As many of you know, we moved at the end of last summer to embark on a new chapter in our lives. That new chapter involved a great house in a great neighborhood that needed tons of work. Here’s a taste of what we’ve been going through to make our living space everything we dreamed it could be while saving thousands of dollars in the process.
3 DIY Winter Home Projects That Saved Us Thousands Of Dollars
We got our current home at a huge discount, but there was a reason for that. The reason was that it needed a lot of work and updates. Basically, every square inch of our house needed to be updated to suit our taste – from the floors to the lights to every single outlet in the house.
1. New Floors
The day we moved into our 1980s home was the day we started ripping out the old floors. We literally started from the ground up. Surprisingly, as excited as I get about home improvement, I was not on board with moving in and immediately tearing the house apart. Turns out, my love of a beautiful home with everything in its place has really rubbed off on Mr. MMM. He simply wasn’t having it. He couldn’t deal with moving in, setting up shop, and doing things slowly over time. He won. And here’s the proof.
Excerpt from Instagram: “This is what saving money looks like. It took 90 minutes to remove laminate floors from a bedroom, loft, and closet. Quote to have someone else remove it and haul it away was $700. I’m feeling pretty good and the actual work was oddly satisfying – almost as good as pressure washing. Almost.”
2. Hardware And Drywall Repair With A Little Ambition
Next up, I tackled light fixtures, door hardware, and drywall repair. There are only two lights in the entire house that didn’t need to be updated: the powder room light because it’s original and kinda cool and the fan in the master bedroom because it was already updated and isn’t so horrible that it keeps me awake at night. Everything else is new, including all 3 outdoor lights. When I inquired how much it would cost to have someone else install the light fixtures, I didn’t get a quote less than $100 per fixture. Multiply that by the number of lights I updated and that’s a savings of more than $1,000.
Oh, I also swapped out every single outlet and light switch in the house. Some were original, some were replaced and ornate, and none of them matched. Now, they’re all white and they all match. Ahh.
After addressing the lights and switches, I went after the hardware on our doors. Our drill got a workout as I updated every hinge and doorknob in the house. Our daughter even got a piece of the action. I’ll never forget her coming home from school asking if she could “do more hinges”. Some things are just priceless. The hinges were about $3 each and the doorknobs about $20 (if memory serves me). For a few hours of my time, correction, our time – our daughter really worked her butt off helping us update the hardware – we were able to drastically improve the look of our home and make things more cohesive.
Excerpt from Instagram: “When I woke up this morning this hole was a hideous medicine cabinet from 1988. After a few internet videos, talking to a couple of people in the trade, and some courage, I removed the cabinet and started tackling the fix. It might not turn out to be perfect but I’m well on my way to learning a very useful skill that I’ll be able to use over and over again with our home and rentals. Cross your fingers and send me some good vibes.”
Now, swapping out lights and switches is one thing, learning the skill of repairing drywall is quite another. Or, so I thought. Our house had old ceramic toilet paper holders and towel racks in the bathrooms. I knew I could hire a contractor or handyman to come in and remove them and fix the walls for me, but at what cost? Surely, not for any less than a few hundred dollars. Maybe, even more, considering drywall repair requires multiple days/trips to sand and reapply mud.
Tools I have found to be ESSENTIAL in improving our home (psst…these are affiliate links)
Since I have a little artistic ability, I thought I’d try my hand at drywall repair. I mean, sure, things could go wrong but they would be fixable. And with that, I began my YouTube search for the best drywall repair instructional videos ever. And I found them! After small repairs went well, I tackled a large one. I removed an old medicine cabinet, framed out the hole, added a new piece of drywall, taped and mudded the seams, and repeated over and over again. It took me days to complete, but the wall now looks perfect and you’d never know it was ever there.
Here’s a little video if you want to follow me around and see some of our improvements.
Related:
- That Time We Bought A Cedar Contemporary House At A Huge Discount
- How We Saved Over $2,000 On These Simple DIY Home Tasks
- PODCAST: How DIY Home Projects Equal Huge Savings
3. Paint, Paint, And More Paint
Some of the walls in the house had very nice, new, subtle gray paint. The other walls did not. The other walls were awful colors (in my opinion). There were pink walls, gold walls, and green walls. And they all had to go. In order to save money, I decided to keep the gray walls since that would’ve been my pick anyway, and paint the non-gray walls to match. I also added a few accent walls along the way.
Excerpt from Instagram: “Spent the weekend painting my old 1980s doors black. The before was a nasty white that was painted with noticeable brush strokes. We moved in 3 months ago and have been doing our best to redo just about every square inch while saving as much money as possible. First floor done. Only 7 more doors to go. Such a frugal way to give a house a makeover. For the cost of 2 gallons to paint, I have completely transformed our space. I’ve been seeing a lot of black trim and black doors lately and figured…what the heck. If it didn’t look right, I could always paint it white again. Let me tell ya, if you’re thinking of doing it, you probably won’t be disappointed. Black is where it’s at!”
So far, I’ve painted my daughter’s bedroom, the dining room, and the breakfast nook. But I didn’t stop there. I also painted all the interior doors. We have the original flat panel doors from 1988 and, although I like the minimalist look, I didn’t enjoy the shabbiness of these doors or the imperfections (read: holes) that were present in some of them. For the cost of some wood filler, a sanding block, and a couple of gallons of black paint (yes, black paint), I was able to add another layer of personality to our home. Not to mention the cost savings.
The cost to hire a professional painter to paint the rooms and doors would’ve been well into the thousands. I think painting is one of the best DIY home projects in terms of savings.
We were able to save thousands upon thousands of dollars by tackling these DIY projects this winter. If you’re like most people and have reservations about trying DIY home projects, I highly recommend having more confidence in your abilities. YouTube doesn’t hurt either. 😉
