7 Decisions You Need to Make Before Starting a Home Renovation

There is a very tempting version of renovation planning that starts with picking countertops, saving pretty kitchens on Pinterest, and deciding whether you're suddenly a person who likes brass. Unfortunately, there are a few slightly less glamorous decisions we need to make first.

A renovation is basically a very expensive series of choices, and the order you make those choices matters. The more we can figure out before construction begins, the less likely you are to be standing in a demolished kitchen trying to decide where an outlet should go while three people wait for your answer.

If you're planning a home renovation in Salem, Keizer, or elsewhere in the Willamette Valley, these are some of the biggest questions we recommend answering before demo day.

What Are You Actually Trying to Fix?

This sounds obvious, but "I hate my kitchen" is not quite enough information.

Do you hate the way it looks? Does it lack storage? Is there nowhere to prep food? Does everyone somehow end up standing in the same three-foot section of floor every morning?

Sometimes homeowners think they need more square footage when they actually need a better layout. Other times, a room technically has plenty of storage, but most of it is so inconvenient to access that it might as well not exist.

Before deciding what the new space should look like, figure out what is making the current one frustrating to live in. That becomes the foundation for almost every decision that follows.

What Is Staying, and What Is Moving?

This is one of the biggest renovation decisions because moving things tends to have consequences.

Keeping a sink in roughly the same location is very different from moving it across the room. Changing cabinetry is different from removing a wall, and replacing an appliance is different from relocating the electrical, plumbing, or ventilation that serves it.

None of that means you shouldn't move something. Sometimes moving it is exactly what finally makes the room work.

We just want those decisions made intentionally and early enough to understand what they mean for the rest of the project.

How Do You Actually Use the Space?

This is where we get a little nosy, but for good reason.

How many people cook at once? Where do you make coffee? Where does the dog eat? Do your kids do homework at the island? Are you a person with six countertop appliances, or does the toaster get put away immediately after use?

Those details matter because we aren't designing a theoretical kitchen for an imaginary perfectly organized family. We are designing your house for the way you actually live in it.

The same applies outside the kitchen. A bathroom used by three kids needs to solve different problems than a primary bathroom for two adults, and a living room meant for movie nights needs something different than a formal entertaining space.

Good design is not asking, "What does everybody else have?" It is asking, "What would make this easier for you every day?"

What Is Your Real Budget, and What Matters Most?

Nobody's favorite renovation conversation. Still very important.

Your budget needs to cover more than the things you can immediately see. There may be cabinetry, appliances, flooring, fixtures, lighting, labor, plumbing, electrical work, demolition, permits, installation, and the occasional delightful surprise hiding inside a wall.

This is also why we like talking about priorities, not just numbers.

Maybe custom cabinetry matters enormously to you because your current kitchen wastes half of its available space. Maybe you desperately want a professional range, but you could not care less whether the backsplash tile costs $8 or $40 per square foot.

You do not have to spend the maximum amount on everything. In fact, please don't.

The goal is to figure out where spending more will meaningfully improve the finished space, and where a simpler option will do the job beautifully.

What Needs to Be Chosen Before Construction?

This is one of the easiest things to underestimate.

Some selections affect other parts of the design. Your range can affect cabinetry and ventilation. Your sink affects the sink cabinet. Plumbing fixtures can affect rough-in requirements, while lighting choices can determine where electrical boxes and switches need to go.

Cabinetry is especially interconnected because it touches almost everything around it.

This is why "we'll figure it out when we get there" can get expensive very quickly.

You do not necessarily need to have the decorative bowl for the dining table selected before demo. You probably do want to know which refrigerator you are buying before we build cabinetry around it.

There is an order to renovation decisions, and getting that order right makes everyone's life easier.

What Materials Actually Make Sense for Your Life?

This is where aesthetics and practicality finally get to sit at the same table.

Of course we care about whether something is beautiful. But we also want to know how it cleans, how it ages, whether it scratches easily, how much maintenance it requires, and what happens when your dog comes flying around the corner at approximately Mach 3.

The "best" material on paper is not automatically the best material for your house.

A household with kids, pets, frequent entertaining, or accessibility needs may make very different decisions from someone designing a lightly used vacation home.

This matters especially with flooring, countertops, cabinetry finishes, tile, hardware, and plumbing fixtures. These are things you will touch, clean, walk on, open, close, spill on, and generally abuse for years.

We would much rather help you choose something that will survive your real life than something that looked incredible in a showroom for twelve minutes.

How Long Are You Designing This Home For?

Renovations are expensive enough that we generally don't want to solve today's problem while quietly creating tomorrow's.

Maybe you're planning to move in five years. Maybe this is the house you hope to stay in for the rest of your life.

Those situations may lead us to make different choices.

If you're planning to stay long-term, this can be a good time to think about things like easier-to-access storage, lighting, wider circulation paths, fewer unnecessary level changes, comfortable hardware, and other decisions that may make the home easier to use as life changes.

You do not have to turn your home into a medical facility because you might someday have a sore knee.

The idea is simply to ask, "Will this still work for us later?" while we already have the opportunity to make thoughtful changes.

And Yes, We Need to Talk About Permits

Depending on the scope of your renovation, some changes may require permits or licensed trades. Structural changes, plumbing, electrical work, mechanical systems, and other construction decisions can all affect what needs to happen before work begins.

Requirements can also vary depending on your jurisdiction, so a renovation in Salem may not follow exactly the same process as a project elsewhere in Oregon.

We are going to give this its own article because permits deserve considerably more attention than one paragraph. For now, the important thing is simply this: do not wait until construction is underway to find out whether your project needs one.

You Don't Have to Know Every Answer Before You Start

This entire article might make it sound like we're asking you to arrive at your first design meeting carrying a binder labeled FINAL RENOVATION DECISIONS.

Please don't.

You hire a designer specifically because you don't know every answer yet.

What you should bring is information about how you live, what isn't working, what you love, what you hate, what you hope to spend, and what you want your home to feel like when we're done.

Then we can work through the decisions in the order they actually need to happen.

The Best Time to Solve a Renovation Problem Is Before It Exists

The design phase is where we get to move things around without moving actual plumbing.

We can question a layout, change a cabinet, compare materials, rethink an appliance location, adjust lighting, or realize that the giant island we imagined is actually going to leave approximately nine inches of space for everyone to squeeze past.

Changing a line on a plan is easy. Changing something that has already been built is considerably less fun.

At River Vann Interiors, we help homeowners throughout Salem, Keizer, and the surrounding Willamette Valley work through these decisions before construction begins. We design with the finished room in mind, but we also think about all the little decisions hiding underneath it.

Because the goal isn't simply to survive your renovation and eventually end up with a pretty room.

The goal is to make sure the pretty room was worth renovating in the first place.