How To Renovate

EP56 Renovation Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making, Until It's Too Late

• Tash South

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Today I share the renovation mistakes you don’t know you’re making – until it’s too late.


I'm going to help you avoid those mistakes that I find people find out just a little bit too late. They've spent years thinking about their renovation, they've spent months and months carrying out their renovation, only to move into their finished home and find that a few things are just not quite right. 


So, today's episode is dedicated to helping you spot and think about those small decisions, that end up having a big impact on how your home functions, feels and flows.

Listen now and save yourself the heartbreak later 💔

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Hi I'm your host, Tash South I'm an Interior Designer and Renovation Consultant.
Each episode of How To Renovate is short, but brimming with practical advice to help you manage your renovation project with confidence and success.

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Tash South:

Hello, hello everybody. Tash here and welcome back to the how to Renovate podcast. Today we are talking about renovation mistakes you don't know you're making until it's too late. So today I'm going to help you avoid those mistakes that I find people find out just a little bit too late. They've spent years thinking about their renovation, they've spent months and months carrying out their renovation and only to move into their finished home and find that a few things are just not quite right, just not how they wanted them. So today's episode is dedicated to helping you spot and think about those small decisions that end up having a big impact on how your home functions, feels and flows. So let's get into the episode.

Tash South:

I'm going to tell you about some common mistakes I see when people renovate. So number one I find comes up quite a lot and it's lighting, sockets and sight lines. So lots of times I find socket placements are a big one that come up. People find when they move in that they didn't think really carefully enough about how they use the space and they just kind of made sure there were some socket points in each room. But you have to really think about where you will sit to work. Where do you need to recharge your laptop or your phone. Where will you use your small appliances? Do you need to recharge your laptop or your phone? Where will you use your small appliances? Do you need a socket in the kitchen island, if you have one? So these are all things you really need to examine very early on during your planning and layout phase, so that you can get it right when you come on site. Because when you're on site, you'll have all your builders and your tradespeople asking you lots and lots of questions and if you're deciding at that stage where you want your sockets, you will not be making the right decisions, because perhaps you don't have your floor plan with you, perhaps you're feeling a bit stressed and stressed with so many people asking you for so many decisions and you don't have time to actually sit down and think about it at that stage.

Tash South:

So you're making rushed decisions, whereas you should really think about this stuff right at the start of your renovation process, right at the planning stage, when you're when you're doing your layout plans and you're deciding where your furniture should go and how you will use your spaces. That's when you decide where your lighting will go, where your sockets will go and how you want your lighting to work, which circuits you want which lights on. So really it's that early that you need to start thinking about these things so that when you move in you're not disappointed and you're not finding that things aren't where you want them to be or where they should have been. You've also got to think really carefully about your lighting placement, especially if it's for things that can't be moved. So let's say you're having a kitchen island installed but your lighting's off centre if you're having some beautiful pendants above it. So all of these things need really careful planning, thought, measuring, and again you have to go back to layout stage and experimenting with your own layouts to figure out where you want these things to be so that they're in the right place when you move into your finished home, because you want it to be exciting. I mean, you've spent all of this time planning, going through the build, spending all of that money, and it can be really disappointing for people when things aren't quite right when they move into their homes.

Tash South:

And then, moving on to sightlines, I feel sightlines are so important in a home. So a sight line is being able to see through rooms, so through doorways, from one room to another, and sometimes from one room to the outdoors, so that just gives the feeling of spaciousness. If you can see from your front door all the way through the home through glazing and into the back garden, that just does something to the brain, where it makes it feel so much more welcoming, so much more light and so much more spacious. So really think about your sight lines, what you want to see when you're in one room and you're looking into another, how you want that to feel. Do you want it to feel cosy? Do you want it to feel open and light? So really carefully think about what you'll be looking at. That's essentially what it comes down to what you'll be looking at when you're in a certain point in the home. What are you looking at when you're sitting on the sofa? What will you be looking at when you're laying in your bathtub? So really think carefully about the sight lines and then that will then help you lay out and position your items, whether it be your kitchen, your sanitary ware or your furniture.

Tash South:

And then, moving on to number two, we're talking storage again, and I know I talk about storage a lot and I find it is because it's one of these things that people really regret definitely is a mistake they don't know they're making until it's too late if they haven't planned for it properly. So storage is one of the most commonly underplanned elements of a renovation, and it's usually not about how much space you have, but it's about how well you use it and how well you plan for what you have. So it's all about taking stock of everything you want to store and then making sure that there's enough space for all of your items that you want to keep into your new home. Things that I hear all the time are not enough kitchen storage, nowhere to hide the vacuum cleaner or the cleaning products, the wardrobes aren't being enough for all the clothes, or the internals of the wardrobes aren't planned properly enough. Too much hanging space, not enough drawers, or too many drawers, not enough hanging space, that kind of thing. So really think about what you have and what you need to store, and that is really going to help you plan your storage properly. Just do an honest inventory of what you need to store and then think about all of the clever ways that you can accommodate for those into your storage in your home and, if you have the budget, custom joinery can be a game changer. If it's planned well from the start, you can literally have custom joinery made to fit everything that you need to store, as long as you know what to store, as long as you have that inventory, and then, moving on to number three, forgetting to think about transitions. So this is not such an obvious one, and probably that's why people don't know they're making this mistake.

