How to Do Kitchen Renovations on a Budget
Kitchens are one of the most popular rooms in the house for home renovations. However, they are almost one of the most expensive areas of the home to remodel. Not everyone is willing to spend their hard-earned money on a complete kitchen renovation that racks up a $20,000 bill.
Fortunately, there are ways you can remodel your kitchen without breaking the bank. In this money-saving article, we go over some tips and tricks you can use to do kitchen renovations on a budget.
Keep the Layout, Change the Appearance
Picture a typical kitchen renovation in your mind. It’s quite common for people to think of renovations as drastic changes that completely change the layout and design of a room. While tearing out old countertops and rearranging the locations of appliances sounds fun, doing so is a sure-fire way to blow your budget quickly. Not only will a total renovation cost you more because it takes more time and effort, but it also complicates the process in more ways than you might think.
For example, your sink, dishwasher and fridge require either access to plumbing, electrical or both. When you rearrange the entire kitchen layout, you will also need to drill more holes in your wall and possibly spend money on a plumber or electrician to get your appliance working in their new locations.
Instead, plan your renovations around your kitchen’s current layout. This way, you won’t need to worry about messing with your plumbing or electrical.
Instead of Replacing Cabinets, Dress Them Up
A staple for home renovations is upgrading your kitchen cabinets. But, you don’t have to tear out your old cabinets and replace them with expensive new ones that don’t do anything unique except look better. With a little bit of creativity, you can refurbish your old cabinets instead of replacing them, and you can save money in two ways.
The first way you save money is related to our earlier tip about keeping your kitchen layout. Because kitchen flooring doesn’t usually run under ground-level cabinets, you will be left with no flooring between the walls and the edge of the old cabinets if you tear the cabinets out. There’s no better way to add costs to your home renovations than creating extra areas you’ll need to fix.
The second way keeping your old cabinets saves you money is pretty self-explanatory: you don’t spend excessive amounts of money on new ones. Sometimes purchasing brand new cabinets alone can take up as much as 35% of your renovations budget. Instead of spending all that money, there are multiple cost-effective options for upgrading your old cabinets like:
- Painting & Finishing
- Refacing
- Updating Hardware
- Add Open Shelving
Most of these options are relatively simple to do yourself, so you can also save money on labour costs.
Instead of Replacing Tiles and Floors, Paint Them
When it comes to wall tiles and floors, you don’t need to replace those either. Unless there is some form of damage, of course. Just like your cabinets, you can spruce up tiles and flooring without spending big money on new materials.
For tiles, an awesome and simple way to get a fresh new look is by painting with a stencil. Using a stencil gives you the chance to paint your tiles with a fun design without the stress of painting free-hand. You can find various stencil designs online without much trouble.
Painting old floors can net you even more savings than painting tiles. Refinishing or replacing your floors can cost thousands of dollars, whereas painting will cost somewhere nearer the $200 to $300 range, depending on the size of your kitchen and the amount of prep work you need to do. This is one of the best options you have for slimming down your budget.
Do As Much Work As Possible On Your Own
A lot of the costs for home renovations are due to labour and time costs you need to pay when you hire a professional contractor to do the work for you. If you are willing to get into the DIY spirit, you are guaranteed to save money.
Still, it’s understandable that you may be hesitant to do 100% of the work yourself—especially the tricky tasks like refacing cabinets. There’s no shame in getting help from the pros by visiting a website like calgaryhomerenovations.com for elements of the renovations that are outside of your comfort zone. Just remember that the more you do on your own, the more money you will save.
