10 Ways To Renovate Your Home On a Budget

You may be looking at your home and thinking, “it’s time for an improvement”. However, your bank account could be telling you a much different story.

Lots of homeowners remodel their homes each year. There were $394 billion in total home improvement sales in the U.S. in 2018. Renovations can add up, though. Between materials and labor, you could pour in thousands of dollars into a single home renovation project. If you have multiple projects on your list, that cost only goes up.

So, what can you do to drive down the cost of your remodel? Here are 10 ways you can renovate your home on a budget, and how they’ll save you money while simultaneously adding value to your home.

Prioritize Your Projects

When planning to renovate your home on a budget, one of the first things you should do is prioritize your projects. Redoing your entire house all at once will get expensive fast. To avoid burning a hole in your savings, prioritize your renovation projects. This allows you to spread out your projects so you can save money for them over time.

You can prioritize your projects based on their importance to your home’s overall function. If there are structural issues that could cause your home to be unsafe, make fixing those issues a priority. These kinds of projects can include foundation repair, roof repair, and plumbing repair. If you haven’t done repairs like this before, you may want to consider hiring professional home renovation contractors and plumbers to do the repairs. You want to make sure you get these important projects done right the first time.

After your fundamental projects are done, you can work on your secondary remodeling projects. You’ll be able to complete these projects knowing that the bones of your home are in good shape.

Look For Recycled Materials

If you want to renovate your home on a budget, you can look into using recycled materials. Using recycled materials decreases waste and decreases the need for production of new materials. You can get recycled wood, tiles, and even recycled countertops. If you’re demoing part of your home, you can use some of that material in your renovations.

Be sure you do your research on any recycled materials you want to use. While using recycled materials in your renovation is environmentally friendly and can save you money, it also means you have to know where the recycled materials came from. If they came from sites where there were mold concerns or where the environment was contaminated, then you’d want to reconsider using those materials in your home.

You can also look into getting recycled doors and recycled fences for your renovations. Doors are typically intact when they’re recycled, so you could find the perfect door for your newly renovated space. If you’re looking for a recycled fence for your yard, contact local fencing services to see if they have any leads.

Be Strategic With Your Space

Creating enough space for everything in your home may be a priority during your remodeling phase. However, if you want to renovate your home on a budget, investing in creating space and storage could get costly. That’s why it’s important to be strategic with the space you have. Make sure you’re being efficient with your space before you spend money creating more of it. You may think you need more cabinets in your kitchen, but in reality, all you may have to do is rearrange the contents to create more space. Or, instead of installing more cabinets, you could install shelves on your kitchen walls to create more storage space. You could also install hangers for your pans so they’re hanging up in the open instead of stored away in cabinets. This frees up even more cabinet space for you.

There are other ways you can create storage space that don’t require you to remodel. You could put storage ottomans in your living rooms or put up hanging shoe racks in your closets. If you have larger furniture, you could downsize and create a more open space in your living area. Instead of creating more space via remodeling, try using small hacks to create more space. This will save you time and money that you can dedicate to other renovation projects.

Invest In Flooring Dupes

You may be looking to replace the flooring throughout your home during your renovation. However, getting new flooring can get expensive quickly. If you want hardwood floors in your home, you could spend between $1,000 and $2,000 per room, depending on the kind of hardwood floors you want. It could also cost thousands of dollars to get new tile for your bathroom and kitchen floors.

You can save money on your renovations by looking for flooring dupes. Instead of installing real hardwood floors, you can look into installing laminate flooring that looks like hardwood flooring. Laminate flooring is cheaper than real hardwood flooring, which means you can dedicate the money you save to other renovation projects. If you want to save money on your bathroom or kitchen flooring, you can look into laminate stone tiles. These tiles can freshen up the look of your rooms while saving you some cash. Before you invest in laminate flooring, make sure you know how to properly maintain it. How you maintain laminate flooring differs from how you maintain hardwood flooring, and if you don’t know how to properly maintain it, you could unintentionally damage it.

Apply A Fresh Coat of Paint

Sometimes, the simplest renovation projects can have big impacts. One project to tackle while you renovate your home on a budget is to give your home a fresh coat of paint. Paint the interior and exterior of your home to freshen up its look and add to its value. Painting your home’s interior a lighter color can make rooms look brighter and bigger. Choosing softer tones like an off-white will give your room the illusion of depth. When comparing costs, painting your interior is less expensive than expanding your space.

