RENOVATION VS DETONATION: WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU?
Are you looking at a renovation for your home? Sometimes our home is simply too small not configured for an ever growing family. Maybe the bathroom is leaking or you need a second one, or perhaps your garage door is looking a bit worse for wear. One option is to move – but if you’ve been in your place for a while, love the area, and have friends close by, renovation or a knock down/rebuild may be the answer.
There are a few things to consider before considering a renovation.
Will a Renovation be Enough for the Changes You Want?
If the layout of your house works for you and you can get the extra living area you want without having to juggle rooms around, then a renovation is probably the better option. If you are going to be demolishing walls or making changes to living areas, you may have to be living outside the house for a while.
Older Homes May Hide a Few Surprises
If your house is over 30 year old, there are a couple of areas you may want to pay close attention to when planning a renovation.
- Asbestos – the dangers of asbestos use became known in the 1950s, but it still took almost 40 years to enact a ban on its use in building across Australia following the first successful claim in Victoria in 1985. If there is asbestos anywhere in your home, it needs to be disposed of safely – and you need to take this seriously because it can affect the health of your whole family.
- Damp – older dwellings used inferior damp retarding material to prevent rising damp (where water under your house can leak in and seep up into the structure) and as the structure of a house ages, cracks in walls and deteriorating timber begin to allow penetrating damp into the house. These are quite often hidden from view – until renovation work begins to expose it.
- Old wiring – again, age is a killer for older buildings. As renovations commence, often older and unsafe electrical work are uncovered and must be attended to as part of the work. Older insulation may have perished, and sometimes older electrical cables are simply not up to their purpose. Old switches can break internally, causing a safety hazard.
- Dodgy plumbing – this is probably the most common problem area for renovators. In some very old houses, ceramic or clay piping may have been used and these can easily crack when disturbed…and when that happens, you are up for replacing entire sewerage disposal lines. Storm water and bathroom waste disposal pipes may also be made of ceramic or even asbestos.
Garage Door Safety
If your home has an old garage door, you may have a sleeping safety issue you don’t know about. With some tilt and panel doors, they are managed by a large cylindrical spring that can snap when old and corroded. This can be very hazardous a) if you are near the spring when it breaks or b) are anywhere under the door when you try to either open or shut it after the spring has broken.
Hinges and guides can also fail, causing injury.
Summary: Rebuild or Renovate?
At the end of the day, a renovation may be the answer if you don’t have much structural work to do and the estimated cost is less than building an entirely new house. There is a tipping point at which a rebuild makes more sense.
In either case, Sesame Garage Doors can assist with a replacement for your existing garage door or a new one.
