How did you have money to renovate your house?

amother

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:26 pm

All! And yes ALL of my neighbors did work to their house before or after they moved in. Like major upgrading like painting, new furniture, lighting etc . If you did these type of renovations or more... How did you have the money for it?? We scraped to come up with down payment and we're living in our house for 2 years and are still waiting to do basic painting etc so we don't go in debt for it.

Rubber Ducky

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:41 pm

If you have a good eye and and some time to prep the walls properly, interior painting is something you can do yourself without having to hire someone. Paint and related supplies like rollers, drop cloths, and brushes are not so expensive. I've done my own interior painting for many years.

amother

Burntblack

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:43 pm

We did it a few ways, we got a cheaper house so that we can have some money for the upgrades we wanted, we put some on credit cards and paid it off with bonuses that we get every few months, and we took some from living expenses and stretched the food and spent less on other things.

Chayalle

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:49 pm

Rubber Ducky wrote:

Same, I've been painting my house together with my DD's and we've been doing a great job (if I do say so myself). We painted the girls' rooms last year, and this year so far did the kitchen and foyer. On the agenda next is the bathrooms (cuz they need it the most) and then the living room, family room, and dining room are up.

I'd say it's about $80 per room, with paint and supplies (2 cans of paint, plus supplies. Brushes are often resuable, but you need new rollers and we used disposable dropclothes). We had extra paint from the kitchen and did foyer same color, so that was a freebie.

Chayalle

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:54 pm

amother Gardenia wrote:

Savings but a lot of people I know take out home equity or refinance

I saved up for a while to do some renovations for my kitchen - about 5K for new counters, tile backsplash, and new sinks. It's like a new kitchen, the difference is amazing. We kept the original cabinets because they are great, and painted the walls ourselves. (don't love the ceramic floor, but it would be a fortune to replace. That will be another day!)

As to furniture, we were able to get alot for free (!) from a local freebay (like beds that were practically new for our guestroom, coffee tables, deck furniture) and some I bought with an eye to sale prices (like an egg chair on the deck for absolute lowest price on sale....)

amother

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:54 pm

amother Tangerine wrote:

We used credit cards at 0% APR
Paid it off of course, but that’s how we do big things when they’re necessary

I'm curious how this works. Do you need to make a specific payment every month? How did you get a 0 apr credit card? How much money did you put on the card for your renovations?

Highstrung

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:59 pm

We painted ourselves. We do room by room. It’s actually enjoyable and when the walls get knicked I don’t get bent out of shape about it because I didn’t spend money I didn’t have abs I know I can just put a little spackle and do paint touch ups .
We renovated our kitchen when it was completed not on our plans. We only planned to replace the counter top. My DH had gone to the kitchen store for an estimate and the designer said he could design a kitchen and give us a price while he was at it. So DH went along with it to see what we could dream about . It turns out the kitchen he proposed was about $13k at that time.
Money we didn’t have.
Three days later , a man my DH helped years before with his business called to tell DH that he had money he owed DH and that he could come pick up the check for $10,000. This was money we never expected and it came just when we needed it, so we got to do our complete kitchen.
Otherwise, we are big DIYers and have not paid anyone to do work for us. When we have some extra funds here and there we purchase materials and do small projects one at a time.

amother

Sand

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 3:59 pm

amother OP wrote:

I'm curious how this works. Do you need to make a specific payment every month? How did you get a 0 apr credit card? How much money did you put on the card for your renovations?

0 APR means that you only pay interest once.
You need to pay the minimum payment every month, and pay the card before the year is up. (Or however many months you get on your card.)

amother

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 4:01 pm

amother Sand wrote:

0 APR means that you only pay interest once.
You need to pay the minimum payment every month, and pay the card before the year is up. (Or however many months you get on your card.)

Thank you for this info!

amother

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 5:09 pm

amother Sand wrote:

0 APR means that you only pay interest once.
You need to pay the minimum payment every month, and pay the card before the year is up. (Or however many months you get on your card.)

How much did you pay on the one time interest?

amother

Springgreen

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 5:12 pm

amother Sand wrote:

0 APR means that you only pay interest once.
You need to pay the minimum payment every month, and pay the card before the year is up. (Or however many months you get on your card.)

It means that you make the min payments each month and only start paying interest once the 0apr is over. We did out Reno on cards that has 18 months 0 Apr. lots of basic cards have this benefit

amother

Springgreen

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 5:13 pm

amother OP wrote:

How much did you pay on the one time interest?

I dont think this is true. When we did it on a couple diff cards it means you are only charged interest once the 0 Apr benefit is over. You make sure to pay up the full balance befor that occurs

amother

IndianRed

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 5:17 pm

We had a budget and found a house that was below budget. The extra 30,000 went towards painting, refinishing floors, new light fixtures, new door hardware, new counters and cabinet handles.

We did all this but didn't have normal furniture (all very old, broken, ugly, second hand). That took about 10 years to get together.

amother

Aqua

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 5:18 pm

When we bought our house we factored in the costs of painting and redoing the kitchen. The work we needed to do once we moved in, we borrowed money from my parents and BH paid it back about a year later. Since then we only do work on the house with money we already have BH.

amother

Olive

Thu, Sep 15 2022, 5:20 pm

We knew when we bought the house that we'd need to do some work on it. We factored that into the price we could afford for a house.

There were asbestos tiles in the basement. We knew we'd need to carpet over them.

There was lead in some of the paint, and there was some mold on one wall. We had to repaint and deal with everything else that came along with the lead/mold issues.

We had termites in the shed, which meant either knocking it down (also $$) or deal with that.

My grandmother had some old couches in storage that she let us have. We bought some cheap beds for the guest bedroom and got some of the other furniture secondhand.

That was all we were going to do, but my mother was appalled that we weren't going to do the rest of the floors and walls. She said that's the bare minimum that you do when you move into a house. (My parents are very well-off. We're living in a different world from them.) When I told her respectfully that it was what we could afford, she offered to pay. I felt weird at the time, doing something that was definitely way beyond our budget, but have appreciated it so much over the years since then and have thanked her often.