Order of Renovations?

Hello, I've been lurking for a long time but don't own a home so have never had a reason to post, until now!

My husband and I just put in an offer on a house that's a complete fixer upper. It's in a great location with great bones on a huge piece of property. As far as we know (fingers crossed) all the required renovations are cosmetic (pulling up carpet, kitchens bathrooms, painting etc). We live in the city right now and have never even lived in a house, so have no idea where to start. I know it's a big project and we're certainly not DIYers, so I know it will be expensive and time consuming. My questions are this:

1. Is there an order that things should be done? Of course, we will address any issues in the inspection and safety issues first, but after that, how do we approach it? For example should we knock down the walls before we do floors? Should we paint before we do floors? Should we do exterior improvements like windows before we even think about doing the inside? When do we address CAC?

2. Are there certain improvements that absolutely should be done before we move in? For example, I would assume that the painting probably needs to be done in advance because of the possibility of lead paint.

3. Is it possible to develop a "master plan" first (both for the house and landscaping) and then take on the projects as we can afford them? I don't want to decide to keep a wall up in the dining room only to discover next year that we need to expand the kitchen and should have knocked down the wall in the beginning.

4. Any general advice/recommendations?

TIA! We're so super excited!!

Re: Order of Renovations?

make a list of everything that needs to be done

then make a list of your budget (because this really dictates a lot of your projects)

then decide what you MUST do to live in the home and start there.

then the projects should go in priority order. for example if the kitchen works perfect but is just very dated, but the master bath has problems, you should do the problems first.

Just know, whatever you budget, more than likely you will go over it. there is so much behind the walls that you can't see that may or may not need to be replaced, that you can't figure every last thing out. And as you go along things that you were going to keep turn into not the best anymore and everything else is new so why not just change it it kind of gets out of control if your not careful

Re: Order of Renovations?

Thanks! I can totally see how it would get out of control, the possibilities are absolutely ENDLESS. Our list already has 25 things on it, from the necessary (replace the roof) to the "we're living in fantasy land" (install a heated gunite pool). Maybe by the time we retire we'll be halfway though!

Re: Order of Renovations?

Structure changes should go before cosmetic changes (sometimes). Using your example, knocking down a wall should be before the floor, since the flooring will have to go where the wall used to be, and you really don't want to patch brand new flooring.

Re: Order of Renovations?

i agree with making a list of the changes you want to make and then of course your budget. unless you don't have one a budget does dictate what you can or cannot do...so i would write down the projects and then an estimate of what each project would cost.

for example - when we bought our house i said i wanted to rip out the kitchen and put in all new cabinets and counters. when we went over the list of all the changes we wanted to make we realized we couldn't do it all. so we figured we could make the kitchen work without gutting it. instead we got new appliances, a new sink, added glass and hardware to the cabinets and maybe in a year we'll do granite. it saved us 10k on cabinets and honestly i like my kitchen now even though it wasn't the gut job i dreamed about.

so i would do order of importance - see if there are things you can live with or just improve on to save money.

once you know the projects you are def doing you can plan better. i would do all demo and structure work first. i would save painting for last.