Things I've Learned

My goal in remodeling this house is to make it look as nice as possible without spending a lot of money. Granite counter tops would be wonderful to have, but they're just not cost effective for a house in this neighborhood. After we move, the house will probably be sold to someone to use as a rental property. While it's important to us to pick paint colors and things that we like to decorate the house with, it's equally important to not personalize the house too much. I've tried to use either neutral colors or colors that I think other people will also enjoy while decorating.

Later, I'll post links to where I bought some of my stuff.

Here are some things I've discovered while remodeling this house on a budget...

Learn some new skills
Why pay someone to do it for you when you can do it yourself and acquire another power tool at the same time?

Paint
I used Walmart paint when we first started working on the house because it's cheap and I didn't know any better. Don't make the same mistake I did. Use Home Depot's Behr paint. That's probably the most important thing I've learned. You'll end up applying fewer coats (1 with a few touch-ups instead of 3) and the paint is more durable. This means less paint gets used, and your time isn't wasted painting the same wall over and over again.

Buy good paint brushes, cheap paint rollers. Dampen your brush before you start painting, it helps to keep the paint from drying on the bristles. Clean your brush well after you use it and take care of it so it will last a long time. The first time you use a roller, wrap it in tape to pull off the extra fuzzies. If you need to take a break from painting, wrap the roller in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge (I've done this for up a day or two). You can never wash all the paint out of it. Reuse it as many times as you can, then toss it.

Plumbing
Buy a good quality faucet (Delta, Kohler, etc.) from eBay. They sell last year's models at discounted prices. We paid about the same amount for each of our good quality faucets as we would have for one of the junky ones from Home Depot. 

We found our kitchen sink supplier through Amazon. We paid about $80 for a better quality sink than the similar $200 sink at Home Depot.

Lighting
Get your light bulbs at IKEA. They're cheap and they last pretty good. One of our ceiling fans uses special bulbs. Regular compact fluorescent bulbs burn out too quickly so we have to use special vibration resistant ceiling fan bulbs that are $$$. I discovered the regular IKEA ones last just as long as the special ceiling fan ones.

The type of lights that I wanted for the kitchen (halogen track lights) were over $100 at Home Depot. I found something similar at IKEA for $25. 

Wait until the Hunter ceiling fans go on sale. Don't waste your money on the cheap Hamilton Breeze ones. They break.

Our under-cabinet lights came from Walmart. We paid about $12 each but saw similar lights at Home Depot from $20-50. They aren't hooked up to a light switch, they plug into a wall outlet. Good that you don't have to do any electrical work, bad that you have to search for the tiny little switch to turn each of them on.

Flooring
Peel and stick flooring has come a long way. We have a 12" faux slate, but I've seen newer 24" tiles and strips of faux wood that I would love to have had. Starting at $1/sq. ft. it's the cheapest option. You only need a couple of simple tools to install it yourself; straight edge and a box cutter.

Our carpet is used. Yup, that's right. My parents bought a new house and replaced all of the carpet with hardwood. Because their house is bigger than ours, we had plenty of large pieces to work with. We found someone to install it for about $400.

Contractor packs
These are your friend when you have a lot of one thing that needs to be replaced. The downside is that there isn't as much variety to choose from and you sometimes have to buy more than you actually need.

We replaced all of the old almond colored outlets, switches, and wall plates with white. For example, light switches are are $0.69 each at Home Depot, or you can buy a pack of 10 for $4.90, which will save you $0.20 on each light you replace.

We also used contractor packs for the kitchen drawer pulls and hinges. I have found that Amazon has a better selection of these than Home Depot.

Shop around
I wanted a back splash for the kitchen that was easy to install. I found sheets of molded plastic at Home Depot that looked like a pressed tin ceiling. They were $20 for an 18"x24" panel, which I thought was too much to pay for a hunk of plastic. I found a store online that sells a better product for half the price. They make theirs out of aluminum and they have a better selection of patterns and colors.