Tash South:

But I think one of the most overlooked aspects of renovation planning is how spaces connect and flow together. And again, this always goes back to that planning stage, back to the floor plan stage that I'm always talking about is to really examine your life, how you use your home and those who live with you use the home, and then from there you can plan your layout to make sure that whatever is going to be built is going to work for you and you're going to be able to use it the way you want to use it and you want to get from one room to the next quite easily, because that's really what transitions are about. It's the flow. It's a flow between the rooms, from one room to another. So don't just think about how one room serves in isolation. Think about the connection to the other rooms around it connected to it. How do they flow together? And then also visually, do the doorways align? Do you want the same flooring throughout? The same flooring throughout adjoining spaces is usually, I feel, quite a lovely thing because it gives the sense of it flowing. It gives that sense of spaciousness, it makes it feel larger if you have the same flooring throughout. So there are benefits of using the same flooring throughout and then accounting for that transition and that flow, because you don't want to create a beautiful space that then completely gets cut off by poor access or awkward placement or a bad transition from one room to another. So really think about how the layout flows, where the doorways are, how they align, and then the sight lines kind of come into this as well, so how you see and you move from one space into another.

Tash South:

And then moving on to number four. So number four I've got as door placement and door openings. So this can be a tricky one. Actually, on this one, bifold doors come up a lot. So bifold doors are. I think they're a bit Marmite. Some people love them, some people hate them.

Tash South:

I have huge bifold doors in my kitchen. I actually love them, but I think it works with my space and I just think you've got to think about your space. How big is it? How wide are the doors you want to have installed? Where do they open? So, where do the doors stack? Because I find that is a huge regret for some people is that they really really wanted bifold doors, but they didn't think about the furniture placement that would be blocking the doors, or they didn't think about whether they would actually fully open the doors that much at all, and perhaps where the doors open or where the doors stack is in the completely wrong place. Where, let's say, on a summer's day, you've got the doors completely open but the doors are perhaps stacking not against a wall but rather into the middle of the patio, then of course they're going to get into the way and cause a frustration. So you have to think really, really carefully of how you're going to use the space inside and outside before you decide if you want your bifold doors to open to the left or to the right. Where they're going to stack, are they going to be in the way when they either partially opened or fully opened? So think really carefully when you're thinking about doors, both the placement and how they will swing open or shut or how they fold open or shut into and outside of the room. Standard width internal doors are a little easier to deal with. They can always be changed. If they're swinging the wrong way, you can always change the hinges or adjust them. But when it comes to those kind of big ticket external glazed doors, think really carefully about the placement, the style of doors you want and how they will open, where they will stack.

Tash South:

And then, lastly, number five, I just quickly wanted to talk to you about trends. Well, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with trends and I think trends are amazing, but also they are what they are. They are trends and they will come and they will go, and the trends now for interiors are changing almost as quickly as fashion trends. But of course, you're not redoing your home every year or twice a year to follow the trends. So just just be aware when you're looking at something that is a trend, when you're looking at magazines or online on pinterest and you're specifically looking at articles or images that are trend focused, be very aware when making your decisions in terms of the interior for your home, especially on the materials that will be quite difficult to change down the line. So things like tiling, flooring and so on, if you're choosing trendy materials for tiling, that is not a cheap and easy fix to change down the line when you get tired of that trend and you like a change.

Tash South:

So I always say be really aware of the trends and I'll, and always if it's fair enough, if you really really love something that's come out as a trend and you absolutely love it and it resonates with you and you feel like you can live with it for a long time, it's your home, and if that's kind of part of your home and your personality and you want to use that in your home, it's your home. Go for it. You know everyone's home should express who they are. But what I'm saying here is just be hyper aware of trends and what you're choosing.

Tash South:

I remember a while ago when there was this huge trend for copper materials, so kind of the, the pinkish metallic finish, and it was everywhere and I recall at the time on Instagram, people were using it on their backsplashes, on their kitchen islands, on their taps, and although I actually quite like the colour and I like the feeling and I did want to include it in my home, I just decided on one lamp that could easily be changed or removed if I wanted to down the line, but I do know that now, whenever I see that copper in anyone's home, it just looks like it hasn't dated.

Tash South:

Well, so just be, be super aware of what the trends are at the time, at the time that you're choosing your finishes, choosing your decoration and your flooring and your tiles, and just kind of take a step back for a minute, consider your decisions carefully and really think about whether you're still going to like that in five to ten years time before making your decision. So those are my feelings on trends, everybody. And that really nicely brings me to the end of this episode. And as always, if I don't say it enough, the renovation mistakes you don't know you're making can mostly be avoided by planning well at the start. So happy planning. I hope this episode was useful and I so look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Everybody, it's bye for now.