Renovation Readiness Review Checklist

Read the written scope through once without adding anything from memory, and mark every point where you had to fill in a gap yourself.

The gaps you fill automatically are exactly the ones somebody else will fill differently.

Put the scope alongside your original brief and note anything in the brief that the scope does not answer.

Things drop out between a brief and a scope quietly, and nobody notices until they are missing on site.

Check that everything you intend to keep is named in the scope, rather than simply absent from the list of removals.

Absence is not an instruction, and a strip out follows what is written down.

Check what the scope says about making good where new work meets what is staying, rather than assuming it is covered.

It is the point where two entirely reasonable readings of the same scope most often diverge, and it is simple to settle beforehand.

Ask someone in the household who was not in the meetings to read the scope and tell you what they understand from it.

A second reader finds ambiguity you cannot see, because you already know what was meant.

List every decision still unmade and mark which stage of work each one falls due before.

An open decision with a stage against it is manageable; one without is a surprise waiting to happen.

Check whether any open decision blocks the very first stage, and settle those before anything begins.

Starting with a first-stage decision still open puts you under pressure immediately.

Ask whether anyone is currently waiting on you for information or a choice, and clear those first.

Owners are often the unnoticed hold-up at exactly the point work is due to start.

Confirm which items remain deliberately open and that everyone involved knows they are open rather than settled.

One side treating an item as decided while the other treats it as open is a common start to a dispute.

Check whether any selection you believe is settled is still waiting on a sample or a confirmation nobody has seen.

A choice made from an image is not a settled selection until it has been seen properly in person.

Check that what you have agreed exists in writing and that you hold your own copy of it.

Verbal agreement is remembered differently by everyone involved within a surprisingly short period.

Confirm that the drawings you hold are the current versions and that everyone is working from the same set.

Superseded drawings circulating alongside current ones is a recurring cause of work being done twice.

Gather your list of selections, samples and references in one place, and check that nothing on it is still described loosely.

Loose descriptions become somebody else's choice at the moment an order is placed.

Ask your insurer what they need from you before work begins, and note their answer with the rest of your project paperwork.

This is straightforward before work starts and considerably more awkward once it has begun.

What cover applies during works, and what any other party must hold, is for your insurer and those parties to state, so ask them directly.

Ask which confirmations, notifications or approvals apply to this work, who is obtaining them and where they will be held.

Knowing who holds what is a different thing from assuming that it has been dealt with.

Whether anything requires local confirmation is determined by the relevant authority, and the professionals involved should tell you what applies and who is handling it.

Ask exactly what the property needs to look like when work starts, and write the answer as a list you can work through.

Owners frequently prepare very thoroughly for the wrong things.

Check that the rooms which must be empty are genuinely empty, including the parts of cupboards nobody has opened.

Partly cleared rooms cause the first hold-up of many otherwise well-prepared projects.

Walk the access route and confirm it is clear, and that anything vulnerable along it has been protected or moved.

The route is assessed by everyone on the first morning, and having it ready is your part.

Confirm that meters, isolation points and service cupboards can be reached without moving anything out of the way.

This is one of the first things asked for and one of the last things owners think about.

Anything involving a meter, an isolation point or a service cupboard should be raised with the relevant provider and a suitably qualified trade rather than handled yourself.

Take your own photographs of the property as it stands immediately before work begins, including areas outside the work itself.

A record made before anything happens answers questions that are otherwise impossible to answer.

Confirm that the neighbours who will notice the work have been told, and that they know how to reach you.

Being told beforehand changes how the same disruption is received once it starts.

Check what any building owner, managing agent or freeholder needs from you, and confirm that it has actually been provided.

These arrangements move at their own pace and cannot be compressed at the last moment.

Requirements set by a managing agent, freeholder or building owner come from them alone, so ask what they need and keep their answer in writing.

Confirm any arrangement for using shared entrances, parking, bin areas or outside space, and note who agreed it.

Shared area use is where friction starts, largely because none of it is normally written down.

Arrangements covering pavements, shared land or parking can rest with the local authority or with other owners, so establish with them what applies here.

Agree how deliveries reach the property and who is expected to be there to receive them.

Failed deliveries in the first stage set a tone that is difficult to recover from.

Check that everyone who may need to contact you holds the right details, and that you know who to contact about what.

Contact confusion at the beginning is the source of most avoidable frustration later on.

Collect every question you have asked that has not been answered into one list, rather than leaving them where you asked them.

Unanswered questions hide in message threads and are forgotten first by the person who asked.

Mark which of those questions need answering before work begins and which can follow, and say so when you send them.

Marking urgency is what stops everything being treated as equally deferrable by everyone.

Add the questions you have not asked because they felt awkward, since those are usually the ones that matter.

Awkward questions asked before work starts are ordinary; asked afterwards they sound like accusations.

Note who owes you each answer, since questions sent to the wrong person are the ones that go unanswered.

Routing is more often the problem than any unwillingness to answer.

Ask for the answers that matter in writing rather than accepting them in conversation.

Written answers can be referred back to, while conversations become two different memories.

Decide where your project records will live, and make sure everyone in the household uses the same place.

Records split across two people's phones are records that nobody can actually use.

Agree how and how often you will hear from whoever is running the work, and what a normal update contains.

Expectations about communication are the most common source of low-level dissatisfaction in projects.

Decide what you will photograph as work progresses, particularly anything that is about to be covered over.

Photographs of concealed work stay valuable for the rest of the life of the property.

Agree the route for raising a concern, including who it goes to and what happens next.

Agreed in advance, raising a concern is routine rather than a confrontation.

Continue your record of decisions from the start rather than beginning one when the first disagreement appears.

A record begun late looks like preparation for an argument rather than ordinary practice.

Write down what remains unresolved as work begins, marking each one as deliberately accepted or still to chase.

This list is short, uncomfortable and more useful than any other part of the review.

For each accepted gap, write what you would do if it turned out badly, so the fallback exists before it is needed.

The fallback is what makes an accepted uncertainty genuinely acceptable rather than merely ignored.

List the things you are assuming rather than knowing, and mark which of those you could still confirm.

Assumptions stay invisible until they are written out in a list of their own.

Share the list with whoever is running the work, since some of your gaps may be answerable in a sentence.

Owners routinely carry worries that the professionals involved could have closed immediately.

Look at the list again once work has begun, because the first stage usually answers several of the questions on it.

Reviewing it while work is live turns the list from a worry into a record.