5 Reasons Why You Should Remodel At Least Two Rooms At Once
Considering a renovation? A recent article recommends that while you’re filling your home with dust, debris, dropcloths, construction noises, paint fumes, and skilled (and therefore expensive) workers, you might as well get everything done while you’re at it.
How Remodeling More Than One Room Can Save Money by Jeb Breithaupt was published in the Shreveport Times, and it raised a few intriguing points. Let’s go through them one by one to see if they might apply to your project.
#1 Setup & Breakdown Are More Efficient
For every job, your design/build contractor will cover your floors to protect them; apply for city permits; set up a giant trash bin and otherwise get ready for the work to begin. At the end of the job, he’ll take it all down and clean everything up.
As with almost any task, setup and breakdown for a renovation are shockingly time-consuming. If you only have to have it done once, you save time and money.
#2 Get Each Task Done in One Fell Swoop
The job involving multiple rooms is bigger than a one-room remodel, but each piece of a large job will go quicker if the contractor can do them all together.
When the painters come, they can paint everything. When the plumbers are there, they can plumb everything! And so on. It makes sense that, if you’re hiring workers, it’s more efficient to do all their work at the same time.
#3 Design the Whole House at Once (Or at Least Multiple Rooms)
Your designer will do a better job of making sure the colors, textures and styles of your rooms flow from one to the other if he or she can design them all at once.
This is a great point. Standalone rooms such as bedrooms and bathrooms can be independently designed fairly easily, but rooms that connect with each other—especially in open-floor concept homes—such as living rooms, dining rooms, and kitchens can be improved by a unified design concept.
#4 If You’re Making a Mess, Might as Well Make a Big Mess
Grouping your projects into a single job will almost certainly shorten the length of a job compared with having rooms done one by one. So your lifestyle will suffer a shorter disruption.
This one is a little tricky. If you have the means to move out during remodeling—or are lucky enough to have loved ones to stay with—then by all means stay in a hotel a bit longer and come home to an all-new home. But if you’re living with renovations, adding more rooms to the mix will definitely add more stress and chaos—but things will be more stressful and chaotic for a shorter length of time! Which approach is better depends on your temperament, your family’s needs, your home’s configuration (you’re going to need one working toilet), if you have shower access at the gym/work, and so on.
#5 Save Money (And Keep Your Contractor)
Your contractor might discount the price on a multi-room job compared with the single-room estimate.
The chance of a discount is a huge incentive, but the Shreveport Times points out that tackling multiple rooms at once ensures that your favorite contractor won’t get booked elsewhere. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading remodeling memoirs, it’s that when you have a contractor (or painter, or plumber) you like, you hold onto them for dear life.
What works for you: one room at a time, or multiple rooms at once? Please share your experiences!