Remodeling your beloved home is a real alternativeto simply packing up and purchasing an ideal home. However, remodeling is not necessarily cheaper; a bad contractor or simple organization mistakes can easily lead to financial and emotional losses. Proper organization and in-depth research are your best weapons to avoid the common pitfalls of a typical home remodel. Be sure to use them!

Your bathroom, your garage, and your kitchen are three great places to begin your home remodeling project.  However, before you begin work, you must ask yourself many questions. The most important of these questions requires an honest answer: how much can you really afford to spend? When remodeling your house, you should be financially realistic. Unless you’re very careful during the bidding stage, your home remodel will most likely run 20% to 30% more than expected. While you have limitless possibilities for your remodeling project, this article will only focus on three different rooms: the kitchen, the garage, and the bathroom.

While there are limitless possibilities for remodeling your home, this article is going to focus on the remodeling of the most important rooms: your bathroom, kitchen and your garage. For most everyone, the bathroom is a private sanctuary. Where else can you lock out the world and soak up a soothing bubble bath or stand under a hot shower? When you are planning your bathroom remodel, you really need to consider where you spend most of your bathroom time: gazing into the mirror or enjoying the bathtub. How you answer that question reveals where you should indulge in your bathroom design. Did you know there are such things as heated flooring and towel warming racks? And every contractor will recommend that you invest a little extra money and buy top of the line fixtures. By investing more cash on the extra bells and whistles can easily transform your bathroom into a mini at-home spa.

It has been said that well over 50% of home owners do not park their vehicle in their garage. Instead of a place to park a vehicle, their garage is nothing but a big storage unit. Are you one of those individuals? If so, you might want to remodel your garage. A remodeled garage can increase your storage space, increase the usable square footage of your house, or it may allow you to park a vehicle inside of it.

In addition to gaining extra storage space, a garage can be transformed into a home gym, an elaborate work room, a laundry room, or possibly an extra living space (like a kid’s play room or a spare bedroom). If you are considering transforming your garage into extra living space, you must factor in the additional costs for heating, cooling, and electrical. And if you would like to add a bathroom or some other form of water supply, you will need to factor in plumbing costs which can be quite expensive.

Remodeling your kitchen is typically the most costly (and complicated) home remodel project you can start. It is a big undertaking; don’t take it lightly. It is highly advisable to hire a qualified contractor than to tackle your own kitchen remodel. If you accept bids from several contractors – which you should, your scope of work should be extremely specific regarding the many materials that are to be used for the project (detailed proposals can be more accurately compared). Also, if you aren’t specific about construction materials, there is a good chance you will get materials either too expensive or inferior than what you originally had in mind.

Designing your kitchen is the first and most important phase of your new kitchen’s remodel. Every aspect of the design should meet with your enthusiastic approval before you begin construction You really must consider the down time you will experience; how long can you handle not having a kitchen? The more expansive your remodel, the longer you can expect to be without a working kitchen.

Buy kitchen window treatments to finish the look of your new kitchen remodel. A new set of  kitchen window treatments can help finish any kitchen, large or small. Of course if you are handy with the sewing machine try making kitchen curtains.

Outside of hiring an experienced, licensed contractor for your project, it is also recommended that you hire an independent consultant that can oversee your contractor’s quality of work and overall job progress. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between ductile iron piping and black steel piping, but an independent consultant that specializes in home remodels can. He or she will notice if your contractor attempts to take any shortcuts.

Your family’s happiness and livelihood are closely tied to your home. Be thorough in your remodel preparation and planning and your home remodeling experience will most likely be a pleasant one.