Top 10 Mistakes You Make Renovating And How To Avoid Them!

hey it's Jeff from home renovation DIY today we are going to be sharing with you the 10 most common mistakes that homeowners make when they're doing a DIY renovation for themselves or did this show live but we edit it for you so you don't have to hear us talk about all of our channel business and answer questions afterwards it's just nice and concise information that'll help you out so that you can plan how to be very effective on your next home renovation let's just jump right into it some of these mistakes will cost you time some of them will cost you money some will cost you both and some of them can be downright devastating so we're going to save the big dramatic ones for a little bit later let's go through all the basic ones because if you can learn from my mistakes and other people have done this before you then you can avoid these tragedies and all these problems that are going to come your way just because life is a great teacher and so you have two options you can learn the hard way or you can learn from someone else who learn the hard way all right so number one problem with renovating lack of research I got this coming a lot people who buy a house we just got a house we're gonna renovate the send me a message in the member come in we're so excited we're tearing everything apart today yay go team right whoo the first thing I think people need to do renovating or trying to flip a house if you've never done it before there is an art to it there is a learning curve and to be diving right in based on the fact that you've been encouraged or excited or you see the videos and you feel empowered that's great I love to do that but know your home ok number one mistake is you don't know your home alright and what that means is you don't know how it functions you don't know the home's weaknesses right and you don't know the flow so let's break that down how the house functions what's your heating like what's the cooling system like when it rains does it dry right do you have weak spots in your foundation you don't know the best thing a homeowner can do is go through four seasons of owning that house so that you can identify what are the weak spots in that home and all the different kinds of weather that you're going to get before you make major decisions to change things because you might make changes that make a problem worse create a new problem or you've invested time and money into something that gets damaged right so that's really great advice know you're home when I bought my farm house we lived in there for three years before I started renovating it because it was sold and AI didn't have enough time because I was running my business and starting the channel and be really old homes all have bugs right they've got issues so it's good to know what those are so you learn about your functions you learn about the weaknesses of the home but then you got to learn about the flow what's it like living in that house right where are people moving and walking and how is it used what are the rooms used like understanding that you might want to move a door or a wall or open something up or close something off how is that going to affect the flow adding an island is that going to be in addition to the kitchen to make it beautiful or is gonna be in the way so you can't get your groceries in anymore what happens if you have to replace your washer/dryer do you still have a way to get that appliance in and out of the house well they lifted it up over your $5,000 marble countertop right all these questions it's just good to take a deep breath slow down understand your house before you move forward there are a ton of different mistakes that you can make from aesthetic to mechanical to structural to just not knowing that when you get a really bad windstorm from the east in the middle of the winter time your pipes freeze or when it rains blowing hard from the West it comes through the roof and every other time of the year is fine so all these kinds of things you will learn if you give yourself one full year in the house and that is brilliant advice take it try to use that the best you can if you want to roll the dice and just jump right in here's the next thing that everybody makes a mistake with they want to tackle the whole house at once all right now I'm just gonna use my pin cuz I'm actually bumping around here a little bit I was in Orlando we had this nice young couple down there I was talking with the group and they had done exactly that they and they'd gotten it now I was in Orlando just a few weeks before this outbreak really happened and we were talking and I was like okay so here's my ten list of mistakes and that's one of the big ones was some of the best advice I ever heard about renovating a house is from a real estate agent and you know they have a lot of experience with when people are bur selling a house and why and what they learned from that was if you're gonna renovate your home renovate a piece of your house that if something horrible was to happen you could have finished that renovation in 30 days to put your house on the market think about this you got a young family these two kids they just got their first house they both had good jobs but my question and I actually was thinking about this last night is are they both still working right now are they in a situation where their house is half renovated but their revenue stream is dried up are they devastated you know and if you guys are watching I'd love to know how you're doing so throw yourself in the comments or send me a message or something I didn't really know like to know how you're getting along there are a lot of different things that could happen in life right things change relationships