Today’s post comes to us from The Picky Pinchers! While Mrs. Picky Pincher calls me a ‘whiz at fixing up houses,’ I’m not sure about that. I readily admit that my renovations come with no shortage of puncture wounds, trips to Home Depot (sometimes more than one trip in the same hour) and profanity. Lots of profanity. I am no stranger to the colorful metaphor.
And yes, renovating can be tough. Mrs. Picky Pincher hilariously (in retrospect anyway) described it:
Our nights and weekends were consumed with manual labor. Mr. Picky Pincher demoed the kitchen and installed cabinets. I painted and painted and painted. Most days we were nothing more than roommates who inhaled sad little McDonald’s hamburgers together in silence.
But holy cow, look at the before and after pictures. They’ve created some beautiful spaces that they’ll enjoy for many years.
Lessons From A Frugal DIY Renovation
It’s no secret that Mr. 1500 is a whiz at fixing up houses. In fact, it seems like so many people in the FIRE community are into either real estate or house flipping and are regular wizards at it. With so many people to learn from, I figured I had all my ducks in a row when it came time for my own DIY home renovation.
We purchased our first home back in September after much hand-wringing, foot-stomping, cursing, and crying over pints of ice cream. Little did I know, the real work hadn’t even started yet.
While our house was livable, it hadn’t been updated since the 1980s. It also didn’t help that one of the rooms was lime green from floor to ceiling. I’m not joking; look at this mess!
And yes, that is a green popcorn ceiling, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyway, it became apparent that we needed to do some renovations to bring our new Picky Palace up to par. After months of work, the renovation is nearly complete and our sanity is (mostly) intact. For those of you daring to brave your own DIY renovation, check out these lessons we learned and what we would do differently.
Cash will save your ass
We had the foresight to save up cash for our renovation. We budgeted about $10,000 total, which we hoarded for months, while cutting our expenses and living below our means.
Cash saved us because we didn’t go into debt to fund the renovation. I’ve heard of people going into $20,000-worth of debt for a kitchen remodel, and I didn’t want that to happen to us. Cash is king, y’all.
I love our new kitchen, but I wouldn’t go into debt over it.
As an added plus, we put all of the expenses on a rewards credit card and paid it off on time each month using our cash. Thanks to this method, we had a good chunk of “free money” to use for Christmas presents. Huzzah!
Ask for help
If you have access to people who can help with the renovation, take advantage of it.
The biggest factor in our success was Mr. Picky Pincher’s dad. As luck would have it, he’s a master carpenter who graciously agreed to work for the cost of materials. This means we had custom cabinets and a few other high-end additions that otherwise would have cost an arm and a leg!
I know most people don’t have a master carpenter just lying around, but it was quite a boon for us. If you know someone who works in construction or who’s even just a little bit handy, the help will make you hate the renovation so much less. And some people are even willing to help out for the cost of a few beers, pizza, and good company.
Sometimes DIY is a bad idea
I hate to admit it, but there are some things that should be left to the professionals. Case in point: our concrete counters.
We fell in love with the look and feel of concrete counters: they looked gritty, beautiful, and unpolished in a refined way. We figured, “Hey, it’s concrete! This’ll be a cinch to do ourselves and save some money!” We should have learned from our past DIY fails, but we were getting so gung-ho that we just went for it.
Instead of shelling out $3,000 for professionally-laid concrete counters, we did it ourselves for $500.
And it looks like we did it ourselves.
While they are definitely concrete counters, they became jagged and rough, even with five coats of sealant. That means our counters are a bitch to clean and stain very easily. Not what you want with a counter, really.
In hindsight we realize we should have spent the money to have a professional install countertops the right way. Know your limits and acknowledge when it’s not a good time to “try something out.”
Define what’s “enough”
Sometimes you just need to walk away.
