10 ways to keep your renovation stress-free

A renovation can be an exciting way to fix all the frustrations in your home, without the stress and expense of moving. “I would always advise reassessing the space you do have, rather than moving,” the interior designer Rita Konig says. “If you can reconfigure a layout or extend your property, then you can channel the money you would have spent on moving house into creating a bigger renovation budget.”

These days, more of us are choosing to renovate, rather than move. Konig herself has done it twice in the same property. A couple of years after she bought her flat in a period apartment block, she was married with a baby, so she bought the next-door flat and remodelled the space. This month she has just completed another major, two-year renovation, again adding another flat, as well as a ground-floor extension. “I just turned 50, I got divorced and I didn’t want to leave my home, but I realised that it wasn’t serving me in the way I needed it to,” she says. “It was the perfect time to do it.”

With building and material costs still high, one way to save money is to plan and manage the renovation yourself. This can be daunting, even on a small job. But Konig has just released an online video course with Create Academy to help along the way, with remarkably detailed advice across 10 hours of lessons.

“I’ve always believed that people can manage a renovation themselves, and yet I’m also so keenly aware of the pitfalls,” she says, “so I wanted to offer practical advice to remove the roadblocks that I’ve seen happen, and make it quite a liberating process.”

Here are her 10 top tips to ensure your renovation runs as smoothly as possible.

Ask how your house can serve you

Everyone, Konig believes, should look around their home and question how well it works for its occupants. “Houses need to evolve all the time,” she says. “You often see empty-nesters with bedrooms preserved just as they always were, but there’s this huge amount of real estate that could be serving them better.”

This thinking stage is “a bit like a puzzle,” Konig says. “You can rethink what rooms do, make use of tiny bits of space, like hallways between rooms or the space under the stairs, and create magic.”

Get out a pencil and tracing paper

Konig recommends getting out floor plans, a roll of tracing paper, and sketching different possibilities. “Every time an architect puts pen to paper, it costs money, so it’s a good idea to try initial ideas out yourself,” she says.

This is the time to think about knocking out walls and moving kitchens and bathrooms. In one countryside house, Konig redecorated, “the guest bedrooms all had en-suite bathrooms, which I don’t always like because it reduces the space in the bedroom, and who, in the middle of the night, wants their head near the loo?” She changed the layout to allow vestibule areas onto shared bathrooms, “so there is an air pocket between the bedroom and the bathroom, and more space for furniture such as more generous bedside tables.”

When you have your ideas solidified, check them with an architect or structural engineer.  “You can’t always take every wall out and leave the house still standing,” she warns.

Create digital mood boards

Gathering fabric and wallpaper swatches is important to get a feel for the materials, but once you’ve decided, Konig recommends digitising your mood boards. “They act as a visual reminder of what has been decided for a room, as well as what still needs to be chosen,” she says.

If you use digital boards, you won’t have to worry about losing your swatches, and you can email them to contractors, or indeed partners. “Husbands can be tougher to convince than clients,” she says, “as I found out when I was decorating North Farm, my (now ex) husband’s house in Durham, where I planned a quite bold green sitting room, and wanted to show him the vision. Digital mood boards really help to show the direction you’re going in and how a room will pull together.”

Create schedule documents

Timings are key to the smooth running of a renovation. “An installation should be staggered and structured, so that things are brought in as and when they are needed,” says Konig. “You don’t want to overwhelm your site by unloading everything all at once.”

For that, you need to create “schedule documents” – detailed spreadsheets with lines for the task, products and notes (such as instructions to wallpaper the insides of the window casements, as in this Notting Hill property), along with delivery and completion dates.

Be militant with the budget

To reduce financial anxiety, you need to stick to the budget. Even Konig, who has orchestrated countless large-scale projects, admits to feeling overwhelmed when the quotes came back for her own home. “I felt really anxious about the money; then I started stripping out certain costs.” She recommends requesting a detailed, line-by-line breakdown of the quote. “It means you can scrap expensive things – for instance, I realised I had included too much joinery – and also spot anything that’s missing. There are lots of things you can do to tweak your design at this stage.”

Along with a contingency pot, “to make any adjustments that may arise during installation”, give yourself a furnishing budget. “I had enough in the pot when I did up North Farm to go shopping, and that makes it a joy. It’s not joyful if you’ve run out of money but still need to furnish your new space.”

Don’t be afraid to make changes 

Konig admits that even she has felt “slightly afraid of losing face in front of a team of builders or architects” when she wanted to make changes. “But the whole project is so expensive, you just have to change it if it doesn’t feel right, especially at the beginning.”

She advises not getting rushed into making decisions. “You have to feel comfortable that you can pay the bills, otherwise it’s not fun.”

She says that even midway through the installation, you should speak up if something really feels wrong. “But sticking to a budget can help you not make too many changes, and that’s liberating too. I’ve seen people tie themselves in knots going back and forth.”

Build time into the schedule

Timing, in a renovation, is everything. Before signing off on a project, “I always write into the contract that installation cannot happen in August or pre-Christmas; these are times when people are often on holiday or off work with their families, which can make the process much more complicated,” says Konig.

She also advises being very clear from the outset about how long you will need to review documents – especially if you have commitments that mean you’re not available at the drop of a hat. “It happens all the time that a drawing will land on my desk, and someone will expect you to look at it immediately,” she says.

Review all the drawings

It’s imperative to go over all the drawings “with a fine-tooth comb, and if there’s anything you’re unsure about, check again.”

Keep checking in throughout the build. After a bad experience in her London home, where the kitchen cornice was put in the wrong spot, Konig now values triple-checking. “We also tend to tell the builders, ‘If there is a detail you can’t see, please don’t guess, come back and ask.’ Don’t let them guess.”

Accept that mistakes will happen

It’s important to accept that mistakes will happen, but, Konig says, “often these errors can turn into happy surprises if you stay calm and allow them to play out.”

In her London home, the staircase had to be modified because it was built slightly wrong. “We had to change the design to make it fit, and actually it’s better than it would have been.”

She advises that often, by the time you get to the end of the build and can see the big picture, many small details that might have bothered you do not matter. “At North Farm, I was insistent that all the floor levels would be the same; when we moved in, there was a small ridge between the hall and the kitchen. It was annoying for the first two weeks -- then we never noticed it again.”

Keep morale high

“You want to keep morale high on-site, and avoid creating any ill feeling if possible,” Konig says. “A renovation project is all about teamwork, and the best results are achieved when everyone is happy and on the same page.”

This applies to you too. “It can be easy to succumb to nerves at any point but try to sweep away this anxiety as best you can. If there are any issues still unresolved at the end of the process, you can approach them calmly and trust that everything will be sorted.”

End credit: Rita Konig’s new online video course, ’The Advanced Guide to Interior Design’ is now available at createacademy.com at £147 for lifetime access. Telegraph readers can get a special 20 per cent discount by using the code TELE20 at checkout