change you wake up one morning you're like wow I just don't like you anymore and you take off wait you got an asset that can be sold but only if it's whole half renovated things don't sell too well in the market right job changes you can have health issues right you could be told hey your job is moving you're shipping you across to the west coast from the East Coast you've got to be ready to wrap up your business and then sell the house so one room at a time yes it's a little slower but it's a safe bet and since you're DIY in your renovation everything you do is going to make you money so don't be in a hurry to finish it be practical about how much of a chunk you want to bite off at once okay even in my own house my whole main floor it's really only two rooms it's the kitchen sitting area and another area we waited until one half of the house was finished before we tackle the other which does irritating because I'm constantly calling for electrical inspect but the point is this while you're going through the process you have a finished space to enjoy and it's a lot less stress I'm just saying that is money that is sorry that's good advice it'll save your bacon okay so one step at a time finish what you start before you move on I'm preaching to myself here because I usually like to get ninety ninety-five percent yeah and then I move on and you know I'm working on that it's it's a personal growth area um next thing that you got to work on as far as mistakes that homeowners make is bump up a bum stop making changes along the way okay when you have a plan and you stick to it you can execute that plan and you can finish and everything can be organized and laid out and it works really well resist the temptation to make a plan agree that it's a good plan and then halfway through the process change the plan it happens so often it's not even funny and a lot of the reason it happens is because you don't have a vision of the finished product in your mind okay and that leads us to the next mistake that people make homeowners don't hire a designer I don't know why less than 10% of people can look at something and visualize it finished okay that's something that I've got the ability to do which is real helpful in my business but if you don't have that skill you can't just have an idea where you're going right it's like trying to drive to a specific city and you know it's north and you just hit any road that says you're heading north yeah you might find it takes a long time to get there it's a real long journey every time you make a decision that changes you've got rework you've got to reconsider your mechanical plans things like you've done your electrical rough-in and you want to change the size of your countertop well you can add a few inches to your cabinet space and change your countertop order and you know you're buying new cabinets you're oh you need more square footage for your backsplash maybe you need an extra plug and you don't check out so when you go to get your final inspection you fail because you're missing a plug now you've got a finished kitchen but code says you need an extra plug because you now you have more countertop little things like that can happen all the time in every aspect of the renovation so have a plan stick to it if it was a good plan when you made it it's a good plan today it'll be a good plan when it's finished if you come up with a better idea save it for your next renovation okay but get this one done and under your belt because you don't want to waste your time and waste your money there is no return on investment if you do everything twice right now you're just spinning your heels and that is not a good way to go another big thing ready next mistake that homeowners make everybody gets excited to do the kitchen in the bathroom now if you were with us last week we talked about return on investment and kitchens and bathrooms have about a 60% return investment if you hire somebody and if you do it yourself you can make money okay but what good is a brand new kitchen or bathroom if you need a new roof first right especially if you bought the house and you made the other mistake of not living in it for a year so you don't know what the weaknesses in the home are and you just assume that your roof is gonna work that could be really costly so you want to do the outside first and this is great advice for almost every DIY ER and here's why if you do the outside first we learned last week almost everything you do on the outside of the house has a huge return on investment it's mostly basic simple skills painting cutting measuring right installing fences decks patios whatever it is changing your windows all of these things are the outside of the house these are basic skills that have huge return on investment and if you grow your basic skills in areas that are gonna make you the most amount of money then when you're done that and you've got some confidence and you've got your mojo and you've got a few more tools then you tackle something like a bathroom or a kitchen you can have a lot more confidence that you're gonna be able to finish it and do a good quality job if while you're working on the outside you keep running into problems and you don't have the skill level you don't have the dexterity or whatever it is that's a great time to learn that maybe that's not for you and ripping apart your kitchen is a bad idea okay so start with the simple stuff that makes you the most amount of money that doesn't affect where you're living inside and make sure that you're going to be successful in your endeavors resist the temptation to buy the lie that you buy a new house and the first thing to do is Rick both the kitchen and start over wow that should be one of the last projects you faced