wood, using marble for countertops, and updating all of your appliances, then you have to accept that your redesign will not be cheap. In any design project, there must be give and take. Either you give more money to the renovation or you eliminate some of your previous must-have features. (Deciding how feasible it is for you financially to start a redesign project isn’t straightforward for everyone, but we’ll get into this more in our next blog post).

Most, if not all, home renovation projects will involve a financial commitment, and this is usually considered by clients before anything else. Many, however, forget to think about the emotional obligations of the project from start to finish.

Good redesign will require patience with the designer, the renovators, and yourself. How much are you willing to delegate?

We can all relate to the feelings of chaos we experience in that uncertain time between the beginning and end of a project. Take spring cleaning, for instance. You seem to be drowning in a pile of junk you’ve unpacked from the various hiding places it’s made a home for all these years, and you’re wondering why you ever committed to this at all.

It would be foolish to try to convince ourselves that home renovation does not produce a similar uncertainty. But this is where we come in. Allow us to be your guide when it comes to delegating and regulating the whirling gears and cogs of the renovation machine.

We will remind you of the importance of taking a backseat to the process. You hired us for a reason, right? Beyond patience, this kind of undertaking will demand trust. You must commit to trusting that your space is in good hands, that we are paying attention to the components of your dream and that we can deliver all that is possible within the space we are given.

Money and feelings aside, time will be the biggest pill to swallow when considering a home makeover. How flexible is your timeline?

Changing a space for the better (sometimes even from scratch) needs the necessary time to develop and come to fruition. Planning, preparing, and executing your dream space doesn’t happen overnight and is difficult to accomplish when an unrealistic time crunch is in demand.

It’s important to refrain from biting off more than you can chew, and we suggest taking your renovation room-by-room. This will help stifle the financial and emotional burdens of change as well as help inspire the rest of the home. The pieces, colors, and arrangements of your new living room, for example, can inform the design of the rest of your house. Allow yourself to be organically inspired over time by the first room you recreate.

Needless to say, resisting the temptations of the quickness of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition will lead you to consider not only your budget and mental state, but your ability to commit to the time in which it will take to complete quality, long-lasting work as well.

Everything Starts NOW.

Jackie Barnes Design offers 15-minute Discovery Calls in which you can communicate your hopes for the future of your space. And really, what’s the harm in taking 15 minutes of your day to discuss your dream design?

Consultations can happen upon request at any stage in your design project, and we are more than happy to provide some guidance and clarity if ever you begin to lose sight of why you started. What inspired you to start your design venture, and that you never lose sight of this, is most important to the Jackie Barnes Design team.

We want to be there for you through every hill and valley, every moment of certainty and doubt, as you make your way toward your design dreams. Our greatest hope is that you stop asking when it is the best time to start and ask instead why you didn’t start sooner.