Sagar Mandan
Whether you need extra space at home or you just want to give your house a fresh look after all the years, adding home extensions will add value to your home.
But before proceeding with building your home extensions, here are 10 factors that you should first consider:
1. Determine if You Would Need Planning Permissions
Even if you’re already thrilled to start the building work of your home extension, there’s still one important thing that you should consider. You should verify if you have the correct planning permission or if you need one.
While there are property alterations that can proceed without planning permissions, you should make sure that you don’t need one for your home extension. Otherwise, the building work may have to halt for this specific reason.
To be sure about this matter, you may ask your architect or consult this to a local planning officer.
2. Make Sure There’s Enough Access to Your House
Even if you completely lay out a design for your home extension, home builders may have difficulty in pushing it through if you have restricted access on your home. The available access to your home may affect their work as they progress in building the home extension.
To make things easier for you and the home builders, consider all the access needed in carrying out the building work. Will it be possible for all the building materials to pass through the front door? If not, is there an alternative route so building materials can pass through? Is there going to have enough parking for the home builders?
3. Check the Conditions of Your Home’s Surroundings
Before proceeding to start the building work of your home extension, another thing you should consider checking is the conditions of your home surroundings. It’s vital to check this so you can spot any problems before it may arise.
Soil conditions, surrounding trees, and any history of flooding may be a conflict for a home extension so it’s best to determine if there are conditions like this on your home surrounding before proceeding.
4. Only Trust Reliable Builders
If you’re considering to do a home extension yourself thinking that you may save money from architect’s fees, it may actually cost you more if you go wrong in the middle of the home building process.
Home extensions are a big project where you’ll need the help of professionals. Only trust reliable home builders like Toowoomba Builders. Their reliable team of building professionals is passionate about design and the home construction world. They are known for providing high-quality homes throughout the local community of Toowoomba.
5. Come up with a Design that Matches Well with Your Home
If you want your home extension to be a success, one thing that you need to do is make sure that the home extension will match well with the look of your existing home.
Decide whether the look of the home extension will either contrast or complement the existing look of your home. Once you’ve made a choice, you should also be careful with the materials that you’ll use. Figure out what would match well with the look of your home.
6. Decide or Determine the Best Part of Your Home to Extend
Before deciding the best part of your home to extend, ask yourself, what would be the purpose of the home extension? Are you going to use it to have an additional bedroom, an attic, or an office?
Depending on the purpose of your home extension, it will be easier to consider which part of your home you should extend. A loft conversion is getting popular nowadays but if you’re only looking to gain extra space, you could go for a single or double story extension.
Talking to an architect may help you decide on what’s best for your home.
7. Consider Your Neighbors
After considering the important elements of your home extension, you should consider informing your neighbors that you’re planning on having a home extension. By doing this, your neighbors can adjust or won’t be surprised by the home building once it’s started.
8. Make sure you have the Right Budget
In planning a home extension project, your budget is an important consideration. This will help you control your spend while the project is progressing.
Make sure to allocate a budget for architect’s fees, costs of the planning application, and etc. Once you have set your budget stick to it. Following your allotted budget will prevent you from spending more than the actual things that you need for your project.
9. Plan about How to Cope Up during the Building Work
While the building work is in progress, you should plan out where you and your family can stay. If you decide to stay at home, just be prepared for the days where you’ll have no power or water to use. Buy dust sheets, move some of your things on the storage, and be prepared to dine out every now and then.
10. Don’t Forget the Building Certificates
After the building work is finished, there’s one last thing that you should never forget. Remember to ask your home builder or contractor for all the needed certifications, such as building control certificates and electrical and gas-safe certification. If you forget all these important certifications, it’ll not be easy to sell your property in the future if you ever thought about selling it.
Adding value to your home could be thrilling once it’s finished. But before proceeding, you should carefully plan out and consider all the factors discussed here. This will help prevent issues once the home building is started.