There’s a reason renovations evolve into agonizing five-year-long ordeals: there’s no set end point. There needs to be a clearly-defined stopping point to prevent what I call “renovation sprawl.” For us, we’re waiting to brick the outside of our home and tile our kitchen. Only then the renovation will be officially donezo!
And even though we’re at the tail-end of our renovation, I would redo everything if I could. If I did, you’d probably find me in a corner with a paint brush in my hand, rocking back and forth. I’m a perfectionist, so it never seems like anything is good enough, renovations included.
But I can’t go back and repaint the entire house. At a certain point I need to nod my head, ignore crooked light fixtures, and go along my merry way. Otherwise I’ll spend even more money and never enjoy my home. Acknowledge that what’s done is done and move on.
At least that horrible green is covered up now, right?
Love each other and yourself
If you take premarital counseling, one of the marriage “rules” they tell you is to not renovate until the tenth year of marriage. We ignored this and renovated after one year of marriage. Mr. Picky Pincher and I have a strong relationship—we even fart in front of each other and eat chips in our gross sweatpants together. But working on a renovation was still challenging for our relationship.
Our nights and weekends were consumed with manual labor. Mr. Picky Pincher demoed the kitchen and installed cabinets. I painted and painted and painted. Most days we were nothing more than roommates who inhaled sad little McDonald’s hamburgers together in silence.
In short, we didn’t take care of ourselves or our relationship, and I regret that.
Remember why you’re renovating. It’s all about having a space to love and share with the people in your life—don’t let what matters fall to the wayside. Make time for each other, homemade meals, sleep, and a hot shower.
The Bottom Line
This DIY renovation has been such a good (if not exhausting) experience. We now live in a beautiful home that we fixed up with our own hands and our own money. There’s no better feeling in the world, but there were definitely some growing pains!
We want to know: Have you tried a DIY renovation?
WOW! The room looks so much better sans green paint! Amazing! And I love that you moved the door in the kitchen over. It flows so much better now.
Gwen @ Fiery Millennials recently posted…How I saved $130k in 3 years….. and you can too!
Thank you! I guess I didn’t fully understand the door situation until there was literal dust settling and a huge hole in the wall. The biggest pain with that is that our house was built with a rare brick (rare brick–who knew?) and we haven’t been able to fill the hole back up. Our porch is still covered in Tyvec while we plan out the next step. Oops!
Mrs. Picky Pincher recently posted…Our Student Loan Payoff Plan
All I can say is wow! Well done, and certainly very frugal.
I need some work done here too, can you come over to the Netherlands? Will pay for the flights and accomodation 😉
Throw in some beer and you’ve got a deal. 😉
Mrs. Picky Pincher recently posted…Our Student Loan Payoff Plan
That kitchen is just stunning!
And it’s interesting to hear how the renovation affected your relationship. I remember when my parents were redoing the kitchen and whenever they asked for my opinion on tiles or something and I gave it, I suddenly felt very invested in our kitchen having that exact type of tile. I guess because I was asked for my opinion, I developed one, and then because I had thought about it so much I became married to that opinion. But I usually absolutely don’t care what tiles my parents have in their kitchen!
Ellie @ The Chedda recently posted…Net Worth and Income – December 2016
Thank you! I have to say, it’s my favorite room in the house. 🙂 We spend a lot of time cooking from scratch, so it made sense to pour our money into that room.
Aww, I love it when parents involve the kiddos. Maybe you were their tie-breaker. 😉
Mrs. Picky Pincher recently posted…Our Student Loan Payoff Plan
What an awesome transformation! I love the colors. The kitchen looks so much bigger!
The lime green popcorn ceiling made me chuckle. Those are usually the best houses to buy since people can’t see past the painted walls!
Thanks for sharing Picky Pinchers. This made me want to get out my sledge hammer and find some DIY rennovatoon to get after!
I gotta say, I kinda liked the green room…unique to say the least.
Great work and some fantastic lessons learned. Popcorn ceilings are bad enough, but green on top of it. Yikes!
