First Home Fix's Raisa Kuddus And Austin Coleman Share Renovation Tips For New Homebuyers - Exclusive

Buying a home for the first time can be a thrill — there's nothing like the feeling of finally having a space that's completely yours. No more worries about losing your deposit if you hang a painting and put a hole in the wall, and no more having to endure paint colors or bathroom fixtures you find embarrassing. If you want to get rid of something or change something, absolutely nobody can stop you. Your only barriers are your budget and your self-doubt.

But money and indecision are still huge barriers, especially for first-time homeowners. In their new HGTV show, "First Time Fix," designer Raisa Kuddus and builder Austin Coleman team up with new homeowners to help them turn their starter homes into the homes of their dreams. To stay within budget, homeowners contribute sweat equity, working alongside Kuddus and Coleman on their homes, while Kuddus and Coleman put their creativity to work devising unique and attractive — but affordable — design solutions. In an exclusive interview, Kuddus and Coleman share their best tips for new homeowners looking to refresh their spaces.

You might know the feeling — you know your home needs a refresh, but you have no idea exactly what you want to do, or how to go about deciding this. And if you're new to renovation and nervous around power tools, this can be even more intimidating. The idea of smashing through a wall of your house (even if it's a wall you hate) may feel like a bridge too far.

Austin Coleman sees this all the time — and he has a suggestion for homeowners who want to personalize their homes but are scared to take the first step. "Paint your favorite wall," he advised. "Because we build up all these barriers. There's this barrier to entry, 'Oh, I'm not handy enough' or 'I'm not skilled enough.' But almost anybody can just take a paint roller and roll a wall, and then once you break that barrier, I feel like a whole new world opens up to you. So go ahead and just grab that bucket of paint and paint that wall, and then you'll be inspired to do so many other things after that."

New homeowners may be tempted to launch major renovations the moment they close, but Raisa Kuddus advises against this. "Live in your house for a little bit before you start huge renovations so you know your space, you know the flow of your day-to-day activities," she suggested. This, she said, will give you time to identify what needs changing. "You can start categorizing what's the most important problems or the hierarchy of problems in your house," she said.

Prioritizing your renovations will also help you manage your budget more effectively. "Unfortunately, when you're renovating things yourself, I think almost every person underestimates the cost of it, so if you can start figuring out which problems you want to hit first, that helps," Kuddus said. Related to this, Austin Coleman adds that homeowners should stay focused and avoid mission creep. "You start to do a renovation, and when other ideas start to pop in your head as you're doing the renovation, that's where things can kind of go awry. 'Well, I can do this or I can do that. Or actually, you know what? I want the washroom over here.' And then that's when things can kind of spin out of control," he said.

"First Home Fix" airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV.