Where to start apartment renovation and finish it as soon as possible. Little tricks during repairs All the secrets of home repair

Repair is a very responsible business. And before you start it is necessary to think over all the details: from the choice of paint to the flooring.

Many, starting to make repairs, do not pay due attention to this issue, therefore, after a couple of months, all “imperfections” begin to appear.

Repair becomes a burden and hands are already falling from the fact that everything is so bad and not working out smoothly. Of course, the option of hiring workers for your repair is possible. However, for the work of good specialists, accordingly, you need to pay a lot of money.

When deciding to carry out repairs yourself, you should pay attention to the following important details:

• If it is necessary to drill a tile with a minimum probability of splitting it, then first the glaze should be removed from the place of the future hole. It is advisable to use a tap and a hammer.
• If necessary, drive nails into a bar that springs, you should use a clamp. And in this way, you can quite easily push the nails where you need them.
• When adding alcohol to water, diluted alabaster will be more elastic and soft, similar to plasticine. This will help to avoid difficulties with filling narrow gaps.
• Many are faced with the problem when the board splits in half when trying to hammer a nail into it. To prevent the board from splitting, it is necessary to dull the tip of the nail a little - this will not allow the board to crack.
• If you have a private house and have a small garden, then all electrical cables, water pipes and various pipelines must be laid under the sidewalks. This will help to avoid future damage during excavations or other similar works.
• If you have wooden parquet on the floor, then the skirting boards are fixed only to the wall or only to the floor. Otherwise, the parquet may not be even, when, for example, one board will stick out compared to the other.
• In order to prevent chipboard from cracking and chipping during cutting, it is necessary to moisten it with hot water in the place where cutting is performed. Then the whole procedure will pass without splits.
• Removing whitewash is a very dusty business. To avoid this, it is necessary to smear the desired place with a paste, then let it dry and only then scrape it off.
• If you need to hammer nails into hardwood, then the nail must be lubricated with soap. Then the nail will go in much easier and at the same time the probability of bending the nail is minimized.
• It is recommended to prepare a cement solution with a pitchfork. Thus, the work will be much easier, and the solution itself will turn out to be much more homogeneous - without unnecessary lumps.
• If the working brush tends to lose its villi, then the easiest way to fix this problem is to coat it with any universal glue.
• If you are using a paint roller, do a few criss-cross strokes at the very beginning, and then continue painting as usual.

• If you need to cut something with a saw, but it is not in its best shape, i.e. with poorly set teeth, then lubrication of the sawn surface with soap will help.
• In order to achieve the desired shade of water-based paint, it is necessary to add aniline dyes to it and mix thoroughly.
• If your walls are painted with oil paints, then removing it is a big problem. In this case, iron the paint through the foil until it softens, and then remove it from the wall without undue difficulty.
• If you decide to put linoleum in your apartment, then you need to accurately determine its size. To ensure that the linoleum lays flat, remove all furniture from the room. Of great importance in the correct laying of linoleum is how smooth the floor is. If there are defects, then it is necessary to use putty and primer. Linoleum is recommended to take a size of 5 cm shorter and put it flat on the floor for a few days. During this time, it will lie down and expand, after which it will be possible to fix it.

These little tricks will help to avoid rather big problems in the future when making a long-awaited repair.

Do you know who is the head of the project called “apartment renovation”?

Not the foreman, but you. Therefore, it is you who should have a clear understanding of what you want from the repair, how much you plan to spend on materials and work, and in what time frame everything should be completed.

Your team will not be able to tell you how to arrange the lamps, where to paste the wallpaper, and where to make decorative plaster, and how many sockets to make.

Any construction work, ideally, should be carried out according to the project. Moreover, this is not only a project of a building and communications, but in the case of finishing work, sweeps, sections and plans of various surfaces, nodes and plans of engineering networks. It is also a production project. That is, the sequence of actions, the plan for the delivery of materials and their placement at the facility.

Of course, if you just need to make repairs, a lot of this is not needed, but there must be some kind of plan.

Where to start, what materials and when are needed, what equipment and tools will be required, how many, when and what specialists need to be involved in order to complete the work efficiently and without delaying the deadlines.