Money Beagle recently posted…Have You Observed Gender Equality During Your Career?
Great job! I have done a little DIY, but I don’t like it. It’s a ton of work and aggravation.
Our current place is pretty good, but there will be a ton of work to do when we move to our rental home. The kitchen and bathroom needs a complete overhaul. I plan to do some of the remodeling myself, but we’ll see. Not sure if the missus is on board for a lengthy renovation…
I haven’t done a DIY renovation myself, but likely will some day – whether in my home or rental property.
It is a great way to give yourself a high paying side job. Many people don’t have much control over their income in their day job – you can’t put in more work for more money. So I love things like this, where a little hustle can save what you would have paid (plus increase worth on the property).
It’s a very satisfying experience isn’t it? Mainly when it’s all done tho Haha!
Looks like you did a fantastic job. I know what you mean about never ending jobs and perfectionism. I’ve gotten over the second one but there just isn’t enough time in each month for me to get all my jobs done I want to do. I’m not talking about repainting I’m talking about stuff I’ve put up ages ago that hasn’t even been painted the first time yet 🙂
I’ll get there in the end or maybe we’ll just move again Haha.
Re: fast food, don’t be so hard on yourself. Without a kitchen and time being short some takeaways are inevitable and surely won’t kill you if you don’t make a habit of if once everything is done 😉
We installed new flooring on our second floor in the last house. Starting of course with removing carpets. It was snap in flooring with a built in underlayment, however the floor space was oddly shaped and about 800 sq feet. We’ve since sworn we’ll never do such a thing together again. My wife now wants to do flooring in the basement on the unfinished side. This will require a separate underlayment and snap in vinyl since it needs to be easily removable in case of flooding. Also its over some questionable existing tiling if you know what I mean. Anyway we’ve decided she will do the work with my father in law while I take the kids on some exciting adventure. To save cost we’re starting to stock pile gift cards off raise and swag bucks to keep materials costs down. Sometime late spring we’ll start to execute.
Full Time Finance recently posted…The Impact of Computers on your Personal Finance Decisions
Great DIY reno job Mrs. PP! It turned out great!
Mr. Tako @ Mr. Tako Escapes recently posted…Ode To My Rice Cooker
I too have completed some DIY home renovations – initially this included lots of colorful language from me as well. The biggest piece of advice that I have is to buy or rent the right tools. Much of my initial frustrations were simply from not having the right equipment to do the job. Thanks for sharing.
Gentleman of Leisure recently posted…Rental Income – Home Renovations
Nice reno! We’ve been in the same situation many times, trying to push through renovations while surviving on fast food. It’s hard to pay attention to things like what you’re gonna eat for dinner when your in the mode and just want to get it done. We have slowly gotten better at taking care of ourselves while in the zone 🙂
Now you have a bunch of new skill and a sweet spot to hang out. I like the style and colors you two went with. Enjoy your new kitchen!
Between our home and 2 rentals, I feel like we have been renovating for 4 years. Although we did wait till year 10 of marriage to start, so maybe that has helped. I also struggle with the “good enough” and the real bummer is that when you do it yourself, you are deeply aware of the flaws. If I would have just moved into a slightly flawed house, I might not have noticed. But because I made that little flaw, it’s 90% of what I see. =) I’m currently tiling my master bath shower and the grout lines are all jacked up. I might have never seen it, if I hadn’t stressed over it as it was happening!
Ms. Montana recently posted…Do the Unnecessarily Difficult Things
Great job, great post. I should do one on our floor replacement. What a “fun” experience that was. We laugh now, but back then, whoa Nilly.
I guess I’m a little nutty, the green didn’t look all that bad to me. And if it had been orange, I would have been in heaven. Mrs CD., not so much.
Wow, that “before” kitchen is in the top 10 ugliest kitchens I’ve ever seen. Yikes! Looks so much better now!
Maybe the green room was because they really like to make movies and chroma key everything?
