How to upgrade your family home to fit a growing family?
Photo by Anete Lusina from Pexels
It’s always exciting when you’re finally approved for a mortgage and can settle down in your first house. As your family grows, though, your dwelling can start to feel cramped. If moving isn’t in the cards, this may leave you with one option to ease the cramped feel: renovating.
Home renovations can be a great way to create a more functional, spacious home. However, even the smallest renovation projects require a certain degree of forethought and planning if they’re going to genuinely help your living situation.
Here are three tips to help smooth the process of upgrading your home to fit a growing family.
Always plan ahead
Rushing into any renovation project is always a bad idea, regardless of your situation. When you have a family that is already occupying your living space, though, starting a home improvement project half-cocked can be a disaster.
Unforeseen issues can drag out your timeline. Turning off water or electricity can hamstring your family’s ability to function at home. A lack of knowledge or research can set up dangerous situations.
If you want to successfully upgrade your family home, it’s important that you thoroughly plan ahead. This should include considerations like:
- Thoroughly researching what is required for each project.
- Looking for ways to save money on a project, such as creating a budget beforehand or using used materials.
- Budgeting your project and applying for options like a home equity line of credit if your credit precludes you from getting a loan.
- Obtaining any required permits ahead of time.
- Fleshing out the logistics of it and how you’ll live in your home during the project.
Planning is a critical part of pulling off a successful renovation project, particularly when there are kids involved.
Look for “value projects”
It’s tempting to focus your renovations on the latest trends. However, before you start making plans that revolve around incorporating natural tones or creating indoor-outdoor living spaces, it’s important to consider the long-term value of each renovation. How will it help your family function better in your living space? Areas that add value for a growing family include:
- Improving traffic flow by opening up a congested area.
- Providing more space, such as walling off a new room.
- Enhancing efficiency, like building a bunk bed with a trundle underneath it.
- Saving cash in the long run by investing in things like solar panels or a garden.
Each time you choose a new upgrade project, make sure to ask yourself if it’s a genuine value project, particularly when it comes to helping your home house a growing family.
Take things one step at a time
While thoroughly planning and researching projects is always wise, once it comes time to execute your planned improvement, take things one small step at a time.
As a parent, in particular, it can be difficult to wholly devote yourself to a home improvement project for hours or even days on end. Childcare and other basic family necessities won’t just disappear while you’re working on your living space.
Instead, break each project down into small steps that you can tackle in stages. For instance, if you’re going to overhaul a laundry room to make it more efficient, divide the work into individual, encapsulated projects, such as hanging shelves or installing a stackable washer and dryer. This way you can work on one small project at a time and have natural breaks to tend to other responsibilities.
Effectively upgrading your family’s home
Each home is different, and the specific upgrades that you can make will vary from one situation to the next. However, in every case, it’s still important to plan ahead, look for value, and take things one step at a time. If you can do this, you will be able to effectively upgrade your home to accommodate your family as it continues to grow.