We’re two years into remodeling our fixer upper! If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to check out Part 1 of this series, We bought a fixer upper! Here’s how it’s going, for an update of what we’ve accomplished to date, along with a detailed look at the renovation budget, and things to consider if you’re interested in purchasing a fixer upper. In this post, we’ll share 5 ways to save money on your home renovation, including the best DIY skills to invest your time in learning.
We’ve saved tens of thousands on our current renovation using these tips. Hopefully, they’ll help you save money on your home renovation as well!
How to save money on your home renovation … tips we’ve used to save big
Our goal on this remodel was NOT to spend as little as possible. Why? Because this is our primary home, rather than an investment property. That said, we are a bit nomadic, so this is definitely not our forever home. However, we want to enjoy the renovations while we do live here.
Additionally, we live in an upscale area, so need to strike the right balance of upgrades to get the best return for our renovation costs. Overspending for a neighborhood will always reduce your returns, but so will spending too little. If buyers feel like they need to renovate your home to meet current standards for the area, then you won’t receive much (if any) value for the renovation work you’ve completed. Our goal was to create an appropriately renovated home while managing costs to maximize our future return.
Here are 5 ways to save money on your home renovation:
1. Get multiple bids for everything
Obtain at least 3 bids for any project more than a couple hundred dollars. Otherwise, you’re likely to get screwed. Additionally, I’d recommend that you not always pick the largest companies when requesting bids… it’s good to include at least one smaller local business as prices can vary. Your best source for recommendations will come from local realtors or neighbors who’ve had recent work done.
When obtaining bids, be consistent and detailed in your request, to ensure that you can easily compare bids. Having an itemized bid will also help you identify any line items you can remove to save money. For example, our remodel bid included $500 for a porta-potty. Instead, we gave the contractors access to one of our bathrooms during the renovation (they were perfect gentlemen).
When you’re dealing with construction labor, pricing can vary widely. And it isn’t always due to differing quality. If you live in an area with heavy renovation or new construction, then you’ll likely pay a premium.
We saw drastic differences in pricing for almost everything we bid, from a 33% difference amongst roofers to over 300% for some electrical work we needed. For example, we had two chandeliers to replace in our two-story foyer. The area is narrow, so traditional scaffolding wouldn’t fit and the work required an extended ladder (yikes). A larger company bid $1,661 for the labor, but the local small business we ultimately used only charged me $545. They were a smaller company, but their reviews were better than the larger company and they did an outstanding job.
2. Cheaper isn’t always better
Ok, I realize this is a bit contradictory to the item above. You should obtain multiple bids to make sure you are paying a fair price, but that doesn’t mean that you should always choose the lowest bid. Many times, you get what you pay for, so if a price seems too good to be true… then it probably is.
The more bids you obtain, the more you’ll know what a fair price is. If you obtain 3 bids to start and they are far apart, that is where I’d recommend you obtain even more bids in order to determine who the outlier is.
Sometimes the lowest bidder is poor at their trade. Othertimes it’s because it’s a scam or they are planning to nickel and dime you later. We walked away from a contractor that kept upping the bid every time we saw him. It was a red flag, so we just said no, and found someone else to do the work.
3. Skip the General Contractor and manage the project yourself
You can save a lot of money if you eliminate a general contractor (“GC”) from your renovation plans! The crux is that you must have the time, patience, and organizational skills to take on the job yourself, or you’ll be living in a perpetual renovation.
I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but American GCs mark up everything they touch by 15% – 40%. This kind of mark-up can derail even the most reasonable budget. While a GC will usually have access to better rates on labor and materials, these discounts will be more than offset by the profit and overhead added to the job. Additionally, these mark-ups are usually buried in the pricing and difficult to spot.
If you don’t want to deal with managing the job, or you’re planning a significant renovation with structural work, you might decide to bite the bullet and hire a GC. However, if you can identify which subcontractors you’d need, I’d encourage you to at least get bids from a few for comparison purposes.
We sucked it up and hired a GC to complete our kitchen and master bath remodel because (1) we had some walls and other structural work, and (2) neither of us had time to manage the project, and I was really stressed out at work. It still bothers me sometimes, but sometimes you have to just do what’s best for your circumstances. We didn’t want to be without those two rooms for too long and our life circumstances at the time made the extra cost for convenience worth it.
That said… here are two examples where we saved thousands by avoiding the contractor….
