Getting ready for a vacation is perhaps one of the most exciting things that a person can do. You get to think about all of the fun and relaxation that you are going to enjoy while you are away from your home. However, before you get too far down the path on this line of thinking, you should take some time to make a house checklist before vacation. You need to ensure that everything is in order before you head out so you don’t have anything to fret about while you are trying to relax.
Home renovations are a big part of the house checklist before vacation for many people. They want to get their house looking just perfect for when they return to it, and the only way to make progress on that is to pick up some of these projects as part of their house checklist before vacation. It might make sense to start with something like a garage door repair before heading on to some of the other projects that you need to get to.
Finding The Right Contractor
It is your job as the homeowner to ensure that your house checklist before vacation goes exactly to plan. Thus, you will need to spend some time looking for things such as fence contractors. These individuals should be on your list because you know for a fact that this is a type of repair that you will need to get done. Why put it off when you know that they are going to be on the list?
To compare one provider versus another for something like siding services or electrical service, you will need to check out what others who have used them before have to say about their performance. It is quite common for former customers to leave reviews detailing the experience that they had with the contractor on their project. Read those reviews carefully to see if they are unbiased and honest opinions about the work that the contractor did. Sometimes, people have a bone to pick with a particular contractor and may provide a review that is less than honest. You need to try to figure out for yourself if the person who has left the review is being honest about their experiences, or if they seem to just want to take out some frustrations on a contractor. One thing to keep in mind is that the person who wrote the review could be a contractor themselves looking for residential roofing work or some other job. They may be leaving a negative review just to take it out on a rival contractor. If you suspect that this is the case, then you can disregard their entire review immediately.
Making Your Home Look Great Before You Leave
You want to have your home looking good and secure before you leave. On your house checklist before vacation, you should include window replacement if the windows in your home are a little worse for the wear. The reason for this is because they could become an appealing target for a criminal if you leave them in a damaged state before you take off on your vacation. A criminal will look at windows like that and see a great target for their next crime. Obviously, you do not want to put your home in a vulnerable state like this.
You should spend some additional time on your house checklist before vacation examining the state of your shed and how it has held up against the various elements that have been thrown at it. It can also be a big target for those who want to steal from you. Criminals understand that many people leave valuable items in their shed, and it is not uncommon for them to try to steal those items as they see the shed as much easier to break into than the house itself. You should be in the market for looking to spruce up your shed and secure it firmly while you are gone. Additionally, you may want to move any items of true value into your house itself while you are away.
Creating More Value In Your Home
The value of your home is of top importance to you because it will matter when it comes time to sell the place. You are accumulating value in your home just by owning it, but it definitely helps to do some basic repairs on it to keep it up to date and competitive with other homes in the area. A drain cleaning company may be of assistance to you as part of your house checklist before vacation. They can be useful because they get your drains cleared up so you don’t have any backups of water or other materials that can get into those drains. People don’t always think about how much they rely on their drains working just right, but it truly is a big part of what helps the house to function the way it needs to.
While you are working on that, you might want to ask a contractor about foam insulation for your home as well. He or she can show you that there is a lot of air conditioning or heat that is likely to escape from your home simply because it is not insulated enough. It turns out that a lot of people waste a lot of money on AC and heat that just escapes out into the wider world because they assume that whatever insulation they have in their house to begin with is going to last forever and hold them over. This is rarely the case, and you should check up on it routinely to make sure that it is still doing its job long after you first move in.
It might seem odd to think about adding value to your home as part of your house checklist before vacation, but it is actually one of the best times to do it. Some of these projects might require you to vacate your home for some period of time to allow the contractors to do their work. That is not a great situation to have happen to you if you’re actively trying to work and take care of your own day-to-day tasks. Instead, you may want to consider adding these projects to your house checklist before vacation so that they are simply done while you are away and not having to worry about getting a paycheck or making other accommodations.
Prepare For These Expenses Ahead Of Time
You are advised to create a house checklist before vacation because you will need to plan for how you will pay for these repairs ahead of time. The truth is that doing repairs in your home can be a highly expensive prospect, and you don’t want to leave anything up to chance. If you are preparing for these expenses and factor them into your budget, then your chances of actually being able to afford them goes up significantly. It can mean the difference between actually getting these things done and just talking about getting them done.
One way to figure out roughly how much these repairs will cost you is to call up the various companies that you are considering working with to get some quotes. This is highly recommended anyway as those companies are going to need to compete for your business. In other words, you do not want to find yourself simply going with the first company that makes a bid for your project. They may not have the pricing that you require to get these things done. It would be a major setback to have everything set up only to find out that you do not have the funds available to actually do the jobs required.
You should expect to pay some of the following expenses as part of this work:
- Labor (usually charged hourly, though it can be a flat rate in some cases)
- Supplies and materials
- Regulatory charges (i.e. charges to get permits etc.)
- Taxes
There may be other expense categories that can pop up as well. You should also be aware that the quote you are given initially may not be the reality of what you pay in the end. It is often the case that some projects take longer than expected or use more materials than expected. In either case, you may wind up with a bill that does not reflect what you were quoted in the beginning. Don’t let this get you upset. Just assume that it is going to happen and budget accordingly. If it turns out that the estimate was overdone, then you just walk away with a little more money in your pocket than what you had planned.
Make A Checklist So You Can Take Your Mind Off Of It
Your house checklist before vacation is your security blanket. It should have everything on it that you want to be done while you are away on vacation. It is the worst feeling to be away somewhere nice on vacation and only be able to think about the things that need to get done but are not getting done because you forgot to make a list with those items on it. You should make your list well before you ever get into your vehicle to head out for vacation. Remember, these projects are going to take an extensive amount of time and money to complete, so you had best prepare yourself for that.
Generally, for the type of house repairs that we have discussed here, the amount of time that contractors will need to get them done is going to be at least a week. Your vacation should be scheduled out for that amount of time at a minimum. You might need even more time than that, but you should at least be prepared for a week’s worth of work from these people. They want to get the job done perfectly for you, and the only way that this is the case is if they have the correct amount of time on their hands to make it happen.
Consider the fact that the contractors will be working during the day for you more or less while you are on vacation, and try to figure out how long it will take to get these various projects done. You should tally up those labor hours to get some idea of what you may pay for this work.
Hire People You Can Trust
The final piece of advice to give to anyone looking to hire some contractors is that you should hire people you can trust. In other words, you do not want to leave your home projects in the hands of people who may take advantage of you, or even steal things from your home. It is sad, but it does happen sometimes. You also want these individuals to be around your home while you are away to deter any would-be criminal from taking the opportunity to break into the home. Thus, you need people that you know can do that and that will have your back as well.
Most contractors are simply interested in winning your long-term business, and that means that they will do things properly by the book, but you cannot rely on that from everyone. This is a moment yet again when you need to take the time to read reviews online carefully and see what they have to say about the various contractors. You might just find that there is valuable information about how trustworthy they are based on projects they have done before. As long as you can rest assured that they are behaving properly when they are around your property, then there should be no problems. Make sure they don’t have a record of damaging or stealing items from the homes of those they serve. After you have verified all of this, then you are ready to get out on your vacation and have the time of your life!