How to Renovate on a Budget

One thing people have asked us, is “How do you Renovate on Budget?”  So, we will try our best to point you in the right direction to your home renovation and how to do it without breaking the bank!

Make a Plan! Make yourself a plan! If you jump right into it, you will likely buy things that weren’t necessary, or start the project without any real plan to finish it and find yourself living in a house with a dismantled bathroom for two years. We suggest this, because we’ve made that mistake! When we first bought our house, we were excited and bought things without a plan! We’ve learned from that mistake, and now plan out our trips to Home Depot.

Do it yourself! Of course, you will save thousands of dollars if you do the majority of the work yourself. Usually, hiring out is so costly for the labor, not for the parts. So, if you can learn and afford the time, doing it yourself will allow you to afford your house renovation!

Let your friends/families help you! Not everyone is handy, but most people are willing to help where they can! So, if someone offers to help you out, let them! Extra hands are always helpful in moving the process along.

Shop Used! You can find a lot of really great deals through craigslist, buy & sell groups, garage sales, or Facebook Market place. We practically renovated our en-suite bathroom through Facebook Market place, most of our “new” light fixtures are used, we bought all the barn wood for our counter tops through Facebook Market and saved a fortune!  We only spent $7 on our bathroom pedestal sink!

Look for opportunity & make connections! The more people know you are renovating, the  more likely you will have people offer you things, or come across great deals for you. Also, keep your eyes open and ears open for others renovating, maybe their “old” will be your “upgrade”. Through making connections and looking for opportunities we have gotten a free kitchen sink, free kitchen cupboards/cabinets, materials to build a fence, and tons of extra wood for a future “barn wood style wall”.

Rebates! Take advantage of rebates through Home Depot, Menards or other builder supply stores. We bought all the paint for our house through Home Depot’s rebates and saved over $200!

Buy In Bulk! Now this is a little harder to do, if you have a tight budget. However, if you have the resources to spend more upfront, you’ll save more in the long run. Most builder supply stores have a bulk price, which is usually almost a $1 less than the regular price. We bought all of our basement mold proof drywall in bulk and during a rebate at Menards, in order to save BIG.

Buy as you Need! On the flip side of buying in bulk, is buying as you need it. This may not save you as much in the long run, however, it will help you in the moment as you are on a budget. If you are working room by room, this is a great option and nothing wrong with buying things slowly over time. This has been the route we’ve gone through the majority of our renovation and we feel we’ve come a long way!

So, those are some suggestions for renovating on a budget! Renovations can be very costly, but at the same time, they can also be affordable if done strategically.

Keep the Reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects 

 

 

Why Renovate?

I’ve heard a lot of people say “I want a move-in ready house that doesn’t need any work on it.” or “I don’t want a house that needs renovations” or something along those lines, but unfortunately that’s not a reality. Yes, you can definitely buy a house that is move-in ready and doesn’t need any work on it…YET! However, one day it will, it may not be the next day, or three months later, or even within the next 5 years, but it will need something done eventually, that is just the reality of being a home owner. So instead of shying away from renovations, why not embrace it? Get excited about it and know reason why to renovate!

So then, Why Renovate? Let’s talk about that!

