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How to Save on Home Renovations

October 1, 2014 By: Anita

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When we found my dream home. Although it was a ‘fixer upper’ it had a great floor plan, had many endearing features, matched up with most all of my ‘must-haves’ and ‘wants’, and was in the right price range.

We had bid on another house shortly before we found our home but since it was a down market and people were bidding like crazy on homes, we lost. The house we lost on had over 40 bids on it. We were shocked because we even bid $20k more than the appraisal price and lost.

After more research, we found that the appraisal prices were set unusually low to get lots of bids coming in on HUD homes. So when we found our house and we knew that wanted it, we decided we were not going to lose! Again, this house was a HUD home and had a very low appraisal price so we bid $37k over the asking price. Despite 60 or so bids, we won it!

We were so ecstatic that we actually both got pretty emotional. We were just so happy with the purchase of what we feel and think will be our life-long home!

In the next few weeks the reality of an entire home renovation set in. It was going to be a massive amount of work and neither of us could take time much time off of work. So, we began preparing early and buying items for the renovation as soon as it was fairly certain that we would close on the home. We stored them in ‘free for a month’ storage units. We had about 3 free storage units we could use for a month. Which proved very useful because I could stock up on essential items and take the items out during the renovation process when we needed them.

Our house is 2,500 square feet. It is a multi-level house with 4 levels and it was in pretty rough shape because of a broken pipe that had destroyed a lot of the sheet-rock, ceiling, etc. (I will show before and after photos on each post in this series). In addition to making it live-able, we wanted two laundry rooms, we wanted to finish the basement, and we wanted two kitchens for a mother-in-law apartment, another full bathroom, and basically wanted to make the entire home look really nice.

Conservatively speaking I can say that we saved WELL OVER $45,000.00 on our home renovation. If I were to use the national average cost of what we did, I could easily say that we saved over $100,000.00 on our home renovation.

Our renovation included:

  • installing a full kitchen,
  • installing a full bathroom,
  • redoing all flooring,
  • all new paint,
  • all new lighting,
  • fixing up 2 run down bathrooms,
  • repairing holes in the walls and some broken plumbing,
  • completely tearing out and re-sheet rocking a ceiling that was falling down,
  • re-shingling the house,
  • re-insulating the house,
  • installing a water heater,
  • framing and finishing the basement completely,
  • installing two laundry rooms,
  • and buying furniture and decor for all rooms involved.

Total we spent just over $23,000 for our entire home renovation!!! Some people spend that on one kitchen alone!

People were amazed at how inexpensively (yet very nicely) we did everything and have asked me to share the tips and tricks we used. What is perhaps even more impressive is that we did not do all of this handy work alone. In order to afford this house and renovation we had to keep our full-time jobs. We had no choice (and most often lacked the skill) to do it ourselves. Thus, even with hiring major projects out we completed it for $23k! If you are especially handy, you could do this yourself even cheaper.

Since so much went into this project I will be doing a Money Saving Renovation Series. In this series, I will be covering how we renovated, installed, updated, and decorated our entire house for tens of thousands less than the average person thinks it will cost. Some of the posts in this series will include our:

Full Bathroom Install
Framing and Completely Finishing an Unfinished Basement
Decorating and furnishing two large Living Rooms for Under $2,000 each (including flooring)
Updating old bathrooms for under $300.00 each
How to Re-shingle and update the outside of a home for less
How to decorate each room luxuriously or comfortably for under $1,000. (including flooring)
and possibly a few more.

I have already posted about these three rooms:

Room 1 Top Level before:

How to Save on Home Renovations

To see the after and how we renovated, painted, floored it, etc. for under $500. Link here: How to Decorate a Nursery for $500.00 or less

Room 2 Top Level Before:

How to Save on Home Renovations

We first used this room as an office which was basically free to furnish so I’ve instead linked to the most updated version of this room which breaks down the expenses including paint and flooring:

How to Decorate a Navajo nursery for under $500.00.

