How to split your renovation into stages
- Gabrielle Glasson
- Jun 29
- 3 min read
With interest rates straining families' renovation budgets across Australia, you may be considering reducing the scope of your renovation and tackling it in stages. There are some great benefits of taking this phased approach to your renovation that you can read about in our recent blog post here.
If you've decided that a phased approach to your renovation is going to work best for you, here's some important considerations to ensure you achieve the best outcome for your investment.
1. Create a final plan for your whole renovation so you know what you're working towards at each stage.
We can help you with this process, and you also may find it best to engage a Building Designer or Architect to ensure you maximise the potential of your home.
2. Prioritise your pain points with your current home and work out your budget.
This will help you know which areas to invest in first to make the biggest difference to your lifestyle. It's important to engage your builder in this process as there will be more practical and cost efficient ways to stage your renovation.
There are a couple of ways to approach the way you prioritise and order your stages:
Go for the most cost-effective vanity changes first to more quickly create some spaces you can love within your home. That may be a master suite and ensuite, some custom storage cabinetry by the front door, or some beautiful cladding and cabinetry in a living room for some easy ways to glam up your home.
Go for the spaces that you use the most that will make the biggest difference to your lifestyle. E.g. creating a beautiful and practical outdoor living area with a deck / patio and outdoor kitchen can completely transform the way you live in and enjoy your home, particularly through the summer months.
Approach according to the most economical and practical way to phase the build. In other words, leave it to us to let you know the best place to start!
You'll need to weigh up the best value areas of your home to renovate, vs the benefit you get from those spaces. For example a kitchen is generally the most utilised area of your home and is therefore often a priority to renovate, however it is also one of the more expensive areas to renovate. You may find your budget stretches much further if you prioritise other areas of your home first.
Our Kirrawee I clients discovered they could renovate their whole home by focusing on minor structural changes and cosmetic improvements as well as creating a stunning new outdoor space for less than the cost of their planned kitchen renovation. They achieved much better value in terms of lifestyle improvement by leaving the kitchen for a later stage.
3. Speak to us about your renovation plan so we can help you
We will help you assess your full renovation vision and work out the best way to group your priorities into phases to achieve the best improvement to your lifestyle for your investment. There are many practical considerations when making structural changes to your home that we will factor in to our recommendations.
4. Ensure you have a vision for the aesthetic of your home, so each phase connects cohesively.
Start with a vision board of the look and feel you'd like to create for your home.
When approaching your renovation one area at a time, the risk is that after several years you end up with a home that looks piecemeal and lacks cohesion. As trends slightly shift, you can feel pulled in slightly different directions as you design each space, which risks a finished result that doesn't work as well as it could.
There is a very easy way to avoid this risk though, and that is to create a vision board for your whole home. This will include key inspiration images collated into a single page that give a cohesively styled look and feel for each space. In future as you're feeling drawn to slightly different styles, coming back to your vision board will ensure you make design choices that result in a beautifully cohesive look where future stages match earlier stages of your renovation.