You can also paint the exterior of your home to add value to it. The color will depend on what style you want your house to have. You could paint the exterior a class color, like blue, or you could choose to go with a color that stands out more, like yellow. Be sure to spend some time power washing the front of your house before you paint the exterior, otherwise, your paint job could look less than ideal.

Knock Down Walls To Open Your Space

If you actually need to create more space instead of giving off the illusion of space, you can knock down walls to open your home up. Keep in mind that if you want to renovate your home on a budget, knocking down walls could get expensive. To cut down costs, see if you can knock down a non-load-bearing wall. A non-load-bearing-wall is a wall that only carries its own weight, not the weight of other spaces in the house.

It’s less expensive to knock down walls that only hold their weight compared to walls that hold other weight. This is because if you knock down a wall that holds other weight, you have to find another way to support that weight. If you need to knock down walls to expand your space, be strategic about which walls you knock down. If you aren’t, you could end up spending an extra $1,000 or more than you originally planned on your renovation.

Shop For Discounts

One of the best ways to renovate your home on a budget is to shop for discounts on materials. Materials and labor are often the biggest costs associated with renovations, so if you can save money by shopping for discounted materials, do it. Shop around at home improvement stores to see if there are materials on clearance or being sold at a discounted rate. If stores want to bring in new materials, they may markdown their old materials to sell them faster. You could get a new kitchen countertop at half the price if you shop at the right time.

You can call home improvement stores and ask when they expect to have remodeling materials on sale. They may not be able to give you a firm answer, but at least you’ll be thinking ahead with your projects.

Don’t Try To Change Too Much

It can be easy to go all-in when planning a renovation project. You may plan on remodeling your kitchen, updating your bathroom, adding a finished basement, and converting the top of your garage into an in-law suite. While these projects may be on your wish list, changing the way your home is laid out could cost your renovation bill to skyrocket. This is especially true if you’re trying to convert a space into a new room. You may need to do electrical upgrades, run new plumbing, and even put in new structural beams to properly structure the space.

Changing your home’s layout too much can add on extra expenses. Instead of trying to convert all these rooms, try simplifying your renovations or only take on one room conversion at a time. If your budget doesn’t allow for these larger upgrades, see what you can do with more simple renovations.

Add Lighting

One of the simplest but most effective ways to renovate your home on a budget is to invest in lighting. The right lighting can make your home look bigger and brighter. One way you can achieve the perfect lighting is by switching up your windows. New windows can be expensive to install, and you’ll likely need the help of window replacement services, so be sure to know which windows you want that will maximize how much light you can get.

You can also look into installing cannon lights or other subtle forms of lighting that can add value and make your space look bigger. Make sure you determine what kind of lighting you want, though. Wanting ambient lighting for your home is different than wanting accent lighting for your home, so it’s important to be clear about what kind you want. Investing in the right lighting during your renovation can help you achieve the same goals as installing new windows without breaking the bank.

Do As Much As You Can On Your Own

One of the biggest costs of doing a renovation is paying for labor. One of the best ways to renovate your home on a budget is to do as much of the work as you can yourself. See if you can enlist the help of your friends and family to do demolition and help you paint. If you get laminate flooring, you’ll likely be able to piece it together and install it yourself. The more you can do yourself and save on labor, the better.

While it is wise to do as much as you can on your own, you shouldn’t put yourself at risk. If there are projects you don’t know how to do, enlist in the help of professionals. This is especially true if you’re working on the fundamental structures of your home. If you need a new roof, call around to different roofing services and compare prices. If you need your HVAC system fixed, contact someone who specializes in HVAC repairs. These structures are important to your home, and you want to ensure they’re properly fixed.

Renovating your home is an exciting time in your life. It’s time to make changes and start fresh in your home. However, it can also be a stressful time if you’re worried about finances. It is possible to renovate your home on a budget, but the key is to stay organized and dedicated to that budget. You may be tempted to splurge on a renovation, but splurging can financially set you back and cause you unnecessary stress. Be smart with your spending and remember what your goals are. All the budgeting and planning will be worth it when you have a remodeled house you can come home to every day.