Home Renovations: Here Is the Best $1,000 These 3 Homeowners Ever Spent
Whether you want to improve your home for possible resale or you want to upgrade to have a better living experience, renovations are often the only way to get there.
However, doing a significant renovation can cost a huge chunk of change your budget might not have to spare. Fortunately, some small renovations can make a big difference in your home.
GOBankingRates spoke to three homeowners about the best $1,000 they spent on renovations and how they did it.
Also here are eight renovations where you can cut corners to save.
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An Electrical Upgrade
Deborah lives in Arizona with her two kids and several dogs in a home built in the 1970s. She wanted to upgrade some of the electrical for “modernization and convenience.”
Safety was also a concern. Many of the light fixtures and ceiling fans were old and trailed cords from the wall to the outlets down below, she said. And the glass portion of her lights were old storm lamps that weren’t well secured.
“Then I had some other outlets that I wanted installed in convenient places because when they were built in the seventies, they didn’t think about them or nightlights for the halls,” she said.
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Balancing DIY With Paid Labor
Deborah was able to switch out the light fixtures and fans herself, a skill she credits her grandfather with teaching her. “Grandpa, he could make anything out of nothing. So resourceful,” she said.
“Installing lights is pretty easy — nothing a YouTube video can’t teach you,” she said. “You find the breaker, you turn it off, you follow the directions on whatever you’re installing, make sure you have the right color wires put together and put the little wire cap on them. Super easy.”
For the more serious electrical work, such as adding outlets, she hired an electrician.
“My hallways didn’t have outlets, but I had things that plug in the hallways,” Deborah said, “so I wanted plugs there and I wanted a light switch in my closet.”
Even with the electrician cost at around $750, she sourced the fixtures from a discount light company online and all in all, spent only around $1,000.
Improving Resale Value and Immediate Comfort
Immediate convenience wasn’t her only reasoning behind the update — she aims to sell soon. “Arizona was never going to be my permanent home and now that I’m super close to retirement, I’m going to be selling and moving to Northern California.”
Dining Room Floor Tile
Mark Dudek, Florida-based owner of CSD Hardscapes LLC, is no stranger to doing renovation projects himself. One such project was tiling his dining room floor.
He purchased a pallet of 12-inch by 24-inch tiles at Home Depot and had it loaded into the back of his truck.
“When I got home, there was little prep work to be done as the floors were just a thin laminate when I bought the house so they came up easy,” he said.
He laid the new tile and then grouted it, waited the necessary amount of time and then mopped.
A Simple Process
“It was that easy. I spent a total of maybe $450 on all the material and the change was amazing,” he said. “This renovation made a drastic change to our kitchen [and] dining room area. This was more for aesthetics than anything as the laminate was horrible.”
While resale wasn’t top of mind when he undertook the project, he knew it would only contribute to the value when it came time to sell.
His materials were just new tile, grout and adhesive. “I did the work myself and this was the first time I had done a full room of tile but had helped friends on other projects so I had a good idea of what I was doing.”
The entire project, including the demo, took about four days total.
“I most like the overall look of the new flooring and it was much easier to clean. I would totally recommend anyone that is at least a little handy to do this themselves as the labor savings were tremendous.
A Bathroom Renovation on a Budget
Holly Leathers, a single mother and a director of talent from Illinois, was ready to upgrade her kitchen and her bathroom, but didn’t have a lot to spend. Yet through some simple strategies, she updated both for less than $1,000 each.
She took an old bathroom with drab colors and old fixtures and replaced the vanity, light fixtures and flooring, painted and then hand sawed and applied shiplap paneling to the walls.
While Leathers got great deals on the light fixture and a faucet, her biggest expense was the $550 vanity, which really anchored the direction of the renovation.
“I was trying to be as frugal as possible, but still wanted it to be really high quality. This [vanity] was really elegant and it looks very expensive.”
She invested her own labor over two weeks, though she said she’s “a very experienced painter” from numerous projects she’s done. “I’ve renovated two houses now though and almost every room in each of the houses and with the kids’ bedrooms, I probably redid two or three times.”
While the fixtures and paint made a huge difference, she said, “The shiplap was the most dramatic improvement.”
Inspiration From Multiple Sources
Leathers took inspiration for the renovation from a variety of places, such as:
Pinterest boards
Budget designers on Instagram
Amazon creators
And sometimes it’s a matter of starting with a piece of furniture or a fixture and building around it. “For me, it started with the vanity.”
A Kitchen Update
The entire bathroom came in at under $1,000. But even more impressive, she also improved her kitchen for around $350 by painting brown cabinets white that she would otherwise have replaced if she could have afforded to. “I priced out new cabinets and it was a minimum of $10,000.”
A small amount of cabinet space has required her to be “really creative” and forced her to organize to fit everything in them. However, refinishing the cabinets with up to 10 coats of paint change the entire look of her kitchen, she said.
Most of the skills she utilized for her renovations came from watching YouTube videos and trial and error. “For me, this was like a means to an end. I just really needed to have some home renovations.”
As a single mom of four, limited on time and income, there was no other option but to do it herself. She, too, took inspiration from her grandfather who had a saying, “The sweetest tasting fruit is the fruit of your own labor.”
“I never fully got and knew what that meant until I did these renovations myself. The fact that I did the work myself made it so much more rewarding. I’m really proud of myself and I thought it was a great lesson for the kids.”
Deborah, Dudek and Leathers’ renovations are proof that many home-improvement projects can be low cost but deliver a high return with a little creativity.
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