Level 2 Dining Room Before (below) Click here for the after and see how I repainted, relighted, decorated and furnished it for under $200!

kitchenbefore1

Level 3 Mother-in-law Kitchen Before (below) Click here for after and another kitchen I recently helped remodel.

How to Save on Home Renovations

 Level 3 Living Room Before     Click here to see how we renovated it and remodeled it for $1,900!

basement1

basement2

Click here to see how we renovated it and remodeled it for $1,900!

Level 3 Bathroom Before- Click here to see the After

bathroom before

Level 2 Front Room Before –Click here to see the After

Screen Shot 2015-02-19 at 9.25.03 AM

Click here to see how I renovated, furnished, and decorated for $560.00 (without flooring included)

Level 1 Master Bedroom Before

masterbedroombefore

Click here for After 

Level 1 Master Bathroom

materbefore

Click here for After

My hope is for other ‘fixer upper’ home-buyers or for those of you who are looking to decorate or renovate an entire room, that you will be able to glean from this series what is applicable to you and save thousands (even tens of thousands) on your home renovation(s).

After our renovation, we requested a professional appraisal of the home. It went up $75,000 in value and has since gone up even more. We gained a huge amount of equity within just a few months without a change in the market and now since the market has gone back up, we are well over that.

Through this experience, I have come to find that you really do not have to sacrifice style and comfort for the money. If you follow these steps you will come to realize this as well!

So check out the links as they are added and hopefully this series will end up saving you thousands…even tens of thousands on your renovation.

How to Save on Home Renovations

For other ‘rich living’ and money-saving Tips please subscribe, like me on Facebook, and follow me on Pinterest and Instagram.

How to Save on Home Renovations

Related posts:

How to Save Thousands on a Bathroom Remodel How to Save Money on Renovating and Decorating a Living Room Flipping an Older Cabin into Your Luxury Vacation Home
Previous Post: « Craisin White Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Next Post: How to Help a Child Learn through Play »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Vasia Kucharchuk says

    June 23, 2016 at 5:21 pm

    Great.. By using these tips, we can save money on home renovations

    Reply
    • Anita Fowler says

      August 19, 2016 at 2:13 pm

      Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply
  2. Bruce says

    September 9, 2016 at 3:17 pm

    Great post, Anita. I really enjoy your post, your useful tips help me a lot. I’m going to try them out with my home remodeling project. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Anita Fowler says

      September 12, 2016 at 6:35 am

      Bruce- I’m glad this helped you! Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply
  3. Sean Hogan says

    December 6, 2016 at 2:30 am

    I couldn’t believe that was doable. That’s quite a lot for home renovation but still you manage to even save more! I cannot wait on your Money Saving Renovation Series as I’m curious on how you did it. Good job!

    Reply
    • Anita Fowler says

      December 7, 2016 at 1:42 am

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Reply
  4. laserlevelguides says

    January 31, 2017 at 11:50 am

    Nice Post !! I like it, it also comprises a lot of useful facts. thanks to share your experience

    Reply
  5. Barbara Herbert says

    May 4, 2017 at 6:23 am

    Great work! Its really important to plan and study the things you need to renovate so that the outcome will be perfect the way you imagine it.

    Reply
    • Anita Fowler says

      May 17, 2017 at 1:11 am

      Agree! Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply
  6. Sharon Elleen says

    June 5, 2017 at 12:04 pm

    I really appreciate the insight here in this post and confident it’s going to be helpful to me and many others. I’m wondering if you or anyone else has additional sources for me to read further and to be able to dig a little deeper?

    Reply
  7. Ryan Wilford says

    June 16, 2017 at 12:53 pm

    This is invaluable information, not only people looking to improve their own homes, but also those who are into flipping houses. Personally, i love to polish already beautiful houses up to make them really shine.

    Reply
    • Anita Fowler says

      June 23, 2017 at 8:35 pm

      Thanks for stopping by. That’s awesome you like to flip houses. Glad to hear this is useful info!