as your kitchen because as a DIY er there are so many skills and so many tools and so many mistakes you make you might want to have a little bit of experience under your belt first okay next thing oh you know what here's one other thing about that the outside of the house is also the most important part of your house it's why we own a home so that we don't die right we have a water diversion system we have building materials that have to stay dry to keep the bugs and the animals out and if you don't have your water diversion and your animal infestation issues taken care of whatever you do on the inside is gonna be subject to all of that problem and it's gonna be just brand new having a brand new mess so make sure your house is sealed up from air and water and vermin and bugs before you go renovate the inside of your house that's great advice I live in 1880 home and trust me that's worth following next mistake that people make they buy cheap materials okay and when I say cheap I don't mean like garbage I mean if you're a fan of the channel I'm been watching for a while you'll see our kitchen renovation and if you're looking for a blueprint for a simple kitchen renovation I'm going to encourage you to click the link if you're not watching the live show and if you are watching the live show here this is for you you're gonna renovate a something to put maybe ten or fifteen thousand dollars or the material into and you're fixing yourself the market value of a kitchen renovation like that is about thirty to thirty-five thousand you've got a lot of room okay you've made a lot of money doing that renovation consider buying instead of a six or $700 stove buying a two thousand dollar stove because nice appliances in the kitchen that have that's been done well really add value to the house remember the value proposition was simple materials plus the rec labor is about what the value goes up and as a homeowner doing it yourself you're your valuation of what the labor would have been is part of your profit margin but your materials are all up to you so when you cheap out on materials hey you cheap out on your own quality of life while you're living there but direct dollar-for-dollar return on investment you go to sell the house you put in a $3,000 stove you get $3,000 back we're gonna tell you right now it's like a guaranteed way to increase your your revenue and enjoy the quality of life all right the next mistake that people make is they buy into the salesman's jargon and they buy really expensive doors and windows okay so next week we're gonna be talking about how to hire a contractor a lot of people hire a contractor to the doors and windows and for good reason they're afraid of ladders they don't want to get them involved with the Heights right maybe it's a skill set you don't have I understand it's relatively simple you can always watch a video and learn but if you're gonna hire a contractor remember the one thing they're gonna send out first person you're gonna meet from the company is the salesman his job is not to find you the best window for your house his job is to sell you the most expensive thing they sell you have to talk him down into normal so when we take a look at the quality windows over the history of time in the early 80s we had vinyl windows came out and the quality of the window from 1980 to now which is over 40 years has not really changed it's almost identical introductory builder grade quality windows are both the same quality as they were then they have an R rating of 5 and they might have a couple more bells and whistles at cost 3 or 4 bucks like low E argon gas big whoop and that's great it protects your stuff from UV rays and that sort of thing so you don't bleach out your floor's in your furniture but the reality is is once you put those two products together a basic vinyl window and the proper gas in there you've got about as much technology as the average person's going to need remember you've got to be buying or renovating a really expensive home with best practices and top-of-the-line materials before you bother upgrading your windows changing the space of a window is an expensive procedure just changing the window in and out the same size keep it simple keep your costs down by the builder-grade materials because they work ok you spend thousands of dollars on a window so that you can be more energy-efficient and never see the return on that investment it's a bit of a scam so be really careful with that it doesn't matter where you live a good window can be vinyl it can be basic and it'll perform really really well for you and it only has to cost a couple hundred dollars so resist the temptation to let the salesman sell you a bunch of hooey and say oh we can even finance it because the minute you start financing your renovation you're losing all your margin right you just pay an interest and interest in interest keep the things simple keep it affordable keep it now pay for it as you go and then you are gonna make a fortune no the next mistake that people make is they have an idea they have a plan we got our kitchen we got our design right we're moving forward and we know it's gonna be a 30-inch stove everything's fine good we put a 30-inch stove in the design model and they move forward but you haven't figured out which stove you're gonna get yet you haven't purchased the stove is it mixed fuel is it gas and electric if so does the gas supply come up the left side the right side to four inches to eight inches all these questions need to be answered at the very beginning so that all of your rough-in work is done properly microwaves convection well mountain ovens all of these different appliances that you may or may not include in your home your stove does it have a molded side to the