Your kitchen remodel looks awesome!
My background is professional construction project management for over 10 years. I’ve worked on both high end residential and commercial. In the ‘biz’, that “renovation sprawl” you mentioned has a technical term called “scope creep”. Don’t feel bad, it happens to every project and definitely needs to be managed. When I worked on residential renovations, I saw how stressed the homeowners would get. I’m also a real estate investor and when realtors find out my background, they assume I want a fixer upper…. but I stay as far away from renovations as possible. I don’t mind carpet, paint and replacing a few fixtures, but no major demo.
I don’t want to dissuade anyone though. I think it is great for people to build a lot of sweat equity, but for me, I’ve done it for too long, and seen far too much that I just don’t have the desire to do it on my own. 🙂
But congrats on your remodel… it really looks wonderful!!!! You are a very talented couple.
Awesome results and love your story about the counter tops! We DIY most things but we have a pretty good sense of when we are in over our heads. We have two shower/tub fixes we need to do in the next few months. We’re struggling with those… We had a contractor do the first ones and they turned out terrible. Still trying to decide.
Vicki@MakeSmarterDecisions recently posted…Make Smarter Decisions – Saturday Share Day, 2017 – Week #3
Nicely done! We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for our pretty major renovation in our kitchen that also creeped (well, the plan was for it to creep) into replacing flooring through most of the rest of the house as well. The kitchen is getting close to done and we’re starting to lay the rest of the tile in the bedrooms. Someday it’ll all be done, though!
Mrs PoP recently posted…Update – Our His & Hers Kitchen
Great job with the renovation, Mrs. PP.
The way it turned out looks great!
You took that very ugly duckling and transformed it right into a swan. Well done!
I have one green bedroom in my home, and it looks like the same shitty shade of green in your picture. So far, our strategy has been to close the door and pretend that the room does not exist. Thus far the strategy has proven to be most effective.
Mrs. BITA recently posted…The BackStory of Mrs. BITA: Part 5
We’ve only done tiny DIY projects, I’m not sure we’d survive doing a huge reno like this ourselves, especially with JuggerBaby running around 🙂
This is amazing! Did you move the door or is my perception just misguided? I’m keeping my eyes peeled for any master carpenters lying around here, now 😉
Looks like a great reno! Too bad you got rid of what I would call the “Kermit room”
Ha – jk
Freedom 40 Plan recently posted…Consolidating Brokerage Accounts
Hubs and I are in the middle of a “reno.” Well… A reno with no demo. We are changing all the surfaces. We’re halfway and it has been an interesting stress on our relationship. I can’t wait for it to be over so we can move in!
I would love to thank you for your pictures. I showed him the Green Room and he said “That’s not so bad.” Now I know I’m in charge of all the aesthetics decisions in our house!!
Kate@Goodnightdebt recently posted…Why I chose a 30 year Mortgage
You know how we roll, man. We love us some DIY. Did we ever show you our family room makeover? We detailed it all on the blog a few years back, including the must-have juicy before-after photos. Bye bye, ugly brick fireplace with oak mantel. Hello, custom built-in bookcases with stone-veneered fireplace and integrated lighting. We still stare at it on occasion for no reason at all, and it’s been almost 3 years. Just completely gutted and rebuilt our bathroom too, but haven’t pulled the blog post together yet… 😉
http://www.myshinynickels.com/2014/03/19/diy-project-fireplace-makeover/
Laura aka Mrs Nickels recently posted…Savings Goal UPDATE: Year 2016 (Almost)
I like your recommendation to define a stopping point to ensure you have an end to the renovations. My wife and I are considering renovating our kitchen to be a bigger space. We may also consider hiring a home construction contractor to do it for us so that it gets done in a timely manner.
Hiring an experienced professional ensures you are not liable should someone get hurt while working on your remodel.
I am a follower of all these blogs. I hope that one day my blog may be as good as these and others. Thanks so much for sharing and my best, Yourhomz