Having a clear and realistic plan will help reduce the time of work, save materials, avoid unexpected expenses, save yourself nerves and good relations with neighbors and contractors.

What needs to be planned when performing repairs in the apartment?

1. Together with your entire family, you should discuss and make decisions about:

• How will the furniture be located after the repair?
• Where will electrical appliances be located and what kind?
• What kind of plumbing is needed and how should it be located?
• Where, how much, at what height should sockets, switches, cold and hot water outlets be located?
• You also need a clear understanding for each room, what materials will be used to finish the surfaces of ceilings, walls and floors.

This is the kind of information that you need to clarify, and it is best to write it down before you start meeting with the crews.
Ideally, if you find one team that will do repairs from and to. Ideally, because in this case there is always a person responsible for the entire work.

If this is not the case, the following order of work will help you plan which specialist to involve when:

• Dismantling and garbage disposal after dismantling.
• Redevelopment. Construction of new partitions, if planned.
• Laying of engineering networks. Wiring, plumbing.
• Preparing surfaces for finishing:
• If necessary, prepare slopes and openings.
• Fine surface finish:
• Making openings (installation of doors, installation of slopes)
• Installation of sockets, switches, lamps, plumbing fixtures
• Garbage removal
• Cleaning the room before moving in

Now about the sequence of delivery of materials. For example, tiles need to be bought before wallpaper and flooring. A bath and toilet bowl before tiles. Doors and a stretch ceiling can be left for later, but the cable and water pipes are imported at the very beginning. You also need to decide who is purchasing the materials. These issues must be agreed before work begins with the contractor.
And one more point of the plan: the procedure and volume of settlements with performers: the amount of prepayment, the timing of the provision of interim reports, the amount of payments for work. All these parameters are conveniently taken into account in the estimate.

Specific figures depend on specific agreements with the contractor.

Mistake number two.

You do not draw up a contract for work and do not receive an estimate

Repairs are serious and expensive. Many are “lulled” by the situation that the payment for the work is made after they are completed, therefore it is believed that only the contractor needs the contract.

In fact, in order to avoid many problems during repairs, at least two documents must be drawn up BEFORE WORK STARTS. This is a contract and an estimate for the work.

In addition, it is desirable to have an estimate for materials and an act of acceptance and transfer of an object for the production of work.
What does it give?
I'll give you an example.

You need to make repairs, and you do not want to overpay and live in the mud for six months.
You invite different finishers and ask them to estimate the time and cost of the work.

In most cases, a business or not very business man comes to you, looks at the apartment for half an hour, listens to what you are telling him and says:

“We will do everything for 150 tr. and 2 months.
Yes, we conclude a contract, we will make an estimate soon. Let's get started, please.
No advance required. We do not take money up front. Only for materials. I'll report back later."

You pretend that although one of the invitees offered you for 120 tr. and 1.5 months, you'd better work with this, for 150. Somehow it's more reliable. And the price is not the lowest either. Probably doing well.

This is how 90% of repairs begin.

Let's think that the man is a pro, his partner is also a pro, his helper is normal. They don't drink during working hours. Maybe they don't drink at all. This happens often enough. Let's think that if they are offered a more profitable job than in your apartment, they don't go there. Accordingly, the terms of your repair are not stretched. This also occurs.

Let's think that they don't renovate their home and all the materials they report purchasing are actually used for your walls/floors/ceilings. This, in general, occurs at every step.

You are brought to sign a “contract” on one page with common words.

You think that this is better than none, and there is no time to write your own version of the contract. Oh yes. You do not pay an advance, so this one will do. For insurance.

They promised you a quote, but haven't done it yet.

A week passes. The peasant asks for money for the work: “Here we have stripped everything, but here we have already puttyed half the room. Plus, we've been working on it for a week now. We are not a bank or angels, we need money. The estimate will be. For now, here are receipts for materials and a report on what has been done. Where are the rates from? How from where! All work like this. Yes, don't worry, I said I'll do it for 150, so I'll do it. Yes, I still have money for materials. I don't remember how much."

Along the way, it turns out that they do not unload the materials or this is not included in the price and is paid separately. Depending on the floor, availability of an elevator and prices in your city, this can cost an additional 3 to 15 thousand rubles.