• It saves you money! You may be wondering, doesn’t it COST money to renovate? How will it save me money? Well, ever heard the phrase “Got to spend money to make money?” Of course you have! Essentially, the same phrase can work with renovations, “You have to spend money to save money!” Here are some ways renovating can save you money!
  • Take a peak at your windows and doors, are they missing caulking or proper whether proofing? Either replacing windows and doors with weather appropriate ones, or simply caulking around them can save you hundreds on your gas bill every year.
  • Or maybe, the spacious laundry area you have isn’t set up to efficiently utilize that area. By adding a wash basin, a drying rod and upgrading your appliances can save you in the long haul as well! Hand washing smaller loads instead of using a full wash load or hanging items to dry on the rod vs. using your dryer on every load, can put dollars back into your pocket!
  • Even upgrading your lighting to cost efficient dimmers or LED’s will help!
• It adds value to your home! This is a no-brainer, almost all the renovations you do to your house will add value to your house. (There are exceptions to this, but we will talk about that in another blog)
  • Repainting the cabinets in your kitchen, upgrading your bathroom, finishing your basement, etc. All these things will add value to your house and if you eventually sell your home, these are dollars going back into your pocket!
• It gives you ownership! Of course, having your name on the title, paying the mortgage bills, and mowing the lawn are all things that make you the home owner, but really is that the fun part? Being able to make that house your OWN is one of the best parts of being the home owner! So why not OWN it?
  • Paint your walls, make the kitchen the way you want it, personalize your bedroom. Don’t be living in someone else’s house, live in your dream home, and you have the ability to make it that way!
• Personal growth! When it comes to renovating, there are lot of learning curves and growing opportunities, it can stretch you as a person to learn new things and give you a sense of pride when you see a completed project. Challenge yourself and renovate! We live in an awesome world of technology with resources at your finger tips, you can YouTube or Google tips, how to’s, and see product reviews to help you on your renovation journey
• Makes it comfortable for guests! One of the reasons we were excited about buying a big house with potential, was for the ability to host guests at our home! This may be a reason you bought your house too, imagining the holiday’s you could host, or having the gang over to watch the super bowl, or having a extra bedroom to house someone in need, whatever it may be, don’t you want it to be comfortable for your guests?
  • Think about that one time you stayed somewhere, you know that house with the dark wood paneling and orange carpet? Kind of had a musky smell to it? You know that house, we all do! You don’t want to be that house do you?
  • Easy enough as painting walls to a more welcoming and comforting color! Or you may want to upgrade that 1970’s fridge that has something growing out of the produce drawer, before you invite your colleagues over for dinner!
  • Renovating and upgrading rooms will make yourself and your guests more comfortable!
• Routine Maintenance!  Thinking you will never renovate something on your house, will hurt you in the long haul. Be prepared for the routine maintenance you will need to do, in order to prevent long term damage to your house.
  • Clean your gutters and replace bad ones, fill in holes, replace insulation, clean your vents, re-caulk around your bath tub, etc. Keeping up on the small things around your house, will help prevent you from having to do some major renovations in the future.
  • Try your best not to put a “bandage fix” on it, instead fix it right the first time and think about when you fix it, is it also time to replace it?

These are some reasons why I think you should renovate! So, why not change your perspective about it, get it excited about and start making your renovation plan. Remember to set yourself up for success, don’t rip out your kitchen before you have a plan for putting it back together, that will just frustrate you. But if you want your kitchen updated, plan it out, prepare and then execute! We will talk more about the planning, preparing and executing processes in a future blog, be on the look out for it 🙂

Keep the Reno’s Comin’ Or Get the Reno’s Started!
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

Sock Feet Approved!

A major selling point of our house, was all of the original wood flooring. After our first walk through, we could visualize how stunning the rooms and halls would be once the floors were refinished. However, it was hard to imagine how they could clean up. The only room that really gave us hope of how the floors would look, was the dining room.

Some of the floors were covered with linoleum from whoever knows how long. Other floors were white washed with a poorly done paint job, and still others were so caked with glue that you wondered whether there was even hardwood flooring under all that goop.

 

We knew that we wanted to do all we could to restore these floors and bring back that old charm that would bring our house to life. Austin and I had never refinished floors before, so it was definitely a learning curve, as many of the jobs we do are! Austin went and rented a drum sander, we cleaned up the floors and he got down to business! 

As the floor’s were being sanded the air was filled with the aroma of pine and we could see the fine lines in the wood. It became clear that the floors throughout our house were quarter-sawn old heart pine, and they are to die for!

It took hours of sanding and a lot of patience, but finally we were able to get to the place to put polyurethane down on them. We decided not to stain our floors, but instead put on clear polyurethane so that the natural color of the wood could come through.We were stocked when we saw how red the floors looked after putting down the polyurethane. After some research, we found that as pine ages it gets redder! So, the redder the wood the older it is. Who knew!? Well we were very excited about it, as it confirmed out thoughts that the floors were original to the house.

When everything was all said and done, the floors were approved by our daughter Tember and by Devina’s sock feet. Every day we get closer to this house being our home!

Keep the reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

 

 

 

 

Year in Review

We have officially had our house for one year! Let the celebration begin!!

We are really encouraged to look back at the year and see how much we have accomplished, but to say WE accomplished it all on our own, would be denying credit where credit is due. Between both of us working full time jobs and raising our one year old daughter-we have definitely had help along the way! That help, has gotten us to where we are today, where we can confidently look back at the year and say “we are proud of where we are at”.

