Tips For Planning Ahead And Saving Money On A Home Renovation

By Author: Gary Nealon
Total Articles: 333
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Most home remodelers look for angles to save money. It might be buying in bulk or buying supplies at a home supply auction. By doing a little research and looking for deals, it will eventually add up and save you big money at the end of your project. Let's face it, in today's real estate market, cutting costs is necessary. Gone are the $75,000 dollar flip in two months. Saving money in the most popular areas of the house is a good way to come out ahead on your project. The most popular areas are the kitchen and bath. A little extra research can take you a long way into saving money. Remember, buying retail is usually the first big mistake. A good home professional is trained to automatically look elsewhere and so should you.

Looking online works for some building supplies but it is not a good way to find everything. It is not likely that you are going to save money on lumber or drywall by shopping online, however, something like kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities are good to find online. Most kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, unless custom made, are imported and then sold to a retailer (even the big ...
... name brands). Then they are sold to you. In some cases there is another distributor in that chain. Avoiding this is actually pretty simple. Advertisers and marketing people will lead you to believe you need to join a club or be in the business, but all you really need to do is find the direct importers. Beware, companies will claim they are direct importers and some will have it in their name, but take it a step further and call or email the business. Ask where they get their cabinets from and who is importing the product. Or just look at the prices. You will know a direct importer, the prices will be lower and the product will still be the same.

So now that you have found a way to save on some of the big ticket items in your house, you now need to make sure you are getting a quality product. The big box retailers sell kitchen cabinets and some have decent prices, but look at their quality. What you will find is that even the name brand cabinets will try to use creative terms for the material used, but what is really is called is particleboard or fiberboard. Look for cabinets that have a solid plywood cabinet box. Since there will be a lot of moisture in your kitchen or bathroom, but the last thing you want to install is something that can be affected by moisture. Don't shy away from the ready-to-assemble kitchen cabinets. Most people think that because they have to put it together, it is not going to be as strong in reality, most of the stuff at Home Depot or Lowes is actually Read-To-Assemble (RTA) and they took the extra step and assembled it for you (adding labor costs) A home professional will always get the RTA - ready to assemble kitchen cabinet because they are easy to put together and cost about 40% less. A word of caution. Not all of the RTA cabinets are the same. A quality RTA cabinet will come as a complete kit in its own box, with the solid wood face frames and doors, solid plywood box and easy to assemble camlock assembly. Don't be fooled by the stuff that Ikea sells where you have to buy each piece individually, and you end up with 100 different boxes that you then have to figure out how to assemble.

I hope by answering these questions we can help you save money on some of your home building supplies. Remembering the phrase RTA kitchen cabinets or RTA bathroom vanities is a good method to save. Looking online and comparing prices at many different sites will only benefit you as well.