My Renovation Mistakes & How You Can Avoid Them | Trades Timeline

I cannot even begin to tell you how many times since beginning this never-ending renovation I’ve thought to myself “I wish we’d known this…” or “If only we’d done that…”

Luckily none of our mistakes have been disastrous in terms of the general health of the house (I’d say it still needs a flu jab and maybe some IV morphine) but our budget certainly would’ve stretched further if we’d had some extra knowledge under our belts. I decided to start a new series of posts covering our f**k ups, stuff we wished we had/hadn’t done and things we wish we’d known in the hope that it may help someone out there (you?!) out at some stage.

The first post in the series relates to the different trades you’ll no doubt need to bring in when undertaking a complete renovation. I’ve chosen this as the first topic because it affects almost anyone working on any project in the home and is certainly where the lessons we’ve learnt have had the most impact, financial and otherwise.

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The Big Before

No renovation story would be complete without a raft of “Before” pictures, so we won’t disappoint.

To recap, we’ve recently picked up the keys to a five bedroom Edwardian terrace in the Hampshire market town of Petersfield where the previous owner had lived since he moved in with his parents some 60 years ago. I mean, I’ll let you be the judge but I don’t think much has been modernised over the years…

Firstly, here’s the floor plan to put the pictures into context. Our medium/long-term aim is to do a side return extension (think that is a London-ism) from the back of the Family Room to the end of the current Kitchen and open it across.

Apologies for the quality of the pictures, they are stolen from RightMove as I wanted to show you the house before it was empty and the gutting process had begun.