Purchasing a home can be really daunting in the sense that it always seems like something is popping up that costs money. This seems to be especially true when you are buying an older home. Though don’t let that fool you, there is homes that are brand new that too have their own sets of issues when it comes to renovations. Maybe they were cheaply made and there is problems that are underneath the new and shiny appearance.

In our case, we did buy an older home. It wasn’t brand new and some of the maintenance that should have been regularly done whether that be yearly, or even every few years, was pushed aside and not done. Period. We had a few surprised within the first year and we also had a lot of things we needed to figure out which to fix first. That in itself is a really challenging thing because typically the bigger jobs, are more expensive. Or if you need to have a specialized person come in that also costs money, Like we needed an electrician in. They cost so much per hour. And then you have to figure out which ones to do first. Here is what we did with our home and why. Hopefully these will help you make some decisions on your thoughts for renovations in your home, and how you want to start too.

If we start with little renovations. Painting was a little one, flooring was another. These were kind of the first cosmetic things we did. Painting was super easy for us because we had to stay in our home for 14 days once we moved due to Covid restrictions. I had someone drop paint off and we just painted and painted and this alone made the house have a really good refresh. The whole house was a weird cream color, and this was just a facelift to help it look like ours. Another was the flooring due to the fact that they had carpet everywhere. The front stairs had carpet, even the bathroom had carpet too. We just got a nice grey click flooring that we put everywhere. While this was about 2000$ it really wasn’t a huge renovation but it was the start to making the home feel like it as ours.

Next up was some of the bigger things. Electrical being huge. When we moved in there certainly was some questionable choices. Like there was one spot that the previous owner had drilled through a wall, and when they did that they also drilled through a wire and the wood surrounding it was black. Literally a fire hazard waiting to happen. Another was different plugs not even wired correctly. A big job also was the home still has fuses. Needless to say after one blew a few times my husband was totally over that and we had breakers installed and an updated panel. These were huge things that needed to be addressed nearly immediately for our own sanity. Fast forward to 1 and a half years later and we’re still doing little tweaks to the electric also.

Heating is a major one also. We are not fortunate enough to live in climate where we can say “Aww fuck it” and live off of no heating. While winters in Nova Scotia have gotten a lot milder with some random cold snaps, heating is still important. The first year we were in our home we used oil. It was expensive to say the least. And the following year thankfully we got heat pumps, one upstairs and one down, and that made a big difference! And if we would have had to use oil it would have been awful because the price only continued to go up! We never used our oil once last year and currently we are in the process of trying to get some baseboards for rooms at the end of the hall. That’s where it can be a touch tricky for the heat pump to reach but it did work. It also would be great in case we needed a backup too for heating to have some electric baseboards instead of relying on oil and maintenance and those things too. Upgrading this part of our home is practical just for the money savings too.

Foundation Cracks/Insulation were next in line for the bigger repairs. The cracks mostly due to the minor flooding we seen. Instead of putting it on the back burner we really didn’t want to risk major damage. Luckily a lot of our things in the basement were able to be unharmed. They also were in the Rubbermaid totes so that was a huge help. We just didn’t want to risk keeping water down there longer than that if we didn’t have to. Insulation was equally as important because we were going to make sure the home was properly heated why waste a bunch of money on heating the home if its not even keeping the heat in?

The bottom line though when prioritizing which home renovations to do should be these 2 things:

Can we afford to fix this now?
This is important because not everyone has the funds that we do or did to make them happen. If we didn’t we would have had to budget and save money in order get it done. Which there is nothing wrong with doing because the majority of people will likely need to save.

And secondly, if we prolong this, will it cause immediate damage to the building? Or will it be okay to put other renovations higher on the list? Because some renovations like replacing the windows should wait when maybe fixing the reason why your basement may be leaking would be a better way to do a home renovation to prevent further damage or mold growth from spreading.

Whichever you choose renovations are anything but cheap, and cosmetic ones can always wait!