Kitchen countertops – Just because you use a GC, doesn’t mean you have to let them perform all the work. The GC we used to renovate our kitchen and master bath quoted me over $13k for the quartz I selected. I found a local dealer and fabricator (highly rated) who would source and fabricate the same exact material for just under $9k. That’s over $4,000 in savings for minimal effort!
Minor Structural work – We had an old-school TV nook with a narrow picture window above in our living room. After exploring multiple options, we decided to just rip out the faux walls in the nook and cut down the window to add a big picture window overlooking the backyard.
The contractors we were working with quoted over $9,000 for this work, as well as replacement of the 6’ sliding door adjacent to the space (they would NOT do the job without the slider replacement).
It seemed overpriced to me, so I decided to look for cheaper alternatives. Since we were also considering replacement of windows, I asked the window companies if they would do this work. The company we ultimately chose, agreed to do this work for only $800 + cost of the window. I did have to demo the interior walls for them, but that was easy and fun. Instead of paying the GC $9,000, we only paid the window company about $3,600 all in.
4. Be flexible
You are guaranteed to overpay if you are too rigid in your plans. However, if you are open minded, you may find some impressive deals or alternatives that will save you money and make you equally, if not more, happy with the results.
The best example of this in our remodel so far has been with our kitchen appliances. I love to cook and bake and had been seriously considering high end appliances, like Thermador for our remodel. I was open to either a 36” pro-range or 36” gas cooktop and wall ovens, but just wasn’t sure if I could swallow the cost. My top choice was the 36” dual-fuel Thermador pro-range with a price tag of $8,300 (though it did come with a free dishwasher). The lower-end alternatives I was considering would still be in the $5 – $6k range for these two appliances.
I visited a local appliance store, and learned that Thermador had just released new models. As such, the prior year’s models (which only had minor cosmetic differences) were seriously marked down. He had a new all gas version of the range I’d been considering for only $2,999, with the free dishwasher! This was a couple thousand cheaper than even the lower end models from KitchenAid or GE that I had been considering. I just had to get over the idea of having dual fuel to save over $4,000. Obviously, I took the deal, and after 6 months, I have no regrets! For me, to get a superior product for less than half of what I had budgeted was a win and worth the flexibility.
5. Do it yourself!
This is my favorite tip. You can save an absurd amount of money on your home renovation by doing things yourself instead of hiring the work out. Some may require you to learn some additional skills, but many are easy to learn or only require skills you likely already have.
Here are 7 DIY skills that are relatively easy to learn (and safe) to save money on your next home renovation:
Demo
This is one of the easiest tasks to DIY in a renovation. It also happens to be fun and a great way to get some pent-up aggression out! All you need are some googles, a dust mask, hammer, and pry bar to demo most things. The costs of having someone else do this work can add up quickly during a remodel.
We let the contractors perform the majority demo work for our master bath and kitchen remodel, since we were both too busy at work to deal with it. We already had the skills and tools to do it, just not the time in this case. However, we have saved $2,000- $3,000 performing some of the demo work for other projects though.
If your cabinets and appliances are nice enough to donate, you may even be able to find a local non-profit who will remove them for you for a nominal fee. Since we had tile countertops, the added surcharge to remove those made this option too cost prohibitive for us.
Painting
Painting is the DIY skill that most of us have performed at one time or another to save money.
I’m the primary painter in this household. And while I don’t love painting, I have gotten both better at it and faster during this remodel. We hired out the painting of the main living areas when we purchased the home for convenience, since the ceiling is 20 feet in several areas. However, we painted each of the bedrooms and bathrooms in the home ourselves. Our painter quoted $250 – $350 per room, depending on size, which included the cost of paint and materials. He let us use his discount code to purchase the remaining paint we needed for the house (50% off!). After the cost of paint and supplies, painting these rooms ourselves saved us about $2,000.
Basic electrical – Changing out light fixtures
There are a lot of things that can go wrong when working with electricity if you don’t know what you’re doing (i.e. burning down your house). Because of this, I’d recommend delegating any complicated tasks to a trained professional. However, if you learn some basic electrical skills, there are there are a number tasks you can perform which will save you a lot of money over the years.