We have been grateful for Austin’s parents watching our daughter as we work at the house, as well as other friends who have volunteered along the way. We are so grateful to the many people who came over multiple times to help with demolition and clean up. Our  kitchen wouldn’t be where it is today without the help in funding it by Devina’s parents and her brother’s spending a week to help us out. And of course, with all of the supporters we have, who are cheering us on along the way! Having that group of encouragement has definitely kept pushing us. We are so thankful. It takes a village to renovate a house 🙂 Is that the saying? Something like that!

This past year has gotten us really excited about the next year and what the future holds. We have big plans and we are excited to watch everything unfold and see how God guides the way!

Keep the Reno’s Comin’ Year Two!!
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

P.s Click here to watch our “Year In Review” video!

The Red Murder Bathroom

Let me start by saying, no there wasn’t actually a murder in our red murder bathroom (at least that we know of) BUT it certainly looked like there could have been.

The funny thing about our house, prior to renovations, was that it was completely washed out. All of the beautiful wood work, painted white. The walls, painted white. The stairs, painted white. Literally everything that could have been painted in our house, was painted and it was white. So, everything was completely washed out and there was no depth to it.

The ONE room that the previous owners decided would look nice with some color was the En-Suite-and the color they chose was a bright red. Why they decided this would be a good idea, is beyond my comprehension. Going from completely washed out white everywhere to a bright red bathroom, definitely jumps out! There is no denying that it was a bold choice, but not a good one. That Red Murder Bathroom, had to go! No doubt!

Seriously, who designed this room? AND ACTUALLY thought it was a good idea? The only thing that could be worse is if there was carpet on the floor!

So we said “goodbye” to the red walls, clogged toilet, medicine cabinet and leaky sink!

And “hello” to exposed brick and a clean slate to work with!

Let the reconstruction begin! We decided to keep the bathtub. It was in fairly good shape and is a super durable cast iron tub, that just needed a little TLC.  As for everything else in the bathroom, we tore out.

We decided to go with a grey floor tile and white subway tile for around the tub. Austin hadn’t done any tiling work before, and took on the challenge. He did all the tile work in the bathroom himself!

And he SLAYED it! The tile worked perfectly in this bathroom. The bright tile scaling the majority of the wall, made for a bigger look in such a small bathroom. The darker floor adds depths to the room, and the grey/green walls give the room a calming finish, definitely a different vibe from the red murder bathroom in it’s previous life.

The En-Suite bathroom was one of the first projects in our house that we have completed. We are super happy with the final product! Stay tuned for a blog where we will “price out” the cost of this bathroom and show some more final product pictures!

Keep the Reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffth
Griffith House Projects

 

 

Demo Day(s)

With any great renovation, comes a great deal of demolition, and that was no different for our project. One demo day definitely does not suffice for the amount of demolition that needed to be done in our house.

Since our house was built in 1900, we have the not so lucky privilege of lath & plaster. The cracks, bumps and bruises of these walls definitely needed more that just a tune up, most of the lath and plaster needed to be taken down and the house was practically stripped to its bare bones. Beautiful bones may I add.

Yes, beautiful indeed. Our house was crafted with complete precision by the original builder. There is 100yr old pine supporting the walls and held together by 3 inch long nails. Of course, along the years, not so crafty people have done some serious damage to our house-closing off glorious large rooms with temporary walls, building in bathrooms in the smallest of corners, and re-structuring the entire floor plan of this once beautifully designed home. Most of these alterations, we have demolished, as we try our hardest to restore the original inspiration of this house.

Removing a temporary wall between the dining room and main entrance

Opening up the wall that once had pocket doors

Removing the stinky awkward bathroom off of the kitchen

Removing the awkward bathroom off the kitchen to become a grand pantry

Removing a semi-dividing wall between the side entrance and living room

The semi-diving wall is gone!

Another semi-dividing wall in the master bedroom

Semi-dividing wall in the master bedroom demolished

The pictures above only partially show some of the awkward structures that were added in our house that we removed.
The pictures below are some of the “bare bones” of the house.

We have loved getting down to the bones of the house and finding treasures we didn’t expect to find! The next blog will be about some of the neat things we have come across through our demolition and unfolding of more of the history of our house!

