We all know someone in our lives who seems to have been renovating their home for months or even years on end. They keep saying that they’re going to complete the project, but they never seem to be able to get around to it.

The problem with home renovations is that they run into bottlenecks. You can be waiting on materials, mismanaging contractors, or fixing mistakes that could have been avoided.

Instead of allowing a renovation to take away your weekends for the next five years, here are some time-saving hacks you can use to ensure that your next project goes smoothly.

Build in buffer weeks for your material deliveries

One of the best places to start is by building in buffer weeks for your material deliveries. If materials aren’t in place, you can wind up wasting your own time and also the time of any contractors that you’re using, because they simply don’t have anything to work with. Don’t schedule contractors to start the day after your materials are supposed to arrive. Instead, order everything you need in advance and store it off-site if necessary, using simple methods to bring it to your property (like hiring a delivery van). You can also keep materials in a garage or a spare room so it’s ready to go the moment you use it.

Remember, contractors charge for their time, so if you’re missing plumbing valves or subfloors, they’ll still add this to the cost of the renovation, and you don’t want that. Instead:

1. Get them to provide you with an itemised list.
2. Order everything.
3. Check everything off, making sure everything’s there.
4. Once you’ve confirmed that you have all the materials you need, arrange for the subcontractors to arrive and start working on your property.

Spend the vast majority of your time on the scan and plan phase

Another pro tip when managing a home renovation is to spend the vast majority of your time on what many people call the scan and plan phase. The idea here is to resist the urge to take immediate action and instead plan what you’re going to do carefully ahead of time. Scanning means mapping out the exact measurements of your rooms and identifying load-bearing walls. This phase prevents you from making costly mistakes down the road, when you realise that you’ve undermined the whole structural basis of your property or you’ve knocked through plumbing and electrical lines.

The planning phase is where you lock down contractor contracts and secure permits. It also means that you’re getting planning permission from relevant authorities to allow the build to go ahead.

The actual build phase is usually only about 20% of the total time that the renovation takes. Eighty percent of the process is dealing with the scanning and planning parts because these can be time-consuming by themselves. Once they’re in place, then you’re ready to get on and build, and sometimes you can do a lot of work in just a couple of weeks.

Choose click-lock and pre-finished materials

Another massive time-saving hack when renovating your home is to choose click-lock and other pre-finished or pre-fabricated materials. Instead of getting contractors to come in and painstakingly create your interiors by hand, you outsource that process to a factory, and it’s just a matter of drilling items into the floor or the wall.

For example, you might want to skip traditional hardwood flooring that requires lots of staining, sanding, and nailing. Creating a herringbone hardwood floor can take weeks, if not months. Instead, you can go for a luxury vinyl plank or engineered hardwood. These floors are designed around the requirements of daily life and come with a click-lock mechanism that allows them to fit easily into place. They go down in a fraction of the time of regular wood flooring, with only a minor aesthetic cost.

You could also do the same with cabinetry. Instead of getting a carpenter to create bespoke cabinetry for you, you can get pre-assembled cabinets that go into place immediately. These are actually even better than flat-pack options, which require hours of assembly work and don’t look as good.

Skip DIY chores

You can also save a lot of time during your next home renovation by skipping all of the usual DIY chores. Most homeowners opt for do-it-yourself options like painting rooms themselves because they think it’s going to save costs. Ultimately, it just winds up eating a lot of time, and the finish often isn’t as good as getting in a professional house painter.

The same is true for other tasks that you might want to complete as part of your renovation. For example, you might think you can lay a new countertop yourself, but as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried it, it can be hard to get everything level and looking perfect. You can also risk breaking the countertop, especially if you’re moving solid pieces of stone into your rooms.

DIY chores like wallpapering also take up an enormous amount of time. Unless you’re a professional and have all of the equipment to hand, it’s probably worth skipping this and just paying somebody to do it.

Master the concept of renovating one room at a time

You should also master the art of getting into the habit of renovating one room at a time. If you try to transform your kitchen, hallway, and living room over the same weekend, you’ll run into trouble. There’s just too much to think about.

Establish a hard boundary around the zone that you want to renovate. For example, if you’re renovating the kitchen, make sure that the renovation stops at the kitchen doors, even if there is a stark transition with the room next door. You can always address that problem once you finish your kitchen projects. This saves you time because it keeps everything centralised and reduces cleanup between tasks. It also keeps your home livable, so you don’t wind up having to go to a hotel for the duration of the renovation.

Image: Unsplash – CC0 License