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You may want to spend your money elsewhere.
Key points
- The cost of renovating a home can be very high.
- Before you spend your money, consider whether your home improvements will really deliver the value you expect them to, and whether they’ll be too disruptive to your life.
- Think twice about building a home office, adding a bar, or remodeling your kitchen if it already works fine.
Whether you bought your home somewhat recently or have been living in it for a long time, you may be in a place where you’re finally ready to move forward with renovations. Maybe you’ve been padding your savings account for years to swing some improvements. Or maybe you recently worked on boosting your credit score so you’re in a great position to qualify for a personal loan you can use to finance renovations.
There are many different projects that could enhance your living space and make it so your home better serves your needs. But here are a few home improvements you might regret making in the coming year.
1. Building an office
Working from home becomes much easier when you have a dedicated place to do it. There’s just something awfully distracting about setting up a laptop at a kitchen counter or balancing one on the floor while you lean against your couch.
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But now may not be the ideal time to invest in a home office. The reason? More and more companies are putting an end to remote work and insisting that employees return to the office. And so if you spend money on a home office only to learn that your days of working remotely are numbered, you might really kick yourself afterward.
2. Putting in a bar or entertainment room
If you like hosting, you may be inclined to spend money on a built-in bar so you can take your parties to the next level. You might also be thinking of installing new lighting and other features to create a welcoming atmosphere for in-home entertainment.
But after several years of being cooped up at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of people have gotten tired of staying in and prefer to spend their evenings going out on the town. You might come to feel the same, so before you invest in features that will keep you tied to your home, think about whether that’s really what you want.
3. Remodeling an already-functional kitchen
It’s one thing to renovate a kitchen with cabinets that are falling apart and appliances that barely work. But if you have a functional kitchen, you may want to hold off on remodeling it.
First of all, a kitchen remodel is one of the most disruptive home improvement projects you can take on. When you can’t use your kitchen, it becomes difficult to feed yourself.
Meanwhile, renovating a kitchen means having to acquire a lot of different supplies, from flooring to countertops to updated appliances. But right now, there are still supply chain shortages that could slow your project down substantially. And while it’s one thing to experience delays when you’re renovating the guest bathroom in your home, it’s another thing to get stuck with an unusable kitchen for an extended period of time.
There are plenty of home improvement projects that could make sense to embark on in 2023. But before you sink money into these three, consider whether the timing is right to do so.
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