The Most Common Mistakes Home Owners Make When Renovating (and How to Avoid Them)
When home renovation bills start to mount, many people suddenly get into the DIY home renovation hobby—and there are certainly plenty of home projects you can tackle on your own to save money. But renovating your home is only worth it if you don’t make things worse in the process, and it’s surprisingly easy to leave your home in worse condition than before you started your ill-fated project.
The worst part is that many of these mistakes aren’t obvious, and you won’t realize how much damage you’re doing until you’re done and starting the cleanup—and feeling dejected that you’ve messed up. Here are some common home renovation mistakes that everyone should avoid.
Damage to walls and floors
Congratulations, you noticed something, broke the stairs, moved the furniture and fixed it. It’s amazing. Now look at your walls and floors and notice how many scratches, scuffs and dents you’ve left behind. Be sure to use the following to prevent this type of collateral damage to your home during minor repairs and maintenance:
- Stair coverings. A couple of inexpensive stair covers can help prevent scuffs, marks, and gouges on your walls—or you can make your own from pool noodles if you don’t want to spend $15.
- Throw away the rags. A simple canvas drop cloth will protect your floors and furniture from scratches, spills and splashes.
- Rosin paper and hardboard. If you’re going to be carrying things around the house, you should consider protecting your floors with either rosin paper and masking tape, which will protect your floors from minor scratches and stains, or hardboard or something like Ram Board , which will protect them. from more serious damage.
- Booties. If you’ll be moving between your work area and the rest of the house, consider purchasing shoe covers to protect the floors in areas of the house where you’re not working.
Turn your home into a trash can
If your home renovation project will involve sanding or sawing, there’s one guarantee: you’ll be cleaning up dust for a long time afterwards. Drywall dust, in particular, manages to permeate every corner of your home, appearing years later like the ghost of failed projects from the past. It’s more than just an annoyance—dust and sawdust can clog the filters and duct grilles in your HVAC system and get sucked into any device that uses air for ventilation and cooling, potentially causing problems. Do yourself a favor and tape a plastic barrier around your work area to keep dust out, using sticky zippers for easy access.
Using the wrong cleaning products
Maintaining your home is often as much about cleaning as anything else, and the things you’re trying to clean can easily get damaged. Not all cleaners are suitable for all surfaces—even natural substances like vinegar can be harmful to natural stone, so using them to clean your granite countertops could cause damage. And trying to boost vinegar’s cleaning power with something like hydrogen peroxide will instead create peracetic acid , a potentially toxic substance that will do more harm than good.
Even store-bought cleaning products need care—just because the package says they’re suitable for all surfaces doesn’t mean they can’t get damaged. Read labels and always test them before applying them anywhere.
Using the wrong tools
There’s nothing worse than doing all the preparation for a home renovation—moving things, organizing rags and sealing plastic, doing all the planning and shopping—only to find out you don’t have the right wrench, saw blade, or whatever. . tool. It’s tempting to just use what you have, and hey, sometimes it even works out .
But more often than not, trying to use the wrong tool or the wrong size will only result in damage or injury . From stripped bolts to scratched walls, it’s always better to give in and buy or borrow the right tool. This goes double for something like an outdoor extension cord: if you don’t have one, buy one. Using an indoor extension cord for an outdoor project is a fire waiting to happen.
Incorrect use of the washing machine
The pleasure of pressure washing is well documented . And power washing isn’t exactly a home maintenance job that requires an engineering degree to understand. And yet, somehow, people manage to cause incredible damage to their homes using a washing machine. The number one mistake you can make is using too much pressure or getting too close, which can physically damage the surface you are trying to clean. But it’s also important to know that not every surface in the universe will respond well to force. wash.
Don’t turn things off
We get it: Finding gas and water shutoff locations and understanding how an electrical panel works is a chore that you don’t have time to waste in your busy schedule. So you decide to just get started with a quick repair, whether it’s replacing a light fixture or investigating a slow leak. These simple repairs could cause thousands of dollars in damage to your home or cash out your life insurance policy. Whenever you interact with any part of your home that has wiring or plumbing, turn off the associated power before doing anything else.
Over-reliance on duct tape
Duct tape is a wonderful thing! Sticky, durable and flexible, it can be used for a wide variety of temporary repairs and everyone should have a roll of it in their toolbox. But let’s emphasize the word “temporary” : duct tape isn’t actually a permanent solution—hell, it can’t even be used on ductwork . The danger of repairing with duct tape is the desire to simply leave the pipes wrapped in it, support your structure with it, and seal the cracks with it. This “repair” will ultimately fail. And if you do remove the tape to make a more permanent repair, you’ll find that it leaves behind a pretty lasting mark.
Do not prime
Painting is a cheap and relatively easy renovation: changing the color of the walls in a room can have a stunning effect for less than $50. But if you skip proper wall preparation, you’ll likely end up with a mess. Glossy surfaces don’t adhere well to paint, so simply applying a new coat over an existing gloss or semi-gloss finish (especially if it’s old oil-based paint) will soon result in peeling and blistering. Prepare the walls, use a good quality primer and repair any minor damage that appears after applying a fresh coat of paint.
Drilling or hammering nails into wiring or plumbing fixtures
Nothing makes you feel more capable than a power tool, but sometimes that feeling is an illusion. Your home is also an illusion because it presents you with this neat, clean, stylish interior, but in reality it is riddled with pipes and wires hidden in your walls, ceilings and under the floors. And if you just start drilling willy-nilly into walls or hammering nails into floors, you will probably discover this fact in the worst possible way. To avoid puncturing a pipe and causing a water or gas leak, or to avoid injury when drilling into an electrical cable, follow these simple steps:
- Invest in a stud finder tool. Not only will placing studs in your walls make it more likely that whatever you attach will stay attached, but if you buy a stud finder with a wire detection setting, you can avoid a shocking discovery.
- Don’t push. If you are drilling into a wall and encounter unexpected resistance, stop drilling . You’ve probably come across either a metal pipe or metal tape placed over the electrical wiring to prevent you from drilling into it. If you continue to insist, you will most likely be in for an unpleasant surprise .
- Measure. If you are drilling or driving nails into a floor or ceiling, make sure you know the depth underneath and use the correct length of fasteners. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve done a great job until you come downstairs and see a bunch of screws sticking out of your ceiling. And if you know there are pipes and wiring running through your beams or rafters, make sure you know where they are so you can avoid them.
Using the wrong tubes
Replacing a section of pipe may seem beyond most people’s basic skills, but it is very easy to use the wrong material. For example, plastic pipes are not always designed to handle hot water, and mixing copper and galvanized metals can cause a corrosive reaction that will cause more damage than what you just fixed. If you refuse to call a plumber for minor repairs, at least find out what kind of pipes you are working with.