top where the slides over top of the countertop or does it just but up next to it all of these things if you don't have answers to these questions before you start you could be making major mistakes and getting involved in rework bathrooms are notorious for this because there are so many purchases you have to make and you need to know the end from the beginning you want to know exactly where your toilet paper roll holder is going to go so that you can put blocking in the wall before you drywall you don't just go out and buy a set and then go okay where would you like to put it honey because then you're just attaching at the drywall and it's going to cause you problems it's gonna fail so knowing the end from the beginning making all your purchases having the specs there and if they don't have the material on-site at least the model number have it purchased have your have your specs downloaded from the internet okay to make sure that everything that's getting done as far as roughen is concerned is in the right place the first time I don't know how many times I've seen this almost every time I've been involved in a major kitchen or bathroom renovation with a company that has a management structure they didn't mess this up always get it wrong because there's there's usually x' right this is usually the way it's done this is usually way this is done every time I hear somebody say the word usually I almost lose my mind because the word usually means things don't change but in the world of appliances and fixtures it's changing every year because they love causing confusion and they love making you go back to the store to buy something a second time all right so be careful with that um okay there's only two more we're almost there number nine mistake that every homeowner makes as they buy a retail you go to the box store now box stores have a purpose right they're like the convenience store where you can go and buy your your milk and your bread and your butter and a soda and get a kid the treat for the kids it's what the hardware store is the box store is just the convenience store for the building trades and what they do is they charge you a lot more you can go buy eggs from the variety store but they're almost twice the price is if you buy eggs at a grocery store you all know what I'm talking about big-box stores are the same model as the corner store they bring convenience all right and as a result their prices are super inflated because it costs a fortune to run that operation they've got a hundred thousand products on the shelves nowhere how's a space everything is just in time delivery and they are charging you a pretty penny to supply that service to make your life convenient what everybody will have in their City has other options for purchasing the same building materials at lower prices now the box stores they do a good job with a couple of things commodities like the lumber and the drywall those are great prices you're not going to do much better than that some the plumbing fittings you're not going to be much better than that but as soon as you get away from the basic building materials and you get into all the other things the tools and the fixtures all the little bells and whistles you have to buy along the way all your doors all your trim dear Lord your insulation all of it is crazy expensive so we're gonna have the next session we're gonna be talking about is it next week max we talk about well that's the members video yeah two weeks from now we're gonna do the members video and we're gonna talk about shopping I am gonna educate you on every trick that I know to go out and save a ton of money on your products because if you want to make money and you're renovating your house and you want to buy siding for instance and you go to Home Depot hey they're gonna give you two or three colors all right or you can go to a company like this all right and this is a wholesaler and this is one deck for one product that they carry they carry three different lines and you have all of these different choices all right and they're broken down into different price group options okay and you can decide how much or how little you want to spend per square foot you can pick your color they got all the trims there you can order it have it delivered to your house right and it's half the price of the box store and you can get a superior quality at that price I might add so knowing where that place is and knowing how to do business with them is gonna be vital we're gonna cover that in the members video which is why I'm telling you you need to be a member I can't give everything away for free but for members I'm gonna take the time to go through that because I know when I'm done sharing that information I'm gonna get flooded with questions and phone calls so for the members I'm gonna share that information and I'm gonna be ready to answer your emails there's gonna be tons of follow-up we might even do a video about that or we might edit that video and release it at some point the road but for now I'm just going to share with members only it's really vital information and I believe that if you're gonna invest in your own project then I'm gonna invest with you and I'll give you all the help I can on that the last thing that everybody makes this mistake I'm telling you if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me this question I'd be a very wealthy man living on an island right now and the question is this can I mix this with that could I not follow the recommendations from the manufacturers and do this instead that's the question it comes in a million different forms number 10 thing that all homeowners make the same mistake is you are all inventors you stop inventing the wheel on your home okay there are proven