Renovating our Kitchen on a Budget

From the moment we saw our house we knew it was going to need ALOT of work. Just about everything was original from the 1900s; from the windows to the kitchen cabinets. And let's not even think about the all pink tiled bathroom from the 50s! After fixing all of the absolute musts... and there were more of them than expected... we were left with a pretty tight budget to make the house everything we've dreamed of. Our one saving grace has been that we are a family of handymen and there's not much we haven't already done or are scared to learn how to do. Between renovating our last house (yea we have a thing for old fixer uppers) to redoing a lot of my in-laws house we know a few things about DIY.

Below are four of the biggest money saving hacks we've come across while remodeling our kitchen!

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Unfinished Cabinets

The first thing we did when we got into the house was gut the entire kitchen. There was ALOT of water damage and nothing could be saved. After looking at a million samples we decided we wanted a black stained cabinet. Without custom ordering our cabinets (which we didn't even look into prices for) black stained was very rare. IKEA was the only place we could find exactly what we were looking for. That's when I found unfinished cabinets at Lowes that ran $50-$200 cheaper per cabinet than their finished versions. After a YouTube tutorial I set to work sanding, staining, and finishing all of the cabinets. In total there were 8 cabinets and it took about 3 days to finish. After finishing them all we decided to change up the top cabinets and make them white which added an extra 2 days to our project... but I am happy we did and think it brightens the kitchen up so much more. We still have a few more cabinets to order as we put the kitchen together but in the end by going unfinished we saved about $1500.

IKEA Countertops

Another huge money saver for us was deciding on installing our own countertops. We decided not to splurge on solid rock or butcher block (which was our original plan) and go for a white marble laminate for the time being. We ordered from Lowes and spent about $550. But on delivery day we received an email saying they were out of stock and our order was cancelled. Lowes didn't have any other laminates we liked in stock and told us we'd have to custom order them. That would have cost us $1300 and was a definite NO from the start. Luckily we came across IKEA and found the exact counters we wanted for $376! We also found that IKEA offers butcher block as well for over half off the price of Lowes and Home Depot.

Find our white marble laminate countertops here: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ekbacken-countertop-white-marble-effect-laminate-20335629/

Open Box Models!

This simple budget friendly hack really caught me off guard but has saved us so much money. Retailers like Lowes and Home Depot have open box sections for just about everything they sell! Anything damaged even the slightest ends up there... with crazy discounts! We were able to get a few of our cabinets for over half off just because of some minor unseen tear and our open box fridge saved us $1200 all on itself! All because of a cracked but still functional shelf! Now every time I go into Lowes I make sure to browse their open box sections just incase I find another amazing deal.

Clearance Flooring

We had been debating on what to do with the houses floors from day one. After the carpet came out we found beautiful hardwood throughout the entire house. And our original plan was to refinish it ourselves. But after counting up the cost for floor sander/buffer rentals, all of the sand papers, stains and other materials, that project was turning out to be pricier than anticipated. Not to mention there was nothing separating the floor from the crawl space which lead to bad drafts and just cold floors in general. That's when we got lucky... my mother in law found a clearance laminate flooring at Lowes for .07 cents a square foot! After spending a whole day calling around to every Lowes within 2 hours of us we were able to find one that had enough of it in stock for us to do the entire house plus the attic room. In the end the flooring itself for 1300 square feet and the underlayment and padding came to about $250... saving us well over a thousand dollars!

Our little farmhouse is slowly coming together and thanks to these few hacks we have saved thousands on the kitchen alone and hopefully they can help you save on any future projects too! Keep an eye out for the final home reveal which will be out in the coming weeks! And as always thanks for reading along!