Home Addition Preparation

So the decision has been made to add an addition to your house. You have finally arranged to meet with a designer or an architect and already scheduled a contractor(s) to come out and do the work. In fact, the work is scheduled to be done in a week and you are left wondering what else you can do to expedite the work and prepare for their arrival. To help you along your way, we have prepared this article that includes tips and helpful information on how to prepare for a new home addition.

Get Your Yard Ready: Certain additions will expand into your backyard and require you to prepare your yard for the new member of your house. Contractors will greatly appreciate it if you do a few things before they arrive. For starters, make sure that you remove anything mobile from your yard such as grills, water hoses, toys, cars, and outdoor furniture. Depending on what your landscaping is like near the area where the addition will expand onto, you may wish to remove any plants, trees and shrubs that might get in the way. Lastly, but still very importantly, you will want to have all your utility lines marked. Be sure to call your cable, gas, and Water Company and have them mark the lines on the ground.

Protecting Property: When adding an addition on to your home, there will be some form of debris created from the construction. Before the work begins, it is in your best interest to protect your exciting floors, walls, and furniture. It is a smart practice to buy some rolls of plastic sheeting and hang them from the floor to the ceiling. This will block the dust from entering into your home, but be sure not to put these sheets in the way of the contractors. Furthermore, you should move all the furniture out of the area that will be worked on. You will appreciate having your property protected and the contractors will appreciate not having to worry about damaging something as they work.

Get Into The Right Mind Set: This part of the preparation is sometimes hard to swing, but if you can at all prepare yourself for the possibility of delays and unexpected problems please do so. The truth is that several things can happen that may throw your completion date off track. For example, a worker may get injured or become sick and this will affect the whole crew and the amount of work that they can get done at any given time. Another example is if your remodel or addition project gets scheduled during the holidays or during bad weather. Such events can stop construction for a while, but it is completely normal and should not be worried about. Try your best to stay calm and live normally. Just keep it in the back of your mind that you have a contract, that you are protected, and that the project will be finished eventually.

In addition to preparing for possible delays and problems, you should also prepare yourself for a messy home. During the time frame in which your house is under construction, you are going to have to deal with an incomplete house and a major mess. Some people enjoy living in a mess and others don’t. For those of you that go crazy thinking about a pig sty in your house, try to remember that the mess is only temporary and the end result will be well worth the frustration.

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