A&A’s Top 10 Renovation Tips

Our collective 20 years of experience on home renovation projects have taught us these things….

Give yourself a healthy contingency budget (15% at least).
Don’t use all your money on concrete & steel at the start of the project. Save money for your joinery, special finishes and furniture. Better to do a smaller project on a higher quality for optimum satisfaction.
Spend money and time on the things you touch in the house - light switches, door handles, and knobs.
Floors are worth investing in. They are hard to change and contribute alot to the atmosphere of a space.
Make sure you check saniware products for the materiality running the whole way through. Is the metal going to rust? Is there any plastic in the product? If you can, better to spend on a quality product that will last a long time and avoid you having to rip out your bathroom and re-do the tiles. Be careful on buying cheaper products that look trendy but are likely to break quickly.
Keep your lighting temperature the same colour! We like 2700 k - it is warm and friendly.
Make sure you match your dimmer driver to your light bulbs - otherwise it can flash in annoying ways.
Always put a waterproof layer (like wedi board) behind bathroom tiles as grout layers fail in time.
Make sure you stain test & heat test your kitchen worktop before investing and ask your manufacturer about after care - very annoying having a worktop that stains/marks from food products like lemon, jelly and tea or rusty baking trays!
We think bathrooms should always have two lighting circuits - a bright one for optimum light conditions (for doing makeup etc) and a cosy wall light circuit for relaxing baths etc.
Good decorating takes time and HIGH QUALITY will cost a bit. Careful preparation, brush selection, product matching and primer coats are all paramount to a quality finish. Rushed jobs can lead to bubbles and cracks in the final paint quality. We always recommend low VOC products too.