Once you learn basic wiring, you can easily swap out existing outlets, light fixtures, or ceiling fans. YouTube and other resources make learning these skills easier than ever. We received quotes from $250 – $300 to swap out ceiling fans and light fixtures throughout our home. Rather than paying someone, Mr. RFL learned how to do this and has already replaced 18 light fixtures, ceiling fans, and HVAC fans in our home, saving us over $5,000! He can install light fixtures pretty quickly now, and will be able to use these skills again in the future to save us even more money.
Trim work
Trim work requires a bit more skill and patience but is easily learnable and another DIY skill which can save you money now and in the future.
Our home had builder basic 2.5” baseboards throughout. They were way too short for our high ceilings, and since we were redoing the floors throughout the house anyways (which would require removing them and then reinstalling or replacing them), we decided to just replace them all with a more contemporary 5.25” as a part of the remodel. Our general contractor quoted an average of $5 per linear foot, and Lowes quoted nearly $4 per linear foot but would not perform any finishing work at that price (filling nail holes, caulking, & painting), so I’ll go with $5/foot as the hire out estimate.
The total cost of materials for us to do this work ourselves, including baseboards, finishing supplies, and including 10% extra for waste is $2.25/foot. At some point, I performed an exact measurement, but since I can’t find it, my estimate is that we have approximately 1,000 linear feet of baseboards. Using these amounts, upgrading the baseboards ourselves saved us about $2,750. As an added bonus, this project has fueled Mr. RFL’s new found passion for woodworking, which he shares with my dad (good for some FIL and SIL bonding) and will likely spend more time on in the future.
Basic plumbing work – Changing out faucets, etc.
Plumbing is another trade which is subject to strict builder codes and can cause a physical and financial mess if done improperly. That said, fixing a leak or swapping out faucets or other fixtures is a relatively easy skill to learn, which can save you time and money. You can learn basic plumbing skills on Youtube or from a skilled friend.
What’s the going rate to have a plumber install a new faucet for you or fix a leak? In our area of the US, it’s about $100-$200. For an hour of time and a couple bucks of material, you can easily learn to do this yourself. We’ve replaced a few ourselves (yes, by “we”, I mean Mr. RFL) and saved a few hundred bucks… and have more to DIY on this as we begin remodeling our daughter’s bathroom.
We also recently purchased a new water softener (a necessity in Arizona) and whole house water filter system, which Mr. RFL installed himself. The plumbing materials were about $200, but it would have cost us $400 – $600 to have a plumber do it.
Giving existing cabinetry a facelift
If the cabinetry is in good shape, but you don’t like the style, you can save a significant amount of money by just refinishing with paint and/or replacing the doors and hardware. You can easily do this using a DIY kit or materials purchased from a big box home store.
We haven’t done this yet, but this is in the plans for remodeling our daughter’s bathroom. Replacing the two vanities in her bathroom would cost several hundred dollars, but painting and adding new hardware will cost less than $100.
Finish your closets
There is a huge industry (at least in the US) for finishing closets with custom cabinetry. It’s super convenient, but it’s also super expensive! In our last home, quotes for the closet systems our neighbors received for similar closets were between $4,000 and $6,000. It was a big closet, but that’s still insane to me. We purchased a build yourself semi-custom systems for about $1,200, saving thousands of dollars. You can also make your own closet organizers or cabinet organizers for even cheaper. We’re planning to custom finish the closets in our new home from scratch in 2021.
Bonus story: Our biggest DIY project tackled to date (and the one we’re most proud of)
Remodeling our ugly laminate stairs was the most nerve-wracking and satisfying DIY project that we’ve completed to date. The stairs were ugly and screamed 1990’s. Photos of wood planks on laminate flooring glued to treads with no overhang (not to code) and a weird trip-hazard/bump at the ends (also, not to code).
The railing was an easy fix with paint, though it did require a lot of time. The stairs themselves were a different story. It took Mr. RFL several hours just to rip off the first two treads, and at that point, I was seriously concerned that we had bitten off more than we could chew. We also have a sprawling staircase, which meant extra-large stair treads with angles for the bottom few stairs.
The project was frustrating and required a significant amount of time and patience. We purchased oak treads from our local big box store. Then Mr. RFL cut, sanded, and shimmed the wood in place. For the risers, we added a ¼” plywood to the existing particle board risers. We’re a team, so while Mr. RFL does the woodworking, I do most of the finishing work which included filling in nail holes, staining and adding several coats of poly.
From my research, it seems that doing this work ourselves saved us $1,000 – $2,000 and should give us a return of well over 100% when we sell the house.
How will you save money on your next home renovation?
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