They were not hired to pick up. Take out the trash, even more so.

Why level the wall - it is already normal. And dub - another 300 rubles per square wall.

Why were the neighbors flooded? So they did the tie. Who knew that the floor you have is not airtight.

Were you at work yesterday? Partner moved. He won't be the only one moving furniture.

And your tiles, in general, are crooked. So, we have nothing to do with the fact that the seams crawled in different directions.

In general, when after three or four months and 250 thousand money the repair is almost completed, you rejoice at this, like a child to a living hedgehog. So what, that everything is not as good as you wanted. But clean and liveable.

I had a case when I was approached by a woman who has been undergoing repairs for almost a year.

Said she didn't really like the contractor. She asked me to look at the object, to see if I would undertake to finish it.

The first thing that struck me was the lack of a budget. And this, by the way, was one of the main reasons for such a long period. The money was paid upon the fact of work, based on the reports of the contractor. In the middle of the renovation, the money ran out. At all.

Secondly, the fact that, in the presence of a design project, two walls in the kitchen are already fully tiled, and the connection to the sockets that should be on this tile has not yet been done. And a few other similar misunderstandings.

Third - the whole apartment is littered with construction debris and materials. The whole floor. An even layer half a meter thick. The paths have just been abandoned.

Fourth - new radiators do not heat. Why? Unclear.

Fifth, the performer says that he was not fully paid off and let's talk like a man to a man. I ask, why didn't you pay? For tiles in the kitchen and for radiators, he says. All in all, a tense situation.
How to avoid such problems?

Conclude a normal contract, which spells out the procedure for settlements, the responsibility of the parties, the rights and obligations of the parties, the data of the contractor, by which he can then be found, in case of problems, guarantees.
The contract must be accompanied by an estimate indicating the specific types and volumes of work, with prices for each work. Always look at multiple budget options. Choose more details.

Mistake number three

You choose a contractor "blindly"

Sometimes I get the feeling that people order repairs with a "just to get it done" attitude. As if they are not doing it for themselves, and then they will not live in it.

The main thing - faster and cheaper.

Here I will write briefly.

Always look at work. Do not invite performers who are currently unemployed to your facility, even if they are recommended to you by friends or relatives.

It is better to wait for the brigade, which will complete the repair in the foreseeable future. In this case, you will have the opportunity to visit the facility where they work. And this means you will see what will happen in the process of repair for you.

The point here is that everyone has different ideas about what quality is. And it's hard to explain it in words. It is best to look with the eyes. In addition, you can get an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe attitude to the case. Order on the object? Are the deadlines being met? No conflicts with the current customer? Like the result? Then - feel free to negotiate. Most likely, everything will go well for you.

My opinion is that it is better to invite unfamiliar advertising specialists in a newspaper or the Internet, whose work you can observe in the process, than acquaintances or on the recommendation of acquaintances, but whose work you have not seen in the process.

Mistake number four

You don't value relationships

Repair is a joint project of the customer and the contractor. For the duration of the entire repair, you get such a “team”. And relationships in this team are very important.

In many ways, the quality of work and ... the fulfillment of warranty obligations depend on this.

I observed more than once that if there were conflicts during the work, the customer and the contractor were dissatisfied with each other, then the quality was lame, and if there were any problems during the warranty period, the team was in no hurry to solve them. There were various pretexts and excuses, the time reached the end of the warranty period and that's it. Then ask someone.

• Do not go to the conflict, try to communicate constructively.
• Repair is a highly skilled, creative and hard work. Therefore, many finishers painfully perceive criticism. Select expression.
• If you see that the dialogue does not work out and the repair is not going as you would like, it is better to find a new contractor. Everyone will be better off.
• If the relationship with the team is going well, the quality and attitude to work suits you, give the team a small gift at the end. They will come to you then and in three years to glue the wallpaper or tighten the nut on the heated towel rail.

Mistake number five

You "save" on labor rates

It may seem to you that I am only speaking on the side of the brigade here, but let's better understand.

Often, customers receive an estimate and try to “cut off” the prices for work.

Here are the dangers:

Many repairmen agree to your terms, and then do "how much they paid." As a result, you can spend more on alterations than you "save" on repairs.

