We learned a few things during our first renovation and I want to pass on those lessons to you. One of those lessons was to never underestimate the budget. I'm not going to lie, we went in our first reno with our experience in new builds thinking we would be for sure under budget at the end. We already knew that contingencies in budgets were a must but we were really hoping we wouldn't need to use it. What we should of known is that there's always more to do than meets the eyes in the world of rehab.
When we initially visited this duplex we were approaching fall season and the windows all looked like they were in great condition, however by the time we took possession, it was the middle of January. We quickly realized the windows needed changing just by the way they were constantly fogging up. A cloudy window generally means it's an old window that isn't keeping it's thermal value anymore and in cold climates like Canada, you need to change those suckers so you don't lose all your heat!
Changing all the windows in both units of this duplex would of been a major cost that would of brought us way over budget. Luckily however, these were PVC frame windows which can almost last forever, so instead of changing the entire things, we opted to simply changing the window panes themselves. We hired a professional company to take care of this for us and it still ended up costing only 3,000$ vs. what would of been 15,000$-20,000$ if we would of changed the frames too. This hack basically gave us brand new windows in the entire building which really helped our appraisal value at the end. (It also helped that we added 8" of blown insulation in the attic to help with heat loss. Anything to increase thermal value in Canada!)
The only thing about this hack is that it won't work if you have wood frame windows. If you have wood frame windows it's possible that your windows are already 30+ years old and wood frames tend to rot and don't last like PVC frames do. In these circumstances, it's probably best to change everything. But it's still a great lesson to take with you when visiting properties: notice the frame type!
Happy reno.