1) Noise Pollution: Any home renovation work will necessarily involve noise pollution from the various equipments that are being used along with the noise of vehicles bringing in materials. Children and old people are particularly affected as they cannot sleep during the day. The solution to this problem is to inform your neighbors well in advance about the schedule of work and assure them that all possible measures will be taken to reduce the noise pollution.

2) Continuous traffic: When home renovation work is going on, many trucks will be coming in and going out of your area and some of them might be parked on your street leading to traffic congestion and creating safety concerns for the children of the area. The solution is to earmark certain areas for parking and asking the contractors to work only during certain specified times and not on weekends. Moreover the contractors should be warned that they would be responsible for any damage to your neighbors or their properties.

3) Dirt and dust: Any home renovation work will necessarily create a lot of dirt, dust and debris that can easily pile up on your neighbor’s property because of the wind. Whereas very little can be done to counter this problem, the contractor can be asked to maintain as much cleanliness as possible, especially near the premises of your neighbors.

4) Nuisance factor: Home renovation in any form can be quite a nuisance for neighbors, especially the heavy trucks that can damage their property and the unseemly sights of lots of piled building materials for a long time. The solution is to protect the work area suitably so that the children of the area do not play inside the work area. As a goodwill gesture you can provide your neighbors with free car wash coupons and offer to get their windows washed.

5) Foul language: It’s often seen that workers at any home renovation site use foul language most of the time. The solution is to warn the contractor that such inappropriate language would not be tolerated.
The best thing that you can do after the home renovation work is over and the debris cleaned up, is to throw a lavish party for your neighbors in order to thank them for tolerating the inconvenience caused to them.

Proper Planning Can Avoid Runaway Costs

A simple example will illustrate the point. A part of your home renovation project might be the replacement of a window. You would naturally have found out the cost of a window and included it in your budget along with the labor cost for replacing it. However, when the actual work takes place, you might find that in order to fix the standard size window that you have bought, you’ll need to make a large number of alterations to the exterior siding since the earlier window was of a non-standard size. Moreover, you would need to replace and paint the exterior and interior trims. The cascading effect of this would go further as the newly painted trim would not match with the balance trim in the room. So you would need to paint them as well. You can well imagine how the cost will escalate with all this extra work. So, what started with merely replacing a window could go on to become a renovation job that make expenses touch the roof.

The solution to this problem would probably have been to anticipate the extra charge and go in for a custom made window that would have eliminated the need for changing the opening or painting the trims. There is no doubt that the non standard size window would have cost more but that could have been incorporated in the budget of home renovation.

Another solution to such wayward cost trends is to estimate the impact of the project on other areas of the home where home renovation is not being planned. You might not have anticipated that some of your renovation work might necessitate alterations to the structure, which might be a costly affair, especially when the structural changes also entail making changes to the plumbing, wiring and ductwork.

Don’t Be Led By Wayward Desires

You might be tempted to plan and execute home renovation work as per your idiosyncrasies without thinking about the future impact of your decision. You can certainly do what you want, like constructing a swimming pool in the backyard of your home. Apart from being expensive to clean and maintain, a swimming pool is not what home buyers are looking for. As such, the money that you would be spending on the swimming pool would not enhance the value of your property one bit. Moreover, over expanding on your home normally does not enable you to recover the full extent of your investment.
Look before you leap is the advice to anyone going in for home renovation.

Common Financing Options

1) Personal Savings: If you are averse to taking any kind of loan, you can start saving money and in a few years time you might be able to save enough to pay for the home renovation work. While this might appear to be a judicious decision, your project of home renovation could get delayed by many years too. Moreover, this delay might push up the cost due to inflation and you would be deprived of staying in your dream home for several years. In case you already have the funds, you should consider the returns that you can get on your money and the need to keep it for emergency situations in your life.

2) Credit cards: This is a very convenient way of arranging for finance but the disadvantage is that it carries a very high rate of interest.

3) Refinancing: You can refinance the mortgage of your home to get finance for the home renovation work if you have sufficient equity. Apart from the availability of the required amount of finance, you would stand to gain considerably if the current interest rates are less than what they were when you had originally taken the mortgage.

4) Home equity: If you have enough equity you can opt for a home equity line of credit for your home renovation. Since this a secured loan, the interest rate will be low and the interest will be tax deductible. You can also take home equity loans which are characterized by fixed interest rates and monthly payments and preset amounts of loan that can be taken only once.

5) Homeowner loans: These loans are available easily and they are sanctioned on the basis of your income, irrespective of the equity that you have. These are secured loans and as such they are tax deductible.

6) Value-added loans: The increased value of your home after the home renovation is done is the criterion for this type of loan which is granted up to a maximum of 80% of the new value of your home after the renovation. The interest rates are very competitive and the payments are released progressively based on the amount of work that has been completed.

Although secured loans offer easy loan terms and interest rates and are tax deductible, you must make sure that you make the repayments on time as per the agreed schedule because failure to do so might mean losing your home.

Encourage Use Of Environment Friendly Materials For Home Renovation

If you are not aware of where to get environment friendly material, you can go online and find out about those companies that provide green materials or products made from green materials. Even your local construction supply store will be able to give information regarding such companies. Basically, these products should not be chemically treated and their harvest or production should be in an environment friendly manner. Green products use paints that do not have volatile organic compounds and insulation that is made from recycled items such as bamboo, cork or cotton.
One of the most common and widely used materials for home renovation is wood and care needs to be taken to minimize tree-felling. You should only use products made from wood that are certified to be safe for usage by Forest Stewardship counsel. Kitchen counters and other household items should preferably be made with recycled goods like paper, plastics and some special types of wood. Besides being environment friendly, green materials need less maintenance than other construction materials and last longer.

It’s not easy to find eco-friendly material for home renovation and as such you’ll need to do thorough research either on the Internet or by inquiring through the merchants and building materials supply companies. This search might test your patience but the outcome will certainly please you.

Other Avenues Of Making Your Home Environment Friendly

Besides using green materials you can consider the use of other methods for creating an environment friendly atmosphere. Your home renovation can include skylights that help sunlight to pervade your room rather than using electrical energy which is again a big drain on resources. Incorporating solar panels in your roof can provide free energy for various purposes in en eco-friendly manner besides cutting down on your power bills.

In view of the damaging effects that global warming is producing in our lives, it is essential that we turn to green materials for our construction and home renovation needs. We should also use natural insulation and energy-efficient wood for replacing our existing windows. Recycled glass can be used for flooring and dual-paned glass for windows in order to make your house more environment-friendly.