There are also options with a "replacement of the master." The foreman or foreman will “appoint” an unqualified “specialist” to the object, and then, again, will say: “What did you want for that kind of money?”. If you have the gift of persuasion and he agrees to remake, you will most likely have to buy materials for rework with your own money.

While everything.
Happy repair!
Leonid Odegov
http://leonid-odegov.com/
30.06.11.

To speed up the repair of the apartment, be sure to take out all the furniture, even if there is nowhere to work - it is impossible to work in a cluttered room, especially if you are not doing the repairs yourself. It takes a lot of time to transfer and move. In addition, there is an almost one hundred percent chance of damaging the remaining items. Leave empty containers, mop, dustpan, stools, stepladder. All this will get dirty, but it can come in handy.

Lay and seal everything yourself. Workers have other tasks.

You can not do a fine finish until the dusty work is finished -,.

You should not cut with a grinder near: Tiles, Plumbing, Windows, Batteries, Wallpaper - sparks will definitely leave black dots. If there is such a need, be sure to cover everything with cardboard.

To beat a straight line on a wall or ceiling, a thin cord is coated with colored chalk, pulled over pencil marks and, taken aside, released - a trace remains on the wall. You can use a special cord for beating, sold in hardware stores, colored chalk, by the way, too.

When working with alabaster, it is convenient to use a half of an old rubber ball of a suitable size as a dish. After hardening, the remnants of alabaster are instantly removed with a slight movement.

Repair planning

You need to plan what and where will be before the start of repair work! Preparation for different coatings is very different.

Ceilings and walls in the modern world are usually painted with water-based paints. On the ceiling it is preferable - matte, white. Walls can be painted with tinted semi-gloss water-based paint. Oil and enamel paints do not pass air well, so it is better not to use them for painting the walls of living rooms. Enamel should be painted pipes and radiators.

If the room has the shape of an elongated rectangle, then to visually increase the space, plan the arrangement of furniture so as to give it a square shape.

If you have very low ceilings, don't use plasterboard to make them look taller visually. This is an established misconception. Think for yourself how you can visually increase, actually reducing.

Choose a wallpaper pattern depending on the area and height of the room. Fashionistas should know this rule - a horizontally placed drawing visually reduces the height of the room, while a vertically located drawing, on the contrary, makes the room seem higher. Diamond-shaped pattern creates a feeling of large volume.

Blue, light green walls make the room visually more spacious, and a room painted in brown, terracotta color seems smaller, but more comfortable.

Tile

A hole in the tile can be drilled with a sharp drill bit, without the use of perforation. To prevent the drill from jumping off a smooth surface, stick a piece of masking tape or electrical tape in the right place.

You can replace one cracked tile without damaging the neighboring ones as follows. Drill a hole in the center and carefully break out the pieces with a chisel, moving from the center to the seams.

If you cannot find exactly the same tile to replace the broken one, you can buy a similar color - it will look like it was intended.

When drilling holes in a tile with a drill bit, it must be cooled periodically. Place any container of water next to you and dip the drill into it. No need to wait until the drill is very hot, cool it more often, otherwise it will quickly become dull.

ceilings

To easily remove the old whitewash from the ceiling, you need to wet it well with a roller and stick old newspapers on the damp surface. When the newspapers dry, the whitewash will come off with them. The rest will have to be cleaned in the traditional way - with a spatula, it is also better raw.

Do not skimp on the primer, it is better to prime the ceiling once again than to suffer later with peeling paint. Repainting will cost more. Be sure to prime after whitewashing!

Keep windows and doors closed while painting the ceiling or walls. A draft prevents the paint from drying evenly.

The thinner the layer of paint, the smoother the resulting surface. It is better to put several thin layers than one thick one.

While painting the ceiling, it is better to maintain high humidity in the room, the paint will dry more evenly. You can put water containers in the room the day before. The surface to be painted must be completely dry.

Painting

In order for the paint that has fallen on the floor, windows, tiles to be easily removed, it is necessary to cover them with soapy water before starting the repair (20-30 g of soap per 1 liter of water).

Hands from oil paint can be washed with ordinary sunflower oil. It does not irritate the skin as much as a solvent.

The paint on the brush will not dry out if you put the brush in water or wrap it tightly in a plastic bag.

