When many people dream of their future homes, they envision a sprawling property with a gracious home from times gone by as the focal point. Owning a historical home can make you feel as though you’ve traveled back in time in a cozy and comfortable fashion. However, before you move in, you want to research how to renovate an older home. Whether you’re thinking about renovating your current historic home or want to purchase one and do some work, start thinking about these topics.
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Consider Legalities When You Renovate an older home
You may not realize that some historic homes are protected under local or state regulations. In other words, you might not have the ability to modify the house. For example, you may have your eye on a historic property in a quaint part of town. This house may be under protection. Local or state laws may prevent you from modifying it in any way or in certain ways. The purpose of such legislation is often to preserve the historical appeal and the history itself of the house and perhaps even of the surrounding communities. Make sure to research legal issues before proceeding at all. Otherwise, you might start dreaming of renovations that are simply impossible.
Calculate Costs
When you’re thinking about home construction in and around Savannah GA, especially when renovating a historical building, you must ask yourself if such a venture is practical. The home in its current state might be worth more than it would be with your desired transformations. Lowering the value of a house might not have major implications now, but if you go to sell it in the future at any point, you may encounter problems. Working with a reputable construction company to get solid estimates on the work can help you to determine what you can and shouldn’t do to enhance the value of the building.
Assess Deterioration
You may want to renovate elements of the house so that your family can live a modern life there. However, you must take serious issues of deterioration into account. For example, if the foundations of the house are crumbling, you will need to do more than move a wall or two to make the house livable. Also, some older houses have weaker structures on the upper levels that may not support modern designs without serious shoring up.
Inspect the Electric
The antique electrical work in a historical house could also pose a threat to your family. You must have the electric inspected to find out if it is safe. Depending upon the age of the house, the electric may have been redone at some point in the not-so-distant past. In other cases, the current electrical system may pose something of a fire hazard. You also need to make sure that the available electric load in the house can support all of our modern devices. For example, a number of older homes may have only 100 amps available when most homes need more like 200 amps. You should also find out if the house is grounded and has up-to-date circuit breakers and up-to-code wiring.
HellcatConstruction is ready to help. Start a conversation with us about any project in your older Savannah structure- we have years of experience in dealing with all these issues and many, many more!