Renovation: what you shouldn't save on

1. Get rid of everything that is old

First of all, this advice applies to houses built more than 50 years ago. They have very strong walls, but the plaster has long lost its former strength. It needs to be removed. It's a messy job, but it also ensures you never run into crumbling walls and tiles again.

The general rule of thumb is to remove all fragile coatings. Nobody builds a new home on an old shaky foundation. With the repair, they do the same: it is necessary not only to clean off the whitewash, putty and remove the old wallpaper, but also to remove the crumbling plaster. If the plaster is still strong, you should make sure that it has not peeled off the wall: tap on it in different places. The exfoliated plaster "rings" and then it must also be removed.

The same advice applies to wood floors: they should be dismantled and discarded. Making new ones is faster and easier than trying to strengthen and level old cracked boards and endlessly listen to their creak.

Leaving old plaster and dry wood floors is a big mistake. The expectation that "this thing will still serve" is unreliable and expensive. More expensive than renovating plaster and flooring now.

2. Plaster the walls along the lighthouses

Flat vertical walls are long and difficult to make, but if they are plastered correctly once, they will not require rework the next time they are repaired.

But such walls guarantee:

perfectly glued wallpaper, well-laid tiles or any other material;
quickly and correctly installed doors and built-in furniture;
platbands and skirting boards without gaps.

And in the end, flat surfaces are beautiful in themselves.

Lighthouses are special metal guides that are fixed on the surface of a wall or ceiling at intervals of 1–1.5 m. They must be strictly vertical (for the ceiling - horizontal) and lie in the same plane.

Plaster beacons on the wall / Photo by the author

Plastering on lighthouses / Photo by the author

The master guides the rule along them, like on rails: the plastered surface turns out to be geometrically correct. The evenness of the surface is checked by the rule, and the verticality and horizontality are checked by the level. This work is time consuming and therefore more expensive. However, she will definitely reward a hundredfold for the time and money spent on her.

High-quality plaster is always done on the lighthouses; such work cannot be done by eye. It is also very difficult to do it yourself, without experience. Therefore, it is wiser to entrust this to a qualified specialist.

It is necessary at the very beginning to discuss with the master with what tolerances the work should be done and how you will control the quality. It is almost impossible to get a perfect result, but it is not necessary. Discuss with the master what deviation of the wall plane from the vertical is permissible: less than 5 mm per room height is the highest quality category. The duration of the work and its cost depend on the required accuracy. The wizard will also help you calculate the required number of beacons, plaster and other materials.

Lighthouse plastering is not always required. Quite often, when renovating apartments in panel houses with good smooth walls, you can do without it.

Smooth walls and floors will not become crooked over time. Align now and forget forever.

3. Leave access

We are talking about inspection hatches.

Any apartment has enough equipment that requires regular maintenance and sometimes repairs. If such equipment is placed hidden, for access to it, special openings are made, closed by doors or removable panels - inspection hatches. For example, through such a hatch access to the valves and water meters in the bathroom is provided.

Yes, the hatch is often striking. But this happens if you spent a lot of time choosing tiles for the bathroom, but did not think at all that the bathtub is water, and water is pipes, filters, meters and valves. Filters need to be cleaned periodically, meters need to be replaced regularly, and valves sometimes break.

In order for preventive maintenance to take place quickly and without unnecessary destruction, it must be thought about already during the design phase.

All elements that may require repair or replacement must be installed so that they can be easily accessed by tools.

For example, if it is a water meter, adjustable plumbing wrenches are used to replace it. You need to be guided by their size. If hidden fans are installed in the ventilation system, the hatch must be of sufficient size so that through it it is possible, if necessary, to dismantle the faulty fan and install a new one.

There are hatches of all sizes and designs on sale. There are almost imperceptible invisible hatches. In the bathroom, for example, such a hatch is tiled along with the wall. It is more expensive and more difficult to install, but the plumber will never have to disassemble the wall of your bathroom for the planned replacement of metering devices.

Any technique requires maintenance. It will not be a problem if you think about it ahead of time and provide for convenient access to equipment and communications.

4. Don't overcomplicate

Murphy's Law says, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." Each additional element of the system reduces its reliability.

Let us explain this idea with an example. Plumbing in an apartment is often built on the so-called manifolds - collectors. In such a design, a pair of pipes goes to each point of the water intake from the collectors. The advantage of this solution is the ability to disable each point independently of the others.

In practice, however, few people use this. But numerous pipes clutter up the space of the plumbing cabinet, and the manifold valves fail due to inactivity, and they have to be repaired.

A simple but well-arranged water supply system is easier to maintain and rarely needs repair. Don't use standard solutions lightly. Consider several options, choose the best one among them, adapt it to your conditions: take into account the number and location of water points, water quality, capacity and type of backup water heater, and so on.

With good water quality, there is no need to install bulky multi-stage filters. If only one or two people live in the apartment, use the filters of the lowest efficiency, do not put too much “just in case”.

Finding the best solution takes time, but in the future it will pay off with ease of use and reliability.

The same principle is true for electricians, and for heating, and for ventilation - find the best solution for your conditions, and do not do it “like everyone else”.

The simpler, the more reliable - this is a universal principle. Think over all technical solutions now and choose the optimal ones. In the future, you will thank yourself.

5. Follow SNiPs

Once you were presented with a very nice picture."Such beauty should hang in the most conspicuous place," - you decided: "Here, above the sofa." For the picture you need a hook, and now you start drilling a hole in the intended place. Cotton, sparks from under the drill, lights go out in the whole apartment.

An electrician urgently called from the emergency service states that the cable was laid in violation of building codes. To repair the damaged area, you will have to pick out the wall, plaster and putty the hole made in the wall and re-glue the wallpaper. And all because the masters, at your request, were in a hurry and laid the cable "along the shortest path."

The requirements of SNiPs, PUEs and GOSTs are boring, but thanks to them, the work of one master is understandable to any other. Cable routing points are obvious and easy to get around. The master will not have to guess for half a day: “Why is it done this way? And how to be now?"

Every qualified craftsman knows what standards a quality work must meet and where they are set out. The plasterer knows the tolerances for the curvature of the walls, the electrician knows the rules for laying cables and the required wire cross-sections, the plumber knows the slopes of the sewer pipes. Ask your craftsmen about how the current regulations will be taken into account in the work.

Sometimes it is easy to follow the norms. But more often this requires additional work. For example, lay the cable along an "inconvenient" path. But you will never experience the trouble described above, and many others.

SNiPs are the experience of many generations of builders, framed in letters. Not using it is stupid.

6. And something else

Of course, each renovation is individual. And in your case, there will probably be something else, which determines the labor intensity of the repair now and a quiet life after.

Together with your master, discuss all the work in this vein: what is reasonable to do now to save money later. Time, money and nerves are at stake.