Renovation regrets – what went right, what went wrong and what we’d never do again

Content creator Lucy Kalice is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on cleaning, home decor and making the most of small spaces. See the rest of her articles here.

When my fiancé and I bought our first home, we didn’t have any intention of renovating it. We didn’t want a doer upper and we bought it because we could move straight in. No structural work necessary, just a lick of paint here and there…or so we thought. 3 years later we were undergoing huge structural works and doing a renovation because the house had subsidence.

Now it’s safe to say we went into this renovation a little unprepared, I mean they don’t teach this stuff at school so how we were meant to know what happens? But we quickly learnt that there’s a right and a wrong way to do most things. A renovation for dummies book would’ve come in handy but hey, after a lot of blood, sweat and tears, the renovation is now complete. The house looks great, but there are definitely some regrets and mistakes we made along the way.

1. We accidentally painted the outside of our house yellow

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t rule number one of decorating to colour test paint? And you’re right, it is and it’s something I already knew yet I still messed up! We had previously painted rooms so knew how important it was to colour test. How paint looks in one room might not be how it looks in another room. However something we didn’t think to do was to colour test the paint going on the outside of the house. BIG mistake…

We chose the colour Chalk White from a website picture. It looked perfect, how wrong can you go with an off white? The answer: VERY wrong! We turned up at the house one day to see the front of it was painted yellow. Let me repeat that…YELLOW. Granted yellow is my favourite colour but it wasn’t the look we were going for on the house exterior. We had to quickly call up the painters and tell them to pause the painting whilst we got a new paint.

So lesson number one, always colour test paint in the space where you want it to go.

2. We're stuck with our old radiators because we didn’t have a plan in place

Surprisingly, there is a right and wrong order to do a renovation. But being the naive first time renovation-ers that we were, we had no idea. As the renovation was coming to an end I decided I wanted to change the radiators in the kitchen.

I spoke to our plumber to get the plans in motion, only to find out that if I wanted to replace the kitchen radiators, they’d have to take the newly laid floor up. So whilst it was entirely possible, it meant spending more time and more importantly, more money which we didn’t want to do.

If we had had a 'renovation for dummies' book, I’d have known that it’s more practical to change the radiators before any floor is laid. So this is my biggest regret and if I was doing another renovation I’d make sure I did everything in the most seamless order.

3. We turned a drab and dreary bathroom into our dream speace

I’m ending on a high with this one! Our bathroom renovation is one room that I’m very proud of. We turned our tiny 1.8m x 1.8m space into a room that looks and feels double the size. The old bathroom wasn’t to our taste and it didn’t work for us. It was grey, clunky and dated. We weren’t extending the bathroom, but we knew we had to make it feel bigger and update it. So we spent hours and hours researching and found some little tricks to do just that.

We swapped from a half-tiled bathroom for a floor-to-ceiling tiled bathroom and used big tiles replacing the small tiles that were already fitted. Big tiles give the illusion of a bigger room. We also added in a wall hanging sink and replaced the bathroom door to a sliding door. It’s made the bathroom much more modern and practical. We couldn’t be happier!

What are your renovation regrets?