Confession time! I am addicted to HGTV. I have been known to watch it for hours on end, just trying to glean more and more ideas from its non-stop litany of shows that turn ordinary rooms into magical wonderlands full of DIY projects. Couple this with the purchase of a 70s-fabulous house full of shag carpet and floral wallpaper, and I have spent the better part of a year staring at walls and imagining the possibilities. The possibilities, my friend, are truly endless. Unfortunately though, those possibilities are also expensive.
Anyone who has tackled a DIY home improvement project in that past can relate here. Usually by the time I’ve armed myself with all of the tools needed to get the job done, then motivated myself (or someone else) to actually do the work, I’m already a little financially deeper into the project than I had hoped which leaves little money left over for those final homey touches so critical to the finished project.
No matter how you cut it (or drill it, or hammer it…), home improvement gets expensive fast, and even faster if you don’t plan ahead. We’re about halfway through our major plans for our house. We’ve done a lot of the work ourselves, and there are a few things we’ve learned along the way. Ready?
- Plan (and budget) for the unexpected… sometimes you can get off easy – the ‘unexpected’ is something you can fix with a bit of extra time and elbow grease (and some added frustration). When we tore out the old warped pine planks in our house, we realized that the installer had both glued and nailed the boards to the subfloor, meaning that each individual piece had to be scraped off by hand, adding 2 weeks and a lot of splinters to our project. Other times, the situation ends up costing more money, like when I stripped the wallpaper in the bathroom and realized that the walls underneath had never been primed or painted first. The walls were damaged beyond repair, so I opted for a more-expensive-than-paint Venetian plaster application to cover up the various pits and holes. Regardless, something is not going to work out how you envisioned so plan for it upfront.
- Wait for the right deal… We’re lucky to have a wide variety of home improvement stores near us – Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware, among others. We’re regularly in and out of these stores anyway which has afforded us the luxury of cherry-picking items we love when they’re on sale. Home Depot runs a Behr paint sale nearly every 3- or 4-day weekend, which has probably saved us a couple hundred dollars over the past year. Home Depot & Lowe’s offer regular specials where you can receive a gift card of a few hundred dollars with any major appliance purchase. Ace Hardware runs a free rewards program that allows you to earn points for your purchases, then receive monthly gift certificates to use toward your next purchase. In addition, there are some “outlet” stores near us that buy seconds from the bigger stores, then sell them at a discount. We bought a brand new dining room light fixture for $17, and enough marble to cover 2 of our bathrooms for about $300! It’s worth it to take your time with your projects if you can – we’ve gotten some amazing deals just by forgoing the vision of a big “reveal” a la HGTV, and instead gradually adding/replacing as we go.
- Get discounted gift cards…. There is a bit of a risk involved here, but the payoff can be very worth your effort. A few months ago, Microsoft’s Live.com cashback program was running a cashback promotion on Ebay purchases – purchase any item through the “Buy It Now” feature and you would receive 30% cashback on your purchase. I was lucky enough to catch this promotion just at the right time, and ended up purchasing a $500 Home Depot Gift Card for $550, then receiving $165 back from Live, making my net cost $385, or about a 23% savings on anything purchased using that card. You may not be able to find a deal like that, but you can still get some decent discounts with a little effort – there are still many sites that offer cashback for your online purchases through Ebay, or even directly through the home improvement store. Also, check your airline and hotel reward programs to see if they offer gift cards in exchange for any ‘orphaned’ points you may not use anyway.
- Use what you have… Repurposing or reusing existing items can help you save a load of cash. For example, we ended up giving a fresh coat of paint to things like bathroom vanities & cabinets, wall-mount toilet paper holders, ceiling medallions, baseboard trim, doors, and anything else that was still in good shape but needed to be freshened up. We also tried to fix or adapt things to fit our needs instead of replacing it outright. The existing sinks & cabinets in the bathrooms looked brand new once we updated the faucet and hardware. Same thing with the freshly painted doors when we added new doorknobs and hinges. And, when none of the above applied, we had a garage sale and actually recouped a nice sum for ourselves!
- Make quick fixes until you can afford what you really want… We based a lot of our home improvement timeframes around which rooms needed to have the ugly beaten out of them first, and trust me when I say there was a lot of ugly! Sure, the kitchen is not my favorite, but then again it’s not my least favorite either. To make it a little more palatable while we put aside money for a major overhaul in a few years, I made some simple fixes like switching out the cabinet hardware and covering or distracting from the color scheme with houseplants, wall decor, and a new light fixture. In other words, unless it makes your skin crawl to even look at it, just go with it for a while. In the end it’s worth it to have what you REALLY want and can afford, instead of going for the cheapest, fastest fix upfront, only to hate that in a few years and want to do it all over again.
- Don’t be afraid to buy used… especially when it comes to large furniture items and accessories. Craigslist is perfect for discounted furniture and other household items – we bought a brand name, solid wood armoire for our living room for $350. Sure, we had to pick it up and unload it ourselves, but it’s perfect for our room and we would have paid twice that for the most basic model available brand new. Consider this: like cars, the majority of furniture loses value the minute you buy it. Styles change, your taste evolves, things get damaged, and suddenly that gorgeous dining room set that used to the centerpiece of your house looks tired and dated. Scouring the local classifieds, garage sales, and thrift stores is a great way to save money AND inject a little personality into your place. Who needs matchy matchy sets anyway? Same thing for accessories – you’re bound to be tired of your displayed wall decor & knick-knacks even quicker than your furniture. Thrift stores are especially good for finding frames, original art, material for reupholstering furniture or making pillows, and glass items like vases and candleholders. Be creative!
- Lastly… Take a break. Ask for help when you’re in over your head. Make sure you always have a room free from any signs of renovation to relax in at the end of the day, because it can get pretty stressful at times. Oh, and realize that the people on HGTV have a whole army of people off-camera who are helping to get these projects done!
Despite the setbacks, the injuries, the sleepless nights, and yes, the tears, I would buy this house all over again because the end results to our efforts have turned out pretty darn amazing.