You can’t merge together the remnants of different paints: you get a mess that will never dry when painted.

Before the main area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe walls with a roller, go through the corners and other places inaccessible to the roller with a brush.

If the water-based paint has been standing for a long time and clots have formed in it, it can be filtered by passing through gauze. It's better to buy a new one. Do not take it for the future, it is stored for a very short time, no more than a year.

Wallpaper

In order to easily remove old wallpaper, you need to wet it well by rolling it several times with a wet roller. The better you wet, the easier it is to remove, do not rush to scrape them dry. You can also try to iron them with an iron through a wet rag - and the wallpaper will be removed from the wall with ribbons.

Before you should pay attention to the careful preparation of the walls, namely - and. Do not hope that the new wallpaper will hide all the flaws, they will emphasize them.

So that the seam on the wallpaper is not noticeable, start gluing the wallpaper from the window.

It is more convenient to spread wallpaper with glue using a roller, it is also better to roll it with a roller, dry of course.

When wallpapering corners, do not try to glue a whole sheet into the corner; when it dries, it will definitely pull and cracks will form. It is better to immediately cut the whole sheet lengthwise while it is dry, and stick the first one with a slight bend around the corner, and the second overlap on the first.

For an even trimming of the wallpaper, it is convenient to use a long metal spatula as an emphasis.

If a glueless bubble has formed under the wallpaper and this place had to be cut, use a medical syringe without a needle filled with glue (wallpaper, PVA, etc.), it will help inject it directly into the gap. Now it remains only to firmly press the exfoliated area and, removing excess glue with a soft cloth, let it dry.

Floor

Before laying carpet or linoleum, you need to keep it unfolded so that it straightens well.

Parquet, laminate and parquet boards must be kept in the room where laying is planned for at least a day. Do not break the packaging, unpack immediately before laying.

Parquet, laminate and parquet boards should be laid along the light direction (along the line from the window to the door), or along the length of the room (in the corridor).

Laying a laminate or plank will help to enliven the room and hide the curvature of the walls.

When sawing plywood, its surface is chipped. To make the edges smooth, without burrs, you need to wet the sheet along the cut line with hot water.

Plywood is used for rigid fastening of the coating to the floor. Floating floors (laminate, parquet) do not require plywood. For laying piece plywood is required.

Large sheets of plywood should be cut into small squares for added stability.

Plywood is glued to the floor with parquet glue or rubber mastic and additionally fixed with dowel-nails.

This time I decided not to write a big and clever text, but simply collected short, but extremely useful tricks that will save money for the owners during the repair process.

1. Wholesale is cheaper. You should not split the repair into several stages in the hope of finding the cheapest performers for each type of work. The smaller the amount of work, the more each performer will request, and this is justified, since the new foreman will need to go through the organizational stage again when starting work at the facility - to purchase a "temporary hut", consumables, tools, and so on. In addition, foremen are deprived of the opportunity to "parallelize" work and thereby optimize work at the facility. Accordingly, the total time increases, and in this case, in the literal sense, time is money, Andrey Lyamin-Borodin, CEO of the PriceRemont.ru online repair ordering service, shares his experience.

2. Stock savings. Buying draft materials, according to the expert, is better with a small margin. Delivery of two or three missing bags or a simple team will cost more. The same can be said for finishing materials - such as tiles, flooring, wallpaper - even if the planned volume was enough, it is better to have a small margin in case you have to replace a damaged item, because after some time your series may not be on sale. .

Repair from scratch: the main stages and technologies for the rough finish of a new apartmentIt is too early for buyers of apartments in new buildings to relax after receiving the keys, because if the housing is bought without repair from the developer, then the newly-made owner gets literally bare walls. The website "RIA Real Estate" decided to remind newcomers about the main technologies and stages of rough finishing, the quality of which determines the quality of the future decor.

4. Catch discounts. To save on finishing materials, you should follow the promotions and special offers of dealers and large construction networks, Lyamin-Borodin points out. So, warehouse balances can be bought at a significant discount. You can also choose materials with economical consumption. For example, plain tiles require less trimming than patterned ones, and wallpaper with a small pattern will be required in less volume than wallpaper with a large print.

