Creating a realistic budget is essential when planning a comprehensive remodel. The planning and design phase happens weeks – typically months – before the project starts. This means clients must have a long-view perspective of what a remodel entails and how that impacts the budget to ensure reserved funds are ample enough to accommodate the process from start to finish.
10 Pro Tips To Experience a Budget-Friendly Remodel
Here are ten tips on how to experience the joy of a budget-friendly remodel from professionals.
1. Choose the Right Builder
There is no doubt that the contractor you select has everything to do with your feelings about the home remodel’s outcome. Their wisdom and experience are driving forces for ensuring things run on time and within the future budget. Contractors who underbid to “get the job” inevitably wind up with unhappy clients who have to dig deeper than expected into their coffers to cover realistic project costs.
As you begin meeting with prospective builders, make sure you take the time to check their references and ask about whether or not the original budget was realistic. This can give you a good indicator of what you can expect.
2. Add a 10% to 15% Contingency Fund
We base project estimates on various factors, including current- or future-material cost projections. However, we have no control over other countries’ political stability, natural disasters, or pandemics. We also have zero power over unforeseen issues that arise during demolition.
While we expect to rewire and replumb an untouched home from the 1950s, we do not expect things to be dramatically wrong in houses built in the 1990s or beyond. If we rip open a way and find major rot, building code violations, or other unexpected red flags, we’ll have to fix them.
Your 10% to 15% contingency fund ensures those issues are minor setbacks and not significant sources of frustration or money stress.
3. Optimize What You Have, Rather Than Adding More
Remodels that “add more” require higher budgets because we’re remodeling existing features while starting from scratch on expansions. Material costs are currently higher than ever due to shortages and transportation issues. Re-envisioning your current space to be more efficient and visually attractive can save you tens of thousands.
If you need an addition, that’s one thing. We’ll help you choose additions that increase home value or provide a return on your investment. However, if you’re just interested in making things “bigger,” let’s see if we can’t achieve what you want with a more efficient and creative redesign.
4. Re-Use and Repurpose
Sustainability and energy efficiency are hot topics right now. We should all be doing whatever we can to re-use and repurpose as much as possible. The benefit of both is that they support your budget-friendly remodeling goals.
You can find high-quality doors, windows, sinks, lighting fixtures, cabinetry, tiles, countertops, etc., at retail stores focusing on repurposing or salvaging materials that would otherwise be landfill fodder. Examples include DeLand’s Habitat For Humanity ReStore, which donates all proceeds to local Habitat for Humanity chapters. Again, your builder can help you source products like these to keep costs down.
5. Offset Costs with a Deductible Donation
Along those same lines, Habitat for Humanity and other organizations are willing to remove the usable items we would have knocked out during the demo. Contact them to learn more about how you benefit financially from the deduction. You may also save a bit on the labor costs associated with the items they’ve already removed.
6. Think Tubes Instead of Windows
Solar tubes are ultra-efficient ways to exponentially increase daylighting without adding new windows. Installing a new high-quality window costs upwards of $1,500, whereas installing a solar tube costs only $500. That’s a considerable saving.
Other ways to creatively lower a home remodeling budget include:
7. Keep kitchen/bathroom layouts similar wherever possible. The more re-working of kitchen and bathroom plumbing/electrical we do, the more it costs you. Working with the layout you have saves time and money.
8. Do your own demo work. Demoing things and hauling them away yourself can shave a chunk off of the builder’s transportation/dump charges.
9. Choose a design-build team. By working with a contractor who does in-house design, you can save hundreds (or more) that you would have spent on unnecessary architect fees.
10. Think lifetime costs vs. one-time savings. The extra money you spend now can save you thousands down the road in maintenance and replacement costs.
Fogle Constructors Specializes in Budget-Friendly Remodels
Fogle Constructors specializes in budget-friendly remodels without sacrificing our commitment to high-quality craftsmanship. Schedule a consultation, at 386-279-0901, and we’ll put you in touch with recent clients who are thrilled with their DeLand remodels and renovations.
