Specifications

The "sigh" Gaggenau oven...

At some point your builder will ask you to specify what doors, windows, flooring, kitchen and bathroom fittings etc you want. This can be what most renovators think as being the “fun” bit, but it can also be fraught. Here’s some tips to help you on your way.

1. Get ideas a long time in advance.

If you’re planning a reno, you’ve probably spent many an hour with a cuppa and a stack of house magazines. This is a pretty good place to start. Take notes on the products and the suppliers of the images you like, then follow it up with an internet search and visit to showrooms. There is quite a lot of leg work involved but it is worth it. You will get a good idea of the things you are interested in and what they cost, and therefore a better idea of what your budget should be. You also get a better idea of what’s available – for example the wood floor you like so much may not actually be available because the trees have not been felled!

Cut out pictures of things you like and put them in a scrap book. Download images from the net too – a good website is Houzz.com where you can tailor your search to different rooms, styles and products.

2. Your builder’s preferred suppliers

All builders will have suppliers they usually work with and who they will suggest you use. There are two reasons for this – one is that they know the product they are going to get, and presumably that it will turn up on time etc, but also your builder is likely to get a sizeable discount for referring the trade. It is worth you knowing this as you can ask your builder whether he will share that discount with you (some builders actually pass on the whole discount). This can be as much as 30% on some things, so it is worth you at least looking at your builders preferred suppliers. Bear in mind, though, that this is where your builder can make his "margin" - in other words his profit - and so if you insist on a discount you may just find the costs are added to the bill somewhere else.

Another reason to ask about your builder's preferred suppliers is that you will get a measure of what your builder is able to offer you in terms of quality – if their suppliers are all low end then that’s the kind of build you are going to get.

Remember, however, that you don’t have to use your builder’s suppliers – you can find your own. It may be that there is a sale at a kitchen warehouse which will offer you a substantially better deal than your builder’s supplier, so be prepared to shop around.

3. Decisions decisions

There's an old saying that goes "if you make a decision with no information, you make a bad decision, if you make a decision with too much information you make an even worse decision". The trick to making a good decision is to decide on the 3 or 4 key points that are important to you and to stick to them. So if it is important for you to have a wall oven as you don’t want to have to bend down, then don’t be sidetracked by those lovely freestanding ovens! Of course you will get information as you go along which didn’t enter your thinking before you started and products will be suggested that you might not have known about, but be very careful that you are not just buying the latest trend for the sake of it rather than because you actually need or want it.

4. Compromise

It is a sad fact that for most of us our wish list will remain just that. I would love a Gaggenau oven in my kitchen (sigh - my mother in law has one, the only oven she has ever needed, not replaced in 30 years) but it just ain’t going to happen unless I win the lottery. Have a top three items in your house which you won’t compromise on (ours were good wooden windows, doors and floors ) but be prepared to compromise on everything else.

5. Beauty versus function

These will always be a devil sitting on your shoulders. You see the very practical tap that does what it says on the packet and which your builder tells you will be easy to install/ never need to be mended, but beside it is that beautiful Italian work of art tap that makes you sigh every time you look at it but which you know will probably have the plumber cursing like a trouper. Oooooh, what do you do? Well ideally you try to get beauty and function, but in reality this usually costs heaps more than you can afford.

My advice is that in kitchens and bathrooms, function should always win over beauty, but I try to get things to at least look pretty if not stunning.

6. Know when to buy

This can be really tricky. If you buy your fittings early but then discover that something about your plans needs to change, you could be stuck with the original product. Alternatively, if you hold on until the point where you are just about to install the product, you can suddenly find it's not available. For us this was the lovely sink in the bathroom. We held off buying it, and then found the manufacture, for whatever reason, had decided to put the tap hole in a different place and it no longer fitted. Cue a mad week of searching for another sink and having to put up with a "compromise" option.

I'll confess I don't have the perfect solution here. Take the advice of your builder and suppliers - and cross your fingers!