Until then, keep the reno’s coming!
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

The Ventilation

So, you buy a house. First you find out that you need to get ALL the plumbing redone. Next you find out that you can’t get mail delivered to your house, because you don’t have a legitimate address? Then a crazy lady steals your mail, breaks in through your window, claims its herself and you need Police intervention. After that you realize the whole house needs insulation. At this point, you must be thinking, we’ve been hit with everything, haven’t we?

Well, can I give you a suggestion? Don’t ask if that’s all. I guarantee, once you ask, something else will come up!

Sure enough, that happened with us.

Winter was fast approaching and we had a goal of getting most the insulation in before winter arrived. We were pretty much done with insulation on the top level and though we weren’t able to get to the main floor by the first snow fall, we weren’t too worried about it. We would just turn our heat on and have some higher gas bills this year, and try to get the rest of the house insulated by next Christmas. (The main level has double walls, exterior barn wood, and then another layer of barn wood on the interior. So, we need to blow in insulation on that level.)

So, Austin called the gas company and set up a date for them to turn our gas on. Well, they came to turn it on, only to turn around and tell us that there was no venting from our heater to vent out the excess gas. Were we surprised? At this point, no.

We gathered some information on what we needed in order to get the gas turned on. We went a head and gathered what we need and got the vent hooked up and figured we were set to go!

The gas guys came back to turn the gas on, but the seal we used for the vent wasn’t fire proof, so we needed to go back to home depot, get fire proof seal and try again. We did that. FINALLY, we were set to have the gas set up.

They set up the gas. The next day Austin and I went over to work on the house, and could smell gas outside. I say to Austin, “Do you smell that? It’s gas isn’t it?” Sure enough, our outside meter had a gas leak. The emergency response came out to check our meter and find out if it was a hazard or not. They turned off our gas in order to get us a new gas meter.

Got our gas turned back on. No leak. check. Properly vented. Check. That hold up was solved, the house was warm and we were on our way again!

Keep the Reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

The Insulation (or lack there of it)

Phew. So after that crazy story. Let’s just take a little breather here, and hear about a less dramatic situation. Here, we have the 4th “plague”, the insulation.

It was a beautiful summer day and Tember and I were out mowing the lawn. Usually, I would do outside work with Tember in her carrier, while Austin worked inside. Since, she’s an infant and we didn’t want to expose her to any dangerous dust or fumes from paints or what have you, her and I worked outside often.

I had just finished mowing the lawn and transferred her to play in her bouncer while I pulled some weeds, when Austin came out the side door.

“Hey, Devina, I need to talk to you for a second.” I knew he didn’t have great news.
“So, looks like none of our exterior walls have insulation in them.” Right, of course not! “I think we are going to want to take down all the exterior walls and then put insulation in. But that means, we have a lot more work to do.” At this point, the plumbing was all removed, and a lot of the demolition was done, so to add this to the list, would set us back A LOT! “I know it’s a lot of extra work, but it’ll save us money in the long run, and it should help with the moisture problem in the basement.” I knew Austin was right, but all I wanted to say was “no”. It seemed like a huge task we would have to take on.

I said “Can you just give me a minute.” I needed to breath and think about it. I felt like we were in a real life HGTV show where they keep meeting with the couple and telling them that they found another issue, so they need to choose between fixing it or losing another thing off their wish list.

After a moment of accepting this new hurdle, I agreed to it. And so, the next round of demolition began.

Keep the Reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

The Thief in the Day (Part 1)

Alright blog readers, you may want to fasten your seat belts for this one, because you are in for a crazy story. If you haven’t had a chance to read Monday’s blog, I will give you a moment to go back and read it now, it is important for you to know some details before continuing reading.

Well, it had been a few months since I had started getting mail delivered to our house, so we figured that that situation had kind of resolved itself and we hadn’t revisited it again.

We were now into July, and had made some pretty great progress on our house. A lot of different friends and family had come to help us with things here and there, and a few of them we hid keys for, so they could go over and help when we weren’t there. It was pretty common to have someone at our house working on something, even if we weren’t there. Austin and I had also recently welcomed two pretty little kittens into our lives and their home was at the house. We would go over and feed them daily and play with them at the house. Our apartment was just a block away, so it was a regular practice to walk over to the house after work and spend some time there with the cats and renovating. When I had days off, Tember and I would walk over there to play with the cats.

