Timing is critical for planning for a Spring or Summer Home Renovation.
Many homeowners prefer to do home renovation work during warmer weather months. This makes sense when your doors will be open while materials are brought in and out and while workers move back and forth to cut materials outside.
With this timing in mind people believe that thinking about details and plans in January or February is unnecessary and that early spring is soon enough to begin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Late January and February are a great time to plan for a late Spring or Summer Home Renovation.
Realistic Timing to Expect For Planning :
The planning and pricing phase takes homeowners much longer than they anticipate. As a general rule allow 5-7 weeks for planning if you make decisions quickly and have time available to research/look at materials and fixtures or appliances. Give yourself more time if your schedule is very busy and you do not have a lot of time for meetings and going to showrooms.
If you work with a designer we normally offer two or more solutions for preliminary space layouts. Meetings to initiate the process, gather the requirements and review preliminary possibilities and then to evolve to a final plan usually happen over a number of weeks. Once the plan is finalized sourcing and choosing great materials for the project takes a bit more time.
The sooner plans are finalized they can be used to organize selections and decision making for fixtures and materials. This is a step that is required to get accurate costing from contractors or workmen.
Some thinking time for yourself between the steps is often required to get to a final plan. It is my experience that clients enjoy the process so much more when they do not feel rushed and give themselves time to really feel their way to the most desirable vision for their home.
Realistic Timing to Expect For Getting Quotes:
Contractors need a bit of time to plan a site visit and then normally a a week and a half to two to do the necessary math to calculate time and resources costs for the work. Leading up to Spring they have multiple requests for quotes if they are experienced in business and good at what they do. The more estimates/quotes they have to work out the longer it will take to get yours done.
Very organized people will get the requests for quotes out in March and April to be sure to get the Contractor they want locked in to do the work before he/she has only limited time available during the warm weather months.
I can not stress enough how January, February and March are excellent months to be planning a home renovation to happen later in the year.