5 Ways to Cut Costs on a Home Renovation

So you already know we’re thrifty AF, but over the course of three houses now we’ve learned a few tricks in how to cut costs during your home renovation.

We evidently keep buying houses in that awkward in-between where they’re priced too high for a flipper or investor to make much of an immediate profit but they need too much work for a regular buyer, which honestly is ideal for our skillset at this point but also leaves us with huge project to-do lists.

From laundries to bathrooms to kitchens, renovation costs can add up quickly. We’re not in the business of spending (or even having) tens of thousands of dollars to overhaul all our main living spaces, so I did a ton of research, got a lot of contractor quotes, and spent a lot of time on YouTube toeing the line between what we can DIY, what we need to hire out, and how intensive a renovation is feasible for each of our rooms.

Anyway, here are the tips and tricks I’ve learned how to cut costs during your home renovation:

Cut costs on your home renovation

Do your own demo

This has helped us a few times now, like when we redid the bathroom in our last house and now in our kitchen.

As part of our current beast of a kitchen renovation, we removed three walls. Two were just closing off the kitchen from the dining room and pantry, but the third was a huge load-bearing wall between the kitchen and living room that we wanted to open up. Being that it was the only supporting wall running the whole length of the house, we knew that wasn’t a DIY and hired out the installation of the load-bearing beam.

We got a few quotes on this job from contractors and were quoted between $5,000 and $12,000 for the whole thing. As it was, the job would’ve included demo of the existing wall, hauling materials away, building a temporary wall, removing the studs, installing the beam, removing the temporary wall, drywalling the beam, mudding, texturing and painting the beam to match the surrounding space.

But, we worked with the contractor we chose and offered to do all of the demolition ourselves down to the studs including taking all our own debris to the dump, have them come in and do the temporary wall and beam installation, then we took over again to do all the patchwork at the end.

This ended up saving us THOUSANDS and in the end we paid the contractor about $1,500 total – the beam materials were about $900 and it took two people only about four hours to get the installation done.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a ton of work doing the demo ourselves and we got enough cuts and bruises and construction bro glares trying to reverse the trailer into the space at the dump to last us a lifetime but do you know how far $5,000 in savings can get me on a vacation? Far enough away and deep enough into a mojito to not care about the dump glares anymore.

Keep the major elements the same

This one comes into play in the design stage and can be tricky depending on your space and how it functions, but keeping the utilities – water lines, electrical – in the same place can save a ton of money.

In our kitchen, we kept the sink, dishwasher, and fridge in the same place which meant we didn’t need to hire a plumber at all, but we did need to move some electrical outlets around and add a few with the walls being removed so ended up spending close to $1,000 in electrician fees for all of that work.

So, it’s one of those things that’s nice to avoid paying if you can, but if you need to you need to, ya know?

Order your own materials

If you’re doing a big job like a kitchen or bathroom and are using a contractor, buy all your materials and appliances yourself. Buying through a contractor’s contacts can sometimes have advantages, but for the most part, being able to shop around for your oven or shower tile will save some money and give you a much wider range of choices.

If you do this, though, make sure to check with your contractor on how much of everything you’ll need and consider things like buying a 10% overage for tile so you’re not holding up the timeline waiting on your orders.

Be your own general contractor

This is definitely not a task to tackle if this is your first renovation and you’re starting out with, like, a full-house makeover. You do need a baseline knowledge of which trades need to come in which order, how long each step might take, lead times, etc., but coordinating all of the different subcontractors yourself can save a huge chunk of money in a renovation.

Essentially, GCs are project managers who organize the timeline and workflow of a renovation, they schedule, order materials, and deal with all the little questions or stressors so homeowners don’t need to worry about it. Nice to have? Yes. Expensive? Also yes.

So, really, with some patience and planning skills, it’s a totally doable task to take on yourself if you’re wanting to cut costs during your home renovation.

Where to save money

Onto the specifics. As far as bigger, overhaul type renovations go, there are plenty of little places to save in the budget while still keeping a beautiful finish. Light fixtures are a big one – there are tons of chandeliers, flush mount, pendants, etc., that are under $100 and great quality. I recently bought this one for our dining room.

Kitchen hardware is another great one with a huge range. You can find knobs for $2 a piece or, like, $100 a handle which is insane. I bought all of our kitchen hardware in this house from Amazon (these pulls and knobs are the perfect brushed brass color), and the last house’s were from Lowe’s.

Lastly, tile has a huge cost variation and you can be spending $50 a square foot or $1.50 a square foot depending on the material and style. Classic subway tile is going to be super affordable and you can do different patterns to make it feel a little more modern, whereas marble tile is going to obliterate your budget if you’re trying to be thrifty like us.

Lowe’s and Home Depot both usually have some good tile options for a decent price, and I’ve also used Wayfair and Floor & Decor for orders before.

Bonus tip: Don’t forget to value your time

Along the way, there are other cost-cutters (like buying powdered thinset you mix yourself in a bucket rather than the pre-mixed stuff, for example) but it’s also worth thinking about how you value your time.

Sometimes you know you could tile your bathroom floor yourself, but it might take a contractor two days and it might take you three weekends between a full-time job and a family, so that’s a factor as well.

In the kitchen, for example, we budgeted in a couple hundred dollars to hire cleaners to do a deep clean once we got done with all the bigger demo stuff. We had been working for close to two months just about every night and weekend demoing, tiling the floor, setting cabinets, tiling backsplash, etc., and everything was covered in dust or dog hair we’d been neglecting while we got the kitchen back to functional.

That couple hundred dollars was well worth the investment to get out of the house for a couple of hours and come home to a nice, clean home.

Let me know if you’ve got any other tips to cut costs during your home renovation that we didn’t think of, but otherwise I hope this has been helpful whether you’re an aspiring DIYer or planning your own renovation.

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