Many property investors, me included, often say ‘Renovation isn’t about tiles and paint, it’s about the numbers’.

It is important to remember that, but I was thinking the other day, as I was in the midst of four straight days of painting that it when you actually have to get in there and get your hands dirty and do the work it could be very easy to lose sight of that and get caught up in making the property look nice and picking the right blinds.

So what’s the thing that keeps me focused on the numbers?

My ‘Renovation Manager’ spreadsheet is a mega-spreadsheet where all of the materials and trades are listed room by room and they all feedback to the summary sheet shown here:

The project plan that we’ve created keeps us focused on what tasks need to occur and when and the ‘% complete’ column gives us motivation as we tick off the tasks!

Everyday that we spend on the renovation, we come home and update the ‘Renovation Manager’ and the project plan and review our progress against our forecasts and budget. This is so important.

Now, onto the update!

Things we’ve completed or are in process of completing:

• Demolition phase is over – we pulled out the walls of the bathroom, the kitchen benchtop and splashback tiles, the old heater, damaged plaster walls, old linen cupboard.
• New fence is up and in a surprise twist, the neighbour is getting her son to pull down the dodgy old sheds on the fenceline so we can get the fence guy back to complete that part of the fence!
• New plaster walls have been completed, including new wall between bathroom and toilet.
• All the new lights, ceiling fans and powerpoints have been completed.
• The bathroom is well underway now, new wall tiles and taps look awesome, new vanity is in.
• Fully undercoated the entire house and have completed half of the first top coat.  Now the all the sanding and prep work is done the painting is going much faster now!  (Special thanks to our friends Clare and Cindy who gave up their whole Sunday to paint with us recently!)

It’s really starting to look good!

Next major things on our plan are:

• Complete the painting – really feel that once this is done we are really into the home stretch and a race to finish!
• Complete the bathroom with floor tiles, shower screen then paint.
• Put the new kitchen benchtop in and tile the splashback.
• Tile the laundry floor
• Put the new window furnishings and window locks up
• Lay the floating floors and carpet
• The garden – hmm..this one gives me a headache just thinking about it.  Thinking of outsourcing a bit of the garden work!

Things that have cropped up that we didn’t count on:

• A replacement $400 set of pipes in the bathroom
• It’s looking like the hot water service is cactus…bummer, there goes $1200, ouch!

So there you go!  The house is really starting to look good.

In terms of our budget, we are definately going to struggle to bring it in at $15k which is the figure I wanted to complete the project for.  The main culprits being the hot water service and potentially a new front fence, still trying to think about ways around that!  In terms of my budgetting, we have been pretty spot on so far for labour costs and we did manage to cut a few thousand from our materials budget by doing some good bargain shopping!

I’m still pumped about the project and enjoying it – so that’s something!