Although, on the other hand, how wallpaper with a large pattern can hide small uneven walls, adds Olga Karpinskaya, Deputy Marketing Director of the Kashirsky Dvor company. In this case, it will be possible to do without leveling the walls with plaster, that is, save on rough work.

5. Price list forward. If you do not have a design project for an apartment, it is almost inevitable that unplanned additional work will arise. Therefore, it is better to immediately ask the masters for a price list for all types of work, so that the price is not formed spontaneously already in the process, and so that it can be checked and calculated independently.

Is it worth it to renovate an apartment before renting it out?Repairing an apartment before renting it out to some owners seems to be a profitable undertaking, and to some - a waste of money and time. So after all, is the game worth the candle, the RIA Real Estate website found out.

6. Repairs are best done in winter. The market for repair services is seasonal, the peak in the number of orders and the price level is summer, the PriceRemont.ru expert points out. Accordingly, if it is possible to make repairs outside the season, you can save on this, since many, even good specialists, sit without orders and are ready to reduce prices for their services.

7. Insist on bonuses. Once you've reached an agreement with the maintenance team on the scope and cost of this contract, ask for small but necessary services, such as hanging cornices, to be included as a bonus. “Most likely, having already “putting a large order in their pocket”, the contractors will not refuse a small makeweight. By the way, the builders themselves use the same technique when the client doubts and delays the decision,” the agency’s interlocutor notes.

Minor works save a penny, agrees Karpinskaya. You need to buy or at least look after household appliances in advance so that you can place sockets under it during the repair process, cut holes in the tile (for example, under the hose of a washing machine in the bathroom). In general, in places where tiling is being done, it is better to immediately ask the craftsmen to screw all the hooks, shelves, holders. The fact is that such works as part of a large volume can go at a discount or even free of charge, a bonus. But an independent attempt to drill a tile can lead to cracking and, as a result, repeated work.

8. Repair with a guarantee. Work with those performers who give a guarantee for their work. The guarantee must be fixed in the contract and its period must be, preferably, at least a year. Even with conscientious performance of work, there is a possibility that something will go wrong, and the problem will “come out” already during operation. This is especially true of what is not obvious at first glance - engineering systems.

Masters Fair: 7 rules for choosing a team to repair an apartmentRepair in an apartment is like a natural disaster, but you can survive it with minimal loss of both money and nerves with the help of a well-chosen repair and construction team. The site "RIA Real Estate" found out by what criteria it is necessary to evaluate the masters and how to work with them.

Karpinskaya agrees with this. She notes that, for example, in no case should you connect underfloor heating in an apartment to central heating. "This is an administrative violation, you will have to pay a considerable fine. If the workers offer to do this, do not contact this team," the agency's interlocutor insists.

Having a guarantee for the repairs made, you will be exempt from unplanned additional expenses, Lyamin-Borodin adds.

9. Features are more important than brand. In some cases, the popularity and high cost of the brand does not always mean that there is no more budgetary and good alternative to it. So, when installing batteries, an expert from Kashirsky Dvor advises paying attention to their technical characteristics, and not to the origin of the brand. “Some domestic manufacturers present excellent products much cheaper than foreign counterparts. Metal radiators, by the way, have higher heat transfer, so it’s better to give preference to them,” Karpinskaya points out.

Themselves with hands: how to avoid mistakes when repairing an apartmentDo-it-yourself repairs, perhaps, this is what most Russians choose in the current economic situation, when the budget is cut due to the rise in the cost of building materials. However, in the process of self-repair, various defects, defects and errors often occur, how to avoid them and decided to remind the RIA Real Estate website.

“Also, if you don’t plan to redo the renovation in a year or two, think over the colors used in the interior. First of all, it all depends on your temperament, but more often bright colors get bored quickly, unlike calm pastel colors,” says Karpinskaya.

Leave samples of wallpaper and tiles after repairs in case you need to fix something, for example, after flooding an apartment. "As a rule, the collection in stores is changed once a quarter, in addition, the same shades of wallpaper or tiles from different batches can differ significantly, therefore, without samples, you will not be able to find the product you need. This can lead to the fact that you will have to completely change the design of the apartment again, ”explains the expert from Kashirsky Dvor.