There are multiple reasons why you could be considering renovating your house. Some of the most notable of these are:
- Making it more efficient
- Getting ready to sell it
- Making it more functional
- Increasing overall comfort levels
As appealing as these can be, the cost can be enough to persuade you not to do them. With how expensive the process can be, it’s easy to see why you could think this. You’ll avoid much of this stress when you know how to reduce your home renovation costs.
That doesn’t need to be as complicated as you’d think. You can use more than a few home renovation tips to reduce your costs. While you’ll need to put a little extra work in to do this, it’ll be more than worth it.
You mightn’t even need to DIY it, especially if you use seven specific strategies to make your home renovations more affordable.
How To Reduce Your Home Renovation Costs: 7 Top Strategies
1. Focus On Efficiency
It’s not uncommon for homeowners to want to increase the size of their home as part of their renovations. It might be the only way they think they can fit all of the new additions. It isn’t, however. By focusing on efficiency rather than size, you can cut out the cost of extending your home.
Since this makes a large difference on your home renovation costs, it’s worth avoiding. Instead, get a little creative with your designs and make sure there’s no wasted space. While that means a little more work and creativity, it saves more money than you’d expect.
2. Keep Materials In Mind
You’ll already know you’ll need supplies and materials to carry out the renovation process. You’ll need everything from malleable iron fittings to the tiles and fixtures you’ll be installing, and much more. You don’t need to spend a lot of money buying all of these brand new, however.
While you should buy certain supplies new rather than second-hand, there are more than a few things you can get from recycling centres and other places. These can be just as effective and look as high-quality as their newer counterparts, but cost a fraction of the price.
You’ll save more than you’d think.
3. Consider Long-Term Costs
When you’re looking for ways to make your home renovations more affordable, you could end up looking for the lowest cost options you can. As logical as that sounds, it mightn’t always be the best approach to take. It could lead to you needing to make repairs in the future.
These can often cost more than they’re worth, and there’ll be a lot of extra hassle involved. It’s better worth thinking of the long-term costs associated with specific materials and upgrades. While this could mean needing to spend a little more upfront, it’ll be minimal compared to what you could end up paying in maintenance and repairs.
Choosing pre-primed and pre-painted clapboard siding instead of a more affordable option, for example, avoids any deterioration and repairs in the future.
4. Don’t Overspend On Walls
Your walls could be some of the more expensive areas to renovate, especially if they’re in relatively rough shape. They could end up needing to be sanded and filled in before you’re able to repaint them. If you’re using a contractor to do this, that time ends up being quite costly, as it might take days.
At least, that’s the case if you went the traditional route. You can avoid overspending by getting a little creative with your wall prep. Materials like Texturglas can be an effective alternative to sanding down and filling in walls that need to be fixed and painted. It’s also much more affordable than getting all of this work done.
The main reason for this is the time you’ll end up saving. You wouldn’t need to pay your contractor to sand down and fill in the walls for a few days, with the process instead taking a few hours.
5. Choose Lookalikes
You could have specific furnishings, appliances, and other upgrades in mind when you’re planning out your renovations. These could be relatively expensive, and will likely be some of the largest costs involved in the process. You mightn’t need to settle for that expense, however.
Figuring out how to reduce your home renovation costs often means compromising on a few areas. When it comes to anything you’re buying or installing, it could be worth choosing lookalikes rather than the real deal. Wood-look flooring can be more affordable than actual wood, despite looking and feeling almost identical, for example.
While you’ll have to put a little effort into finding the right options for you, it’ll be a much more affordable approach to take. You could end up saving thousands by doing this.
6. Donate Trash
A home renovation usually ends up in a lot of waste being generated. While much of this mightn’t be usable anymore, quite a few might be. Old fixtures and appliances are some of the more notable of these. You’ll already know you’ll need to get rid of these.
The landfill mightn’t be the best place for them. Instead, it could be better recommended to donate them to a charity, such as Habitat for Humanity. You’ll end up getting rid of what you no longer need, and you can end up saving on your taxes because of the donation. It’ll save you more money in the long-term.
Coupled with that is the fact it’ll be much more environmentally friendly. Since someone else will end up using these, it’ll prevent the fixtures and appliances from being dumped in a landfill for quite some time.
Save yourself some money and protect the planet by taking this approach.
7. Tap Contractors
Looking for materials, as mentioned above, doesn’t need to be as complicated as you could think. One of the more notable ways of making this more affordable is to look into what your contractors already have. In some cases, they could have more than a few supplies leftover from previous jobs.
Contractors usually throw these out after a while, as they would’ve already been paid for, despite not being needed anymore. It’s worth looking into what your contractor already has and making an offer on them. The materials should be much more affordable, as a previous client would’ve already paid full price for them.
As long as there are enough materials there – and in good quality – you shouldn’t have a problem getting them at a highly reduced rate. While there might be some negotiating involved, you’ll still end up paying less than buying new materials.
How To Reduce Your Home Renovation Costs: Wrapping Up
If you don’t know how to reduce your home renovation costs, it could prove to be an expensive process. It’ll likely end up with you deciding not to go through it. You mightn’t be able to afford it, or you simply mightn’t be able to justify the costs.
That’ll leave you in a home you want to improve, but thinking you mightn’t be able to. You don’t need to be stuck in this process. There are more than a few ways to make your home renovations more affordable, all of which can be practical and relatively easy to do.
Choosing lookalikes, knowing where to get your materials, focusing efficiency rather than size, and multiple other home renovation tips will be more than helpful with this. They’ll bring down your renovation costs more than you’d think.
While you’ll still need to put some work in, the money you’ll save will be more than worth it.