systems that work there are things that don't work hmm I should just check this out well we'll have to do that overnight clouded that I was trying to do a little test for you and I'm gonna share a little something with you right now actually how about inventing okay here's some tile it's cute this little round stuff it's probably for a backsplash but you know how many tiles you'll see that have this little mesh backing on the back of it right take a guess here I'm going to just use the table here max move the beer remind myself to take a sit Cheers catch asipi this tile is laid out like this on a conveyor belt and is moving alone and then they spray glue on it it moves along and then they drop a sheet of mesh on the back it's lovely it's convenient it's designed so that you can put cement or adhesive on the wall didn't attach your tongue and for years I'm guilty of this too we've been using tile like this mosaics all different kinds of glass and stone mix little rectangular bars and kitchen backsplashes and people didn't use this in their showers okay I found out just about six months ago or so that there's such a thing in the industry of tile is tile that's not approved for wet areas let's think what that blew my mind only want to be not approved what you see when you go put tile in a wet area you're supposed to have 90 percent coverage but the back of that tile is covered in glue and as soon as you put it on a wet cement or a wet adhesive it dissolves the glue and the only part of that tile that's actually attached to your wall is when the cement comes squeezing through the middle but most of us in the industry are trying to avoid that because it takes forever to clean it out before you go out and so we're being cheap with our adhesive and then when you go to grout you're finding tiles popping off and we just think it's poor installation or poor quality but the reality is is 95% of mosaic tiles out there aren't designed to go in a bathroom that is amazing putting it in a bathroom is a creative thing unfortunately we've seen it on design shows on television for years and we think is normal but they've been doing it wrong - I know crazy it's called being an inventor I once got contacted by a member who cut a hole in his floor and put in a clawfoot tub and it sat on the on the rim on the floor he was asking me for advice on how to waterproof the areas around it turn into a shower what do you do oh I try to be respectful at the same time don't invent the wheel don't mix building materials right probably just as guilty as everybody else I've shown you how to how to do something with a little more on the less expensive side of things in the shower world we've been very creative for a lot of years because since 1960 most showers have not worked there are precious few shower assemblies that actually don't end up rotting out and leaking and there's a lot of different reason for that I can't get into all the details today but it's little things like using the wrong tile right mixing two different technologies not using approved methods and procedures even though there is no approved method of procedure for a lot of different showers everything out there is being done like a cowboy because we invented this new thing called Vince that has revolutionized the tile industry for installation but it doesn't do a good job of waterproofing so now we're everybody's mixing this and mixing that and trying to find a way to you know like I'll show you you can use drywall with red guard right well yeah you can it's more effective than not using the red guard and the problem is is that the industry says the tie lines through sets a standard up here but then the building code sets the standard way down here and then there's all these different options that are in the middle there and you don't know what to do and so there's so much confusion people are trying to think the confusion with here I got a solution I'm going to build this instead of that I'll use this material with this material you got to stop doing that every one of these situations is going to be ending in a disaster if you want to have confidence with what you build don't invent the wheel if you have a question become a member after the question get an answer I can help steer you towards what's gonna work and what's not gonna work I don't want to see you spending your time and money installing things that are doomed to fail I get questions every day from people asking me to bless their idea I'm telling you right now if you're thinking outside the box stop get back in the box and just do what you're supposed to do that's normal you can't save time and money and get a good result stop trying don't be an inventor this is the biggest investment you have in your life and there are a lot of things you can do that will cause a problem right away next week or in five years you know and the bigger the problem that's gonna happen the longer it's going to take the show up so resist the temptation to be creative all right well thanks for watching the show today listen if you are interested in doing home renovations for yourself and making money then you're gonna want to check out this playlist right here it's the rest of the do-it-yourself tour it's going to be a lot of information on their return investment how to hire contractors if you need that kind of help and how to do it yourself and make money we'll see you again next time

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 237,304

Rating: 4.918622 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, top 10 mistakes when renovating, How to renovate, when to renovate, what to renovate, real estate, home renovation, renovation mistakes

Id: FYIo3kEBHL0

Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020