As time passes and a home falls into disrepair, renovation becomes less a nice option to have than an essential. The trouble is, however, that aged buildings often present additional obstacles to be surmounted en route to making improvements.

From structural issues to problems relating to the availability of parts, there are a number of special challenges that might need to be dealt with by a home renovation professional. Curious about what kinds of problems you might need to handle when renovating older homes? Here are a few examples to note.

Renovating Old Attics Can Be an Expensive Challenge for Home Renovation Technicians

A lot of attics are mostly ignored by their owners. They become storage space for Christmas trees and old tax documents, collect moisture (and sometimes animals), and may decay quicker than most parts of a home. As years go by, attics could well fall into a state of rather profound disrepair.

Come renovation time, this could make for a significant challenge for a home renovation technician. New moisture-proofing might be required, damaged materials might need to be replaced, and there’s always the potential that a new intended use for the space might create problems. Adding extra headspace to an attic that is being converted to a bedroom, for instance, is not exactly easy or cheap. All of these tasks are well within the capabilities of graduates of home renovation technician school, but they might take a fair bit of time and effort to complete.

Some Components From When a Building Was Constructed Might Not be Available

Standards change, and with those changes can come headaches for renovation professionals looking to make an old place look a little more modern. You might have difficulty finding bathtubs that fit a space correctly, or modern doors or flooring made from a formerly common, now rare material. When these components are essential to the completion of a project, this can be a bit of an obstacle to be overcome.

 Needing to find outdated components or uncommon materials is an important renovation challenge

Largely, this is a problem resolved through diligent research, with appropriate materials and components often sourced from antiques shops or specialty stores. Since older components will generally be as simple to work with as those that are more common today, the hands-on skills developed in home renovation technician training will still apply.

Fixing Bad Renovations Isn’t Uncommon for Those Who Become a Home Renovation Technician

One of the great frustrations of home renovation professionals is encountering poor attempts at repairs or construction and needing to fix them up. There might be exposed wiring that needs to be covered up in a wall, horrible mismatches in exterior finishing, uneven floors, stuck doors, and any number of other problems indicative of sloppy prior work. Worse, older homes might have had several such renovations over time, leading to a bit of a mess for a home renovation technician to go in and fix.

This isn’t so much a test of skill as it is a test of patience, but it’s something that it is almost inevitable that a home renovation expert will encounter in their career. It’s not all bad, though. Finding especially bad examples of prior renovations could give you some fun stories to share with friends you make in the industry.

You’ll likely have a few chuckles with friends over the weird “repairs” you encounter while renovating

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In the process of beautifying and fixing up a home, home renovation pros often encounter signs that they are not alone. Waste, bite marks, and the pitter-patter of little feet are just some of the indicators that there’s a pest of some kind in the area, most likely causing damage that will need to be addressed.

This type of nuisance is common just about everywhere buildings are found, with pests coming in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some, though, stand out from the crowd as being particularly problematic.

Here are some of the common pests that tend to give home renovation pros the most grief.

If Undiscovered, Racoons Can Wreak Havoc on Attics

When Racoons get tired of dumpster diving, they often take up residence in the attic of a home. Their nimble fingers and surprising strength allow them to rip holes through walls and even roofs, giving them easy access to a nice, insulated space in which they can nest. The trouble is, invading raccoons will often trample insulation, rip up ducts or wiring, and otherwise destroy attics. They are also known to leave significant amounts of waste behind, which can be a biohazard.

Beyond potentially needing to delay work until a wildlife removal specialist can remedy the problem, the presence of racoons probably won’t pose the biggest problem to your work when you become a home renovation technician. Insulation can be replaced, holes in walls can be patched, and other issues can be taken care of fairly efficiently.

Being surprised by a racoon while you’re in the middle of some roofing work, though, is never much fun. Likewise, if a racoon moves in and starts destroying your recent hard work while you’re halfway through a project, you probably won’t be especially fond of them.

Ants & Termites are Annoyances That You’ll Likely Deal With After Home Renovation Training

Insects are some of the most notorious household pests, and for good reason. Termites and carpenter ants in particular have earned reputations for spreading wide, spreading fast, and chewing up the wooden structure of a house. This often creates damage that should be replaced not only for aesthetic reasons, but also because it compromises the structural integrity of a home.