      Reply
  8. Laser Level Tips says

    August 13, 2017 at 8:15 am

    This is a great post. Thank you for the tip on the tape.. any tape ive ever used it’s bled through. Ugh. Also for showing the kids as well, i’ve always wondered where the kids are when you’re doing your projects, good to see them having fun!

    Reply
  9. Adrian at ninjaDIY says

    January 5, 2018 at 12:51 pm

    Hey Anita, just discovered your blog and this post is awesome. You guys were very brave to take on so much DIY renovation.

    It’s a really tough decision to make. But when you actually think about the money that you’ll save … as you said … it would’ve cost you guys well above $100k. So when you think about the money … it’s an easy decision to make, no brainer.

    But from my own experience and other’s people stories as well … often homeowners don’t take into account the huge amount of time and effort that a DIY project can take, specially if you have a day job as well to keep up paying the bills … they don’t take this into account and they get frustrated and burned quickly and very early into the project.

    Very well done Anita. Congratulations!

    Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • Anita Fowler says

      January 8, 2018 at 2:56 am

      Thank you!

      Reply
  10. Benjamin says

    January 26, 2018 at 4:49 am

    Great article. I really enjoy this post. It is really helpful for those who wants to remodel their home. I will also try this for my home remodeling project. Thankyou so much for sharing.

    Reply
    • Anita says

      February 28, 2018 at 2:38 am

      You are very welcome!

      Reply
  11. Jack says

    June 8, 2018 at 5:06 am

    I’m seriously impressed how much money you managed to save on a whole entire home renovation! I’m a tiling contractor and can confirm some of my clients spent that much and more on their kitchens or master bathrooms alone! You know the sad part? The end result did not reflect the amount of money they spent!! I hope more people read your blog and discover that throwing a lot of money at a renovation won’t always guarantee the best results. Taking the time to plan and doing some things yourself can greatly help the end result.

    Reply
  12. karan zale says

    February 25, 2019 at 11:20 am

    thanks for sharing this amazing posting.

    Reply
  13. Alex Maker says

    April 23, 2019 at 8:14 pm

    OMG! How much works you did! Now I doing same works at my home, but I built it from zero. Also I can say that I need some renovations now in my hall, but it is practically new finish works… My works in another rooms broked the hall 🙁 Anyway, all works I doing myself and I like it! 🙂

    Reply
  14. Am Needed says

    August 22, 2019 at 7:56 am

    Thanks for sharing a wonderful blog post! I’m Really impressed it’s very useful tips.

    Reply
    • Anita says

      August 23, 2019 at 12:52 am

      Thank you!

      Reply
  15. Bob says

    April 22, 2020 at 8:20 am

    OMG it was a huge job, Anita! My congrs and thank you for the post, it makes a sense!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Why Knowing The Difference Between Saving for a Rainy Day vs Living for a Sunny Day Can Change Your Future | Live Like You Are Rich says:
    March 20, 2015 at 7:50 pm

    […] we moved into our house we did a complete renovation of our home and while we saved thousands (even hundreds of thousands) on it by being frugal, we didn’t […]

    Reply
  2. Renovate Your Home On A Budget - The Suburban Socialite says:
    September 4, 2018 at 3:19 pm

    […] you will want a professional to do the work for you, but in certain cases you might want to save money by doing it yourself. This is clearly always going to be more economical, but you should only really do it if you are […]

    Reply
  3. Tips For a Beautiful Home - From Kimberly Duncan - The Ana Mum Diary says:
    December 24, 2021 at 6:26 am

    […] They saved money by hiring a contractor to do all of the work they needed at a discount rather than to pay full price for one room at a time. They bartered their services. The result was their renovations were completed quickly and for a lot less money. For more on that, click here. […]

    Reply

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How to live a rich life on any income. Stay-at-Home Mom to 4. 👦🏻👩🏻👧🏼👶🏻Wife 👩‍❤️‍👨Author 📖. Blogger 💻. Christian 🌟. #livelikeyouarerich #LivingRichTips

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