How To Save Money When Renovating Your Home

Thursday 17 January 2019


Changing things around your home is something that many people may decide to do at some point, whether this is when moving in or after a few years of being there. When myself and fiancée bought our house back in June 2018, we moved into the property and knew that there were a number of things that we either wanted to change or that needed replacing. We learnt a lot of things when renovating our house and turning it into the home it now is. This post contains some advice about how we saved money while going through the process.

Get A Range Of Quotes For Work

There will be some jobs that you can't always do yourself and you'll need a skilled tradesperson, such as an electrician or plumber. Asking friends and family for recommendations of who they have used before can be a really good way to find reliable and reasonably priced people. We found tradespeople this way and they did a great job without costing us the earth. If you aren't able to find someone through recommendations, be sure to get prices from a few different companies. Don't just get one get one quote and assume that's just how much it will cost. You can often get the same work done but you could be paying hundreds of pounds more for one company compared to another. Try to find reviews online by other customers to make sure they sound reputable and others are happy with the work that has been done to be sure they aren't cheap for the wrong reasons.

Do The Flooring Yourself

As the flooring in your house covers such a large area, you might be put off by the potential costs of redoing this. When we got into our house we knew that the carpet in the living room and all three bedrooms were in serious need of replacement so we started to price up the options. After purchasing laminate to replace the carpet in all four rooms, we looked at the cost of getting someone in to do it and felt we would be better spending that money elsewhere so chose to install it ourselves. Taking up the old carpet was fairly easy, all you should need is a Stanley knife to cut the carpet into strips so that you can easily take it out, a pair of pliers to pull out any staples used to secure the carpet underlay and a chisel or screwdriver to pull up any carpet grippers. After securing any loose floorboards, laying the laminate and cutting to size is a relatively simple process to follow and once you have laid a few rows you'll soon get into a routine.

Upgrading Your Kitchen On A Budget

You might think that redoing your kitchen is going to cost thousands and you'd have to get it completely gutted and redone, which is the same thought we had initially. As we didn't have this kind of money to get the kitchen refitted, we decided to look at other options and came up with a few areas to upgrade. We redecorated all of the kitchen units from a drab green to a dark grey which only cost £25 for a tub of cupboard paint from B&Q. This made such a difference and immediately changed the look of the whole room. We then removed the old worktops, bought new ones online, cut them to size ourselves and fitted them in place, along with a new kitchen sink, which wasn't as hard as it may sound. The old black tiles were removed and we re-tiled the wall around the worktops and the splashback area above the cooker with white subway tiles which made a great improvement. To finish off the kitchen, we added some white lino tiles that could be stuck on top of the older lino which really brightened the room up and made it feel bigger. This flooring may not stay forever but for £30 it gave a budget-friendly option to improve the overall appearance. You might not want to do all of the things I've described but each one could make a noticeable improvement to your kitchen.

Shop Around

There is often a lot of things you need to buy for your home and it can soon start to total up. Taking the time to look at a range of shops for items could end up saving you a lot of money. If you haven't been to IKEA then it's well worth a trip as they have pretty much everything you could think of at different price points. Homesense is another favourite home store due to their collection of unique products. The prices can vary greatly due to the type of products they stock, but you can also get some bargains, such as a dressing table stool that we picked up for only £23. Another option if you are in need of some furniture but are on a tight budget, you can often find a lot in charity shops. Even if this would be used for a few months, the prices will be much lower than a new item from a store. Discount retailers such as B&M have a surprising amount of home items including cushions, decorative pieces, large mirrors, bathroom bits plus even more.

Be Savvy When Buying Items

You might have decided where you want to purchase your home items but it's worth being clever with when you buy them. There are numerous sales throughout the year where you could get money off such as Christmas, Black Friday and end of season sales to name a few. Keep checking back and keep an eye out for these sales to save yourself some money. Websites such as Vouchercloud and Money Saving Expert can give you discounts to use, which can also be obtained if you sign up for company newsletters, so it's worth doing this before rushing into buying.

Upcycling Furniture

There are certain items of furniture that you may love but are a bit pricey. When you have been redoing your home you may end up having to make a choice between purchases due to budget constraints but there could be another option. When doing our house, we upcycled a few things that let us have the furniture we wanted without having to spend a lot of money. The wooden unit you can see in the photo above was created from a basic white Kallax unit from IKEA. We added wooden doors and top to it and then fitted door handles and feet. This completely transformed the look of the unit and cost a considerable amount less than if we had bought something similar. Other items we DIY'ed were two sets of metal and glass shelving units. We bought these from IKEA but they came in black metal. A couple of cans of gold spray paint later and these units looked amazing and significantly more expensive than they actually cost us.

There are a number of different options in this post that could help you save money when renovating your home. They won't all necessarily apply to your situation but could help with bringing down the costs when making improvements in your home. If you feel like any of the DIY related improvements seem a little daunting, then it's worth checking out the YouTube tutorials from Wickes and B&Q as they cover a range of tasks, and they came in very useful when we were learning how to do things.


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