Carpenter ants and termites can cause real structural damage to a home

Since home renovation training teaches students how to complete all kinds of house work – from installing windows to building entire rooms, and more – graduates are quite likely to be tasked at some point with repairing the damage caused by hungry insects. The main aggravation here will be that insects often cause damage to home elements that are difficult to repair, like molding or columns. With good, hands-on training from a school like North American Trade Schools, though, you will be up to the task, and able to fix even the trickiest insect-related damage.

Become a Home Renovation Technician and You Probably Won’t Like Mice & Rats

Mice and rats are a special kind of problem because they can go just about anywhere in a home and destroy just about anything. They chew through walls, through floors and roofs, through insulation, wires, and wooden supports. They also build nests in inconvenient places, often creating a greater risk of fire. Nobody wants them, but just about every home will have them at some point, and home renovation technicians often need to clean up the messes they make – perhaps more than once.

Mice and rats are everywhere, and cause all kinds of damage to homes

It might seem annoying that the renovation work you do could end up in need of redoing if rodents show back up and destroy it.  It’s worth considering, however, that their seeming dedication to destroying homes accounts for a not-insignificant amount of the work that is out there for home renovation pros. With the interesting, varied work and healthy salaries available, it’s probably best to take the bad with the good and accept that your craftsmanship might occasionally get chewed up a little bit.

Are you thinking about attending home renovation technician school?

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A career in home renovation might seem pretty straightforward. It can be a chance to work with your hands, to solve interesting spatial or design puzzles, and to finish the day having built or improved something.

These are all satisfying elements to the job, but there’s also a lot more to look forward to in this kind of career. Some pleasant surprises await ambitious students once they finish their training and enter the workforce.

Want to get better acquainted with some of these lesser-known aspects of home renovation careers? Here are some fun facts you ought to know.

A Career in Home Renovation Can Involve a Variety of Interesting Tasks

One of the fun things about becoming a home renovation professional is that it’s possible to mould your career into whatever you most enjoy. Some home renovation professionals will be specialists, choosing to become experts in areas like floor installation or exterior finishing work, while others love doing it all and work as generalists. It’s the kind of career where there’s every opportunity to do the kind of work you like doing each and every day.

It can take some time to figure out where your passions lie, and this is why professionals who attend home renovation college will have an advantage over others in their field. Hands-on training programs will give you a great deal of exposure to the different tasks you might complete as a home renovation professional and let you enter your career with an idea of what you like and dislike. That’s a nice head start to let you start directing your efforts to those areas you like most while others are still trying to get their bearings.

Home renovation professionals can become specialists or do it all – it’s up to them!

There is High Demand for Home Renovation Professionals

The Canadian real estate market is quite healthy, and wherever there are buildings going up or changing hands, there’s an opportunity for renovation professionals to enjoy stable work. All across the country, the Canada Job Bank says the career outlook is fair to good, with many opportunities available in major cities, and Ontario in particular. Entering a career in home renovation, in other words, is a great way to secure stable work that you’ll enjoy doing for years to come.

For even more of a leg up in your drive to get a great new career, it’s worthwhile to attend a construction school that makes a point of assisting its students with securing employment. North American Trade Schools, for instance, has longstanding relationships with employers working in the home renovation and construction industries, and is notified of great employment opportunities before they are posted publicly. Being privy to this kind of valuable information can be a great way to get ahead in the earliest stages of your career.

Teamwork Can Take Construction School Graduates Far

You might imagine construction work to be something that involves a lot of individual effort, and that’s true to an extent. Home renovation professionals can enjoy a fair amount of autonomy when working on a particular task, and it does only take one person to drill a hole or hammer a nail.

There’s an important social consideration to this field, though, that shouldn’t be forgotten about. Coordination is required for some larger tasks, and all work of course needs to be according to the plan communicated by the client and employer.

There’s a type of camaraderie, too, that is enjoyed on work sites. You don’t need to be a chatterbox to fit into this dynamic, but it’s good to be pleasant, courteous, and willing to help out your team. Having an ability to express yourself well and take instructions are therefore quite important in this line of work.

Being able to communicate well and take instructions are important skills for renovation pros

Do you want to get started training for a career in home renovation?

