When you think about your home, what doesn’t work as well as it could for your family today – what causes frustration, or leaves you thinking,’What if…?’
Maybe you’re stuck sharing a single bathroom with your teens, or can’t have two people work comfortably in the kitchen at one time. Perhaps you need to adapt that unfinished basement as a private space for your university-age kids.
No matter what your “pain points” are with your home, getting to the root of them is key to any successful renovation, says Blaise McDonald, from MAC Renovations. And in fact, sometimes the perceived problem is simply a symptom for another issue.
“People come to us when they’re in transition in life and something about their house is not working, but they don’t always know what the issue is,” McDonald explains.
After all, no one wants the disruption and cost of a renovation, but it becomes necessary when a space no longer works – or the frustration of it pushes it to the top of our to-do list.
While the age of the homes and demographics make every community different, here in Victoria, renovations typically fall into three categories: modernizing; space; and safety or health. Often, you’ll see overlaps between the categories.
- Modernizing – With many Victoria homes 60 to 100+ years old, it’s no wonder that modernizing for both appearance and function is tops on the list. Perhaps the kids are older and it’s time to invest in the new kitchen you’ve dreamed of. Or you’re tired of trying to embrace the “retro” feel of that 1960s bathroom.
- Opening up – Many older Victoria homes are compartmentalized into smaller, stand-alone spaces that don’t work for today’s families – a kitchen closed off from the family room, for example, or a formal dining room that largely goes unused. Maybe your pain point is the lack of space for the kids to shed their sports gear, or that one bathroom needs to serve four family members and guests.
- Safety – That closed-off kitchen we talked about above? It may also make it difficult to keep an eye on kids playing outside. Or, maybe you want a safe, inviting space for your aging parents to live closer, and the existing cold, dark basement isn’t it. It also pays to consider safety up front, when renovating for other reasons. While that new shower may fall under the “modernizing” category, it will cost much less to build in the safety features you may need down the road, rather than re-doing the job in 15 years.
If any of these scenarios ring true for you, you may be experiencing some of your own “pain points,” but it’s essential to do the work up front to ensure the end result solves the root cause of the problem.
Opening the kitchen to the living room may make the space more open, for example, but not improve sight-lines to the yard, if that was a main concern.
“That’s the point of the design-build process, to find out what those needs really are,” McDonald says. “Renovations aren’t cheap, and you don’t want to alleviate one challenge, only to create another one.
“We find out exactly what’s not working with the home so we can design a solution to that problem.”
To explore the possibilities for your home, visit MAC Renovations online today at macreno.com or call