And so that is how this beautiful day in July started. Tember and I had gone over to the house in the early afternoon, fed the cats and spent some time playing with them. When it was getting close to supper, we returned to the apartment to start dinner. This week at the house we had spent a lot of time doing demolition, so we had a big dumpster that was going to be picked up that day, but it was still there in the early afternoon. Austin arrived home around 6pm and had noticed that by now the dumpster had been picked up. Still, nothing out of the ordinary.

After dinner, we walked back over to the house. As we were getting closer to the house, we noticed a sweater hanging in the front window. I thought at first it was our Pastor’s sweater. He had come over to our house a few times to help, and a couple of those times he had come alone and just let himself in with the key. But as we got closer, it became apparent that it wasn’t his sweater. Well, maybe it was one of our other friends? At this point, we were really confused. We got up to the house and the side window was open. Now, that was odd. Austin walked up to the window and saw a girl we did not recognize standing on our stairs. Austin quickly ran around the house to the back door, as he reached for the handle, she met him at the door.

There a stranger was standing in front of us, at our front door. She had a dust mask on her forehead and covering her mouth. Her hair was buzzed and she had a bandanna headband on. She was smaller in stature and had tattoos on her neck. She was holding our broom.

Austin stormed into the house, pointed outside and yelled to her “Get out of our house! Right now!”

To Be Continued…

Keep the Reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

The Mail Fiasco

Well, here we are on plague #4 “The Mail Fiasco”. Ok, so maybe not exactly a plague, but a big hurdle that resulted in a much stranger scenario, (which you will read about on Friday’s blog)

As most of you should know by now, if you read our blog, “Over a Century of History. ” that our house was vacant for a number of years before we bought it. Which could explain some of the problems we had currently faced, example, the stolen pipes. Apparently it had been vacant so long that the mail carrier actually “shut off” mail delivery to that address.

Unfortunately, nobody informed ME that the mail had been cut off and I went ahead and did what any law abiding citizen does, immediately changed my address.

Though, it wasn’t as easy as it should be, because every time I tried to change my address on different things an error message popped up that said “no such address found.” I quickly went back to our closing papers to make sure I was putting in the right address. The first paper had a zip code that ended in 01 and the paper under it had a zip code that ended in 03. So, I went ahead and tried it both ways-again the error message popped up. I decided to go onto the US postal service website and request a mail transfer instead, since I couldn’t individually change my address in any of my other sites. Such as the Department of Immigration, and the DMV. Well, with the US postal service, the same error message popped up but there was an option to click “continue anyway”, so I clicked it. That was that, my address was changed and my mail would transfer to my house, so I thought.

Well, a few weeks went by and I hadn’t gotten any mail and I started to wonder what was going on. Since, we had an issue with my mail transfer, I decided not to transfer Austin’s or Tember’s, so anything that was in their name, arrived at my in-laws. I started getting suspicious that my mail wasn’t arriving, so I went online and cancelled the mail transfer, hoping my mail would show up at my in-laws again. It didn’t. I went to the post office and asked them if they knew what was going on. No one at the local office seemed to know and they even told me the address we gave them wasn’t in the system at all. As if the house didn’t even exist. I tried explaining to them that the house is not new, it has been sitting on that same corner lot for over 100 years! The post office told me to go to the city planner’s office because they would probably know, and maybe it was because we had recently bought the house. Well, I went to the city planners, and they told me to go back to the post office. I went back to the post office and they told me to go to the city planners. Okay! Come On! Someone has to know something, right?

So finally, I called the headquarters for the United States Postal Services and they put in an official investigation as to what had happened to my mail and why our house wasn’t showing up on any database. Meanwhile, the delivery man who delivers to my in-laws neighborhood, asked my sister in law whether we still lived there, because he was being told to transfer my mail, but had no idea where it was going. It was a complete mess!

Finally, one day in June, I received a letter in our mailbox, then I received a few more that week. My mail was being delivered to our house! As for the mail I never received, I just assumed that it was lost somewhere in mail limbo. And so we thought the mail fiasco was behind us…but maybe not solved?

Keep the Reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects

P.s. we couldn’t even get pizza delivered to our house, because domino’s didn’t recognize it as a real address. *face palm*