Preparing Your New Home for Moving In: An Expert’s Guide

Getting the keys to your new home is going to be an exciting time. But it’s good to consider whether you should make your moving in date a time after the date you get the keys. Why would you do this though? Well, you will no doubt have had a thorough survey of the property conducted before you finalizing the purchase, and this will have given you an indication of the state of the property and what work may need to be done to it. So if you delay moving in then it will allow you to get any work and modifications done before your things are moved in and you have to work around them.

The downside to this approach is that you will have to arrange to have somewhere to stay while this is going on and either delay moving out of your previous accommodation, which may not be possible or renting some temporary place. Both of these options have a cost attached to them.

So you know everything that you need to have done or want to have done. You will also have a budget that you can afford to spend after you have provided the deposit required to obtain your mortgage. Therefore it makes sense to try and figure out what work needs to be prioritized and what budget you can allocate to each area of work. There are two different criteria to consider then, priority and cost. So your top priority may be expensive but items 2,3 and 4 may be less so, giving the conundrum of whether to fulfill your single top priority or a combination of the other works. The choice may be simple if the top of the list item is an essential repair.

Firstly you need to get quotes for any work to be done. Most reputable contractors will give free estimates or quotes, and it’s important to know the difference between these two terms. A quote is a set price for a job and be sure to have it in writing and ask that the quote is itemized so that you have a record of what is promised.

An estimate is quite different from a quote, it’s just what it says an estimate of what the work should cost as a best guess. You are essentially taking a bit of a gamble if you go with an estimate as the cost can go up considerably if things take longer or problems emerge and so it may seem like a good deal if the cheapest option is an estimate, but be wary. Get a few different quotes anyway to compare them.

Moving furniture is always a pain in the behind, so we want to limit the number of times we need to do this and if we allow work to start after moving in then we are going to be doing a huge amount of this. Then as well as having the burden of moving furniture around we also have to decide where to put it.

So if we are re-carpeting, for example, we can only do one room at a time and need to double up furniture in another room which effectively takes two rooms out of action for this time, and not many of us have that many rooms to spare, do we? Also, if any of our work is to take care of bug or insect infestations then we will want to have this taken care of before we move our stuff in as if it gets into the furniture then we need to look at bed bug exterminator and bed bug treatment options available to us.

When moving into a new house it’s the perfect opportunity to decorate it in the way you want it to look. It’s essentially a blank canvas at this point, especially if it’s a newly built property, but even if it’s not you have a good opportunity to start afresh.

There are a few aspects to decorating, firstly there’s the option of a theme running through the whole house, which can be a nice touch, although it’s just as reasonable to want a different look for every room. You will have the walls to decorate and for a long time wallpaper was considered too old-fashioned to be used but that has swung around and come right back into fashion giving a good choice between papered or painted walls.

Also, do you want to go with carpeted floors or maybe laminate or another hard flooring option? These considerations all need to be thought of together as it all comes together, for example, carpets work better with papered walls and hard flooring looks better with painted ones.

Other than how the place looks it’s important to consider more structural concerns at this point. If the roof needs attention then you’ll want to look at having it re-tiled before you move in and wait for a leak which can cause a lot of damage to your stuff. Other important things to check at the time of moving in include the water pipes, it may be the case that they have a few years left in them but it may make more sense to have the disruption caused now rather than later on when the home is much more established.

The garden is the last part of the puzzle that most people consider when moving to a new house. But often it is the area that needs most attention as if the previous occupants have been considering moving over their last few years in the place then it is unlikely they will have put much effort into changing the garden round. So the opportunity to get a good landscaper or gardener in to look at it and advise about what is good to go in there. What you might want will depend on your family circumstances, if you are a single person, couple or even have kids.

Published in: Home advice | Author: Yanita