Last year I offered up some tips for saving money on renovation projects. We had just completed a kitchen renovation on a small budget. Now we are finally beginning another huge task– turning our attic in a master suite. Just getting this project off the ground has been a bit difficult. Turns out the person we thought we would have do the work wasn’t able to pull permits in our city which was not going to work for us. Even though we’ve just started we’ve already saved over $10,000 on this project and we plan to save much more. Here are some ways we’re saving money on our attic renovation.
$10,000 Savings: Getting Multiple Quotes
It took a long time before we found the right person to do the electrical work. The person with the best price didn’t have the ability to pull permits in our city. After that we received several quotes that were way out of our price range– including one that was over $10,000. Finally after at least a half dozen tries we found a great guy for the job. He’s reliable, trustworthy and a very hard worker. On top of that his price was the lowest which ended up saving us thousands of dollars.
$1,000 Savings: Asking for a Discount
We got two quotes for putting spray foam insulation into our attic. Both quotes came in within a couple hundred dollars of each other. I followed up with each, explained the situation and asked if there was any negotiating on the price. One company said no, the other offered a 20% discount that cut the price by about $1,000. Not bad for just asking!
$100 Savings: Coupons
I don’t hide the fact that I love coupons. But it seemed like Home Depot and Lowe’s coupons could be hard to come by. Then I found out that both Home Depot and Lowe’s accept competitor coupons which means any hardware stores in the area that have coupons will be accepted there. As soon as I realized this I started seeing coupons all over the place– online, in my mailbox and in a bunch of magazines I subscribe to. It can be a little bit of a pain because you can only use one coupon per transaction so if you’ve got a lot of small coupons such as $5 off $25 purchase it may take you a while to check out. But it’s definitely worth the savings.
More Savings: Sell What You Find
When we were cleaning out attic we found four antique wooden mirrors, an antique wood door, a neat oil lamp shade, and dozens of linocut newspaper printing blocks from the 1930s. We’ll probably end up selling some of these treasures which will help pay for at least a shower head. Be careful with what you remove from your renovation space because some of it may be valuable! And anyone who has gone through a renovation knows you need lots of cash to get through it.