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If you’re accustomed to working with your hands, you probably know that doing so comes with a sense of satisfaction that you just won’t find behind a desk. Manipulating materials, sizing them and aligning them, and then joining them together to create a greater, functional whole is a very rewarding experience. And, at the end of a long, productive day, when you’re tired and a little sore (in a good way), you’ll always have the satisfaction that comes from taking on hard work.

Want a little variety in the things you do? Going to school to become a home renovation professional is a great way to prepare for a career that involves many different kinds of hands-on tasks. Here’s a peek at some of what you can do as a home renovation pro.

Floor Installation is a Fun Job Home Renovation Technician School Teaches You to do

Floors are much more than first meets the eye. At the top, of course, you have the surface you see and walk on, often tiles or lengths of wood or laminate. Perhaps surprisingly, while this level is obviously important, it’s also more or less decorative. This is because beneath the tiling or timber is a subfloor, there to provide structural stability for the layer above.

Beneath that are joists, working a bit like a skeleton made of wood, meant to provide further stability to the layers above. Installing a floor correctly means installing all of these different elements, taking care to ensure they are secure and steady.

If you’re the kind of person who likes developing a project step by step, all the while watching it grow closer to completion, then installing a floor is the kind of hands-on project you’ll probably love. It does take some specific know-how to accomplish, though, which means completing home renovation technician training is important. This kind of environment will provide you with plenty of hands-on learning opportunities geared toward teaching you to install floors and complete other important home renovation tasks, allowing you to step into your career with the knowledge and abilities you will need.

Hands-on training can help you learn the right way to perform tasks like floor installation

Home Renovation Technician Training Will Help You Learn to Put up Walls

Walls are another interesting home renovation project. Like floors, they’re multi-layered objects, made from frames of thin pieces of wood – called “studs” – holding up sheets of drywall. “Plates,” which are just horizontal pieces of wood, are also crucial components, running along the top and bottom of the inner wall and connecting to the studs. You need all of these elements to build a wall that not only functions as a barrier, but is secure and able to serve as a surface on which frames, TVs, and other heavy objects can be securely hung.

Putting a wall together bit by bit can be fun, but with the pressing need for walls to be safe, it’s vital to ensure that the home renovation technician school you attend offers a high calibre of training. An institution like North American Trade Schools offers instruction by licensed, highly trained professionals, ensuring students learn how to safely complete these kinds of large-scale renovation jobs.

Home Renovation Technicians Can Mix Things up by Doing Exterior Work, Too

Exterior finishing work and shingling are a little different from other home renovation work in a few ways. You get to be outside, for example, and the fresh air and sunshine can be a nice change of pace. There also isn’t quite the same process of building something piece by piece – shingles and exterior finishing are the end touches on a job.

That said, it’s pretty critical to get these jobs done correctly. Roofs and building exteriors serve the important function of preventing the outside world, including rain, wind, and other natural forces, from damaging the interior of the building. You’ll want to get a lot of practice completing this type of job before entering the workforce.

Because of their critical function, it’s important to get roofs and exteriors right

If you want that kind of thorough training but don’t want to wait forever before starting your new career, look for accelerated programs that teach what you want to learn fast. At some of the better schools, you can become job-ready for home renovation roles in under a year – a perfect opportunity to upskill and start working quickly.

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Sometimes, it’s clear as day when a person is the right fit for a particular career. They might have a natural talent, or a perfect personality for the type of work that the career involves. Whatever the case might be, being able to realize this in advance can be a huge advantage, and let a person know that they are on the perfect professional track.

Wondering what kinds of signs exist that can show you that you’re a perfect fit for a career as a home renovation technician? Here’s a look at a few of the best indicators.

1. Having Physical Stamina is a Big Advantage for a Home Renovation Technician

Home renovation is satisfying hands-on work, and a great outlet for people who are able to maintain a steady physical work output over the course of the day. It can, however, be demanding to move supplies around, use tools, and be on your feet all day long.

Having good endurance is a great indication that you’re the kind of individual who is meant for a career in home renovation. If you’re someone who can work hard throughout the day, and do safe, good quality work even when you’ve gotten a little fatigued, you’re exactly the kind of person that employers in the home renovation and construction sector are looking for.

