This is a detailed analysis of the kinds of improvements performed when it comes to home renovation projects. What you can do is ask professionals to visit your house and take a look around to give you an estimate on what would be the final amount of the renovation. This would be able to help you plan the whole home improvement project with much enthusiasm and dedication.
Including electrical, plumbing, and water heaters as "home improvement" is misleading. This list should be divided along the lines of mandatory changes vs optional ones. It's the difference between heart surgery and breast implants.
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Items like wiring and plumbing should be in a separate category, as these updates are often matters of legal compliance to safety standards. We have an AC system that was « green » when our condo was built 16 years ago but is now illegal thanks to a new municipal law.
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Along with building code changes there can be other mandates. I discovered that my insurance company would limit coverage on older roofs - the old one was still"working" but needed to be replaced.
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No mention of plaster & painting, few improvements are as powerful as fresh paint. We bought at a deep discount an apartment that hadn't been plastered/ painted for 30 years, the guy lived there for 53 years. My wife and I could see the good bones of the place and knew all ceilings and walls would be treated.
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"Ceiling tiles"? You mean, acoustic tiles?
Whenever I surf Realtor.com and see an old house with ceiling tiles, I almost audibly say, "Oh, no! What did they do?" An uglier home improvement is hard to imagine.
And paneling? Look, if paneling isn't already a hundred years old, it shouldn't happen at all.
My "home improvements" have been mostly mechanical: replacing sagging vinyl replacement window with wooden Marvins, replacing the old boiler, gut-renovating a foul bathroom that, when I bought the house, gave me the willies just to look at, let alone shower in, making sure roofs didn't leak, and so on.
Those improvements that weren't mechanical but cosmetic were attempts to bring the house back to its 1860s aesthetics. Old picture molding found on one side of a dressing room suggested picture molding should be elsewhere too; ditto chair rails. Ditto kitchen-cabinet doors, now back to Shaker style, like an old cabinet door found up in the attic.
Of course if one's house was built in the 1960s, all bets are off. But please, let's eschew acoustic tiles and Home Depot-style paneling. Even if one is over 65 years old.
Like me.
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@B. Paneling is popular again when used strategically in updated finishes and limited areas. Deal with it.
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But I do not have to deal with it, you see.
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We're in that group of under 65 that spent on improvements between 2010-2018, and the costs added up, but it made our home very livable and easy to sell this summer.
Win-win all around.
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