Again, with the trying my hand at being Jay Z - it's obvious it's just not workn' out, yo. We ain't tight. I ain't no thug. Hey, you gotta give it up for tryin', no?
Anyway, I figured before Ed and I dive into beginning our next big project, aka the rec room, bathroom, and laundry room downstairs, I would share with you a yo, yo, yo, break-it-down homey, budget breakdown of what went into our awesome sauce kitchen and bathroom renovations and how we did it all on a very tight budget.
First off, we were slightly overwhelmed by the amount of work these two rooms were going to be right off the bat. We had just invested almost every last dollar we had into closing costs and a down payment. How on earth were we going to renovate the two most important (and expensive) rooms in the house? Well, at first we decided we were going to do just the bathroom because of the physical and medical dangers that it held. This, my friends, is what we call a travesty (but holy hell was it fun to destroy!):
Then, as the plumbers were searching for broken pipes to fix, they found some behind the dishwasher and couldn't get the dishwasher out; that's when the kitchen went to looking like this:
Obviously we couldn't live with a kitchen or bathroom looking the way it did - hell, they weren't even operational. So, we had to bite the bullet and start from scratch. Was it that bad? Um, yes. Would we do it again? Um, maybe. So, what did we do to get where we are now? Lets break these projects down, yo. Let's see how we did these renovations on a supa-tight-budget-like-fly-and-sheeeeet style. We didn't really have a set dollar amount budget, but knew we wanted to keep it under $3k Benjamins. First up let's visit the bathroom, shall we?
- Demo: F-to-the-R-double-E
- Subway tiles: $125 (23 pennies a pop from home depot)
- Marble Floor Tiles: $400 ($6.99 a sq ft negotiated down from $10 sq ft)
- Grout, spacers, Ditra, sealer, caulk: $175
- Holy Sheet!Rock, Cement Board, Plywood: $150
- Trim - window and base board: $80
- Tile Saw: $69 (Ed found the saw and the stand on clearance for $69)
- My brothers work van: F-to-the-R-double-E
- Thinset, tile nippers, and tiling trowels: $130
- Miter Saw, Circular Saw, Drills, etc: All owned or borrowed = F-to-the-R-double-E
- Holy Sheet!Rock mud, tape, spackle knives: $25
- Primer and Paint (Behr ultimate all in one in Urban Mist): $60
- Vanity Ed built (wood, screws, glue, stain, and poly): $165
- Sconces, Sink, Faucet, Mirror: $183 (Sconces: $68; Sink: $45; Faucet: $40; Mirror; $30)
- Toilet: $98
- Tub: $120
- Insulation: $15
- Moen Shower Faucet and special valve (or as I lovingly refer to them, water handles): $170
- Accessories (towel bar, tp holder, shower curtain rod, shower curtain, bath mats, window blind, etc): $120
- Electrical switches, outlets, recessed light, and FAN!: $80
- Wall Art: F-to-the-R-double-E (Thanks, Cman!)
- Other miscellaneous stuff-er-ooni: $60
- Labor: F-to-the-R-double-E (well, paid in pizza, pepsi, and beer)
Making the grand total for the bathroom: $1935.00! That's actually under the guesstimate I made a while back at $2100. Go us! $1935. benji's isn't too costly considering the transformation we ended up with:
Now, let us move on to the kitchen. Like the bathroom, we didn't have a set budget per se, but more of a keep it as close/under to $10,000 as possible. While we went a little over the $10k ceiling, we didn't blow it out of the water - which easily could have happened.
- Demolition: F-to-the-R-double-E
- Powertools: Mostly owned or borrowed except for the sawzall ($39 on sale at Home Depot) and automatic brad nail gun ($45 on clearance at Home Depot)- both of which ended up being some of our best investments
- Blades, sandpaper, etc: $150
- Holy Sheet!Rock, plywood, spray foam, buckets, 2x4's: $300
- Sheet rock tape, mud, and caulk: $50
- Halo recessed lighting - 5ct, 6in pots and trim: $90
- Electrial wire, switches, outlets, dimmers, and boxes: $200
- Floor tile: $210 (overstock item on Home Depot.com for $1.99 sq ft)
- Insulation: $80
- Thinset, grout, and sealer: $150
- Thresholds, wood flooring inserts: Free (Thanks Mr. & Mrs. Toth!) and $100 for 3 thresholds
- Trim: $35
- Undermount double bowl sink extra deep, sink kit, strainers: $150 (sink was $350 down to $129 -clearance from Home Depot)
- American Standard Fairbury Faucet: $138
- Appliances - new electric range and microwave: $1015.
- Dishwasher Part: $50
- Broken pipes: $1000
- Paint: $60
- Custom Cabinets: $4000
- Granite Counter tops: $3000
- Wine Fridge: $120
- Pendant light: $140
- Labor, know-how, and brute force: F-to-the-R-double-E
Kitchen grand total being $11,122. Yeeee-ooouucch! Ok, so going $1,122 over where we wanted and/or proposed to stay isn't really that bad; in all honesty I'm actually really proud of our numbers considering our new kitchen (and bath) look like a million bucks. See:
If we weren't able/capable of doing the work ourselves and didn't bother to wait for sales, coupons, and clearance items, these two projects would have cost us in the $75,000 region easily for material, labor, and tradesmen/women. Ed and I learned a lot from doing these projects ourselves. We we do it again? Honestly, yes because paying someone to do something we are quite obviously capable of doing ourselves would be silly and would really vex me.
So lets do one final number crunch - this is my favorite part! I'm geekin' out here! Ok, ok...so, the reasn Ed and I are pretty much house poor is because so far we have put:
$11,122 into the kitchen
+$1,935 into the bathroom
+$2,300 into the rest of the house (building permits,paint, recessed lighting, molding, Holy Sheet!Rock, oil, beer, pizza, soda, etc)
+$15,000 into refinishing the hardwood floors, fixing broken pipes, and a brand new furnace.
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$30,357.00 US Benjamin's and CENTS.
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