planning your perfect home renovation)

Renovation can be awful. It's not like the television shows - it's dirtier, harder and more stressful than any close-up can capture. It doesn't matter if you live in an apartment and need to repaint the lounge room or if you live in a harbourside mansion and need to rebuild the entire house, you can just about guarantee that things you haven't anticipated will go wrong, the budget will blow out and you'll want to shout at someone. But help is at hand.

Planning Your Perfect Home Renovation is your blueprint to a stress-free, well-planned and well-budgeted renovation that improves the value of your home. It helps you to plan a renovation to suit your available time, experience and money. It will also:

* Introduce you to the three R's: repairs, refurbishment and rebuilding

* Provide examples of room-by-room mission statements for easy planning

* Show you how to work out cost estimates and schedules

* Help you to build good relationships with builders and tradespeople

* Show you what happened in three real renovations: in a unit, a brick-veneer house and a semi

* Give you lots of money-saving and design tips

* Include helpful and practical diagrams, floor plans and tables

Planning Your Perfect Home Renovation is a complete how-to of assessing all your renovation needs. If you're thinking about improving your home (and want to survive the experience), you need this book.

In the middle of her second renovation, Alex May is the perfect person to write this book. She is a freelance writer who specialises in property and design. She writes property and design stories for The Sydney Morning Herald's Domain section and also has a column in The Sun Herald called Worth a Look.

• Chapter 1 Introduction to renovating
• Chapter 2 The buck starts here
• Chapter 3 The real value of renovating
• Chapter 4 Your heart's desire: working out what you want
• Chapter 5 Plans, estimates and schedules
• Chapter 6 Repairs and maintenance: make it a mantra
• Chapter 7 Refurbishing
• Chapter 8 Rebuilding
• Chapter 9 Kitchens
• Chapter 10 Bathrooms
• Chapter 11 Living and sleeping areas
• Chapter 12 Dealing with builders and trades
• Chapter 13 Sarah and Tim renovate a unit
• Chapter 14 Tom and Belinda renovate a brick-veneer house
• Chapter 15 Roy and Camille renovate a semi
• Chapter 16 The final word on planning
• A glossary
• Handy websites  

Planning Your Perfect Home Renovation is a blueprint to a stress-free, well-planned and well-budgeted renovation that improves the value of your home. It helps you to plan a renovation to suit your available time, experience and money. It also:

• introduces you to the three Rs: repair, refurbish and rebuild
• provides room-by-room mission statements for easy planning
• shows you how to work out cost estimates and schedule trades
• helps build good relationships with builders and tradespeople
• shows what happened in three real renovations: in a unit, a house and a semi
• offers loads of money-saving and design tips
• includes practical and helpful diagrams, floor plans and tables.

Planning Your Perfect Renovation: What’s In It?

chapter by chapter...

Chapter One: Introduction to Renovation

• The three Rs of renovation
• Renovating rigmarole
• Getting started - the floorplan

Chapter Two: The Buck Starts Here

• Don't wreck your property value with renovation
• The real costs of renovation
• Working out what you can afford
• How to work out costs
• Guesstimating
• Step-by-step renovation budgeting
• Cutting renovation costs

Chapter Three: The Real Value Of Renovating

• Property values: what the experts say
• What determines property values
• So how do I work out the value of renovating?
• Overcapitalising

Chapter Four: Your Heart's Desire: Working Out What You Want

• What other people want
• Retaining property values
• Renovating to your desires - creating a room-by-room mission statement
• Does your budget match your desires

Chapter Five: Plans, Estimates and Schedules

• Estimating Costs
• The time scheduler

Chapter Six: Repairs and Maintenance: Make It A Mantra

• Scrub-up maintenance
• Regular maintenance
• Chapter Seven: Refurbishing
• The rules of refurb
• The most valuable rooms to refurbish
• Refining your refurbishment plan

Chapter Eight: Rebuilding

• Do the rebuild test
• Rebuilding as alterations
• Demolishing to rebuild
• Relationships with builders and professionals
• The pre-construction and design stages
• Approvals and building regulations
• Navigating the planning approval process
• Chapter Nine: Kitchens
• Kitchen components
• Kitchen design - the work triangle
• How to save money on kitchens
• The sequence of renovating a kitchen
• Kitchen planning template

Chapter Ten: Bathrooms

• What you want in your bathroom
• Pampering bathrooms
• Bathroom components
• The sequence of renovating a bathroom
• Bathroom planning template
• Chapter Eleven: Living and Sleeping Areas
• A living space checklist
• Sleeping space checklist
• Lighting Up
• Getting wired
• On the floor
• Window coverings
• Heating up and cooling down
• Painting - the finishing touch

Chapter Twelve: Dealing With Builders and Trades

• The subcontracting life
• Why changing your mind costs money
• The benefits of trust
• What's the difference between a builder and a tradesperson?
• Writing a specification or brief
• Getting quotes
• Working with a subcontractor
• Contracts
• When things go wrong
• Types of tradespeople and what they do

Chapter Thirteen: Sarah and Tim Renovate a Unit

• A real case study

Chapter Fourteen: Tom and Belinda Renovate a Brick Veneer House

• A real case study

Chapter Fifteen: Roy and Camille Renovate a Semi

• A real case study

Chapter Sixteen: The Final Word On Planning