2. Having Great People Skills Can Help You Stand Out in Home Renovation

Being a good people person is a reliable sign that you’re an excellent candidate to become a home renovation technician. Home renovation pros often need to interact with the owner or residents of a building that is being renovated, as well as get along with a group of other workers who might be hot and tired after a long day. If you are someone who is likable, or who can just get along well with others, you could be perfect for this line of work.

Want a little extra insight into the best ways to get along in the workplace? Enroll in a training program at a top institution like North American Trade Schools. Not only can you develop the technical skills that employers will look for, but you can also pick the brains of the experienced faculty about the kinds of behaviour that will help you thrive in a professional environment. Learn from their years of being home renovation workers, and you can walk into your career with a great handle on how to present yourself as a pleasant professional.

Ask your professors for their expert insight into how to be a personable home renovation professional

3. An Eye for Detail Makes for a Great Home Renovation Technician

To succeed in a career in home renovation, and construction more generally, it is essential to be able to produce accurate work. Measurements need to be precise, for example, and cuts made to wood, drywall, or other materials need to be clean and even. The importance of making things measure up correctly, and fit together well, cannot be overstated in this line of work.

Precision and attention to detail are important in home renovation and construction

If you’ve got an eye for detail, and live by the philosophy of “measure twice, cut once,” you’re a perfect fit for the construction and home renovation industries. Enrolling in hands-on home renovation technician training can help you translate these natural traits into highly polished, in-demand skills that can land you the rewarding career you want. With training programs typically lasting as little as under a year, you can expect to make quick leaps in your capabilities en route to your new career in home renovation!

Are you convinced that home renovation training is right for you?

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Dino is a Home Renovation Technician instructor at the London campus of North American Trade Schools. In this video, he talks about the Home Renovation Technician program and also the Construction industry as a profession.

Transcript

“A Home Renovation Technician is a person who renovates homes. It can include anything from putting an addition to a house, re-doing a floor in the house, installing windows are doors, finishing an unfinished basement and building a recreation room.

As a Home Renovation Technician, you have the ability to specialize in certain fields or you can become multi-faceted in with the ability to do mutliple tasks.

Charactertistics of a good Home Renovation Technician include strong math skills as you would be required to do a number of tasks that require measuring and cutting. Additionally, excellent communication skills are required due to the amount of work that you would be required to do in a team setting with other trades workers.

North American Trade Schools training includes the ability to learn and use a number of different tools and materials that are needed for each individual job and project. It also includes a solid foundation in learning building codes.

In addition to the hands-on training that is provided, North American Trade Schools instructors are licensed carpenters, plumbers and electricians. The instructors teach their real-world experience to students with the goal of passing on all of their knowledge and expertise in their respective fields.”

 

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Kathryn K. is a Home Renovation Technician student at the London campus of North American Trade Schools. In her review, she talks about her experience at NATS, her instructors and why she decided to attend the school to study to become a Home Renovation Technician.

 

Transcript

“My name is Katheryn K. and I’m starting the home renovations course here at NATS. Before I came to NATS I was working in an office for the last fifteen years and you know it wasn’t what I wanted to do, I needed to get my hands dirty and I decided, you know what, I can do this, I’m going to take a shot and jump right in.

I chose NATS because I was looking online and I saw a testimonial by another woman and I thought, you know what, if she can do it so can I. What I like best of the instructors is how knowledgeable they are and how willing they are to help you learn what you need to learn and they won’t stop until you understand it.

What I really enjoy about the campus is the small atmosphere of it the amount of equipment that they have for every students, you’re not waiting, you don’t have to take as many turns and you actually do get a lot of hands on experience.

Something that I learned that mats that I enjoy the most is not only learning how to build roofs and stairs, I actually learned self-confidence and I learned that I am capable of doing things that are typically a man’s job. In five years I see myself owning my own renovating business, flipping homes and renovating older homes, making a little shiny new.

I find it easy to make friends on campus because everyone here is extremely friendly, teachers included and it doesn’t matter what course they’re in, they’re willing to help you with any questions that you may have. My family is very proud that I’m attending NATS, they’re very looking forward to myself renovating all their homes.

They’re very supportive and they’re very willing to help me along the way in any way that they can. If you were undecided about coming to NATS just come out here and come for the tour and see for yourself how wonderful it is out here.”

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