Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Cost Effective Upgrades

If you are looking for some cost effective ways to upgrade or give your home a fresh look I'll be sharing some of my tips on here! Now, I know not everyone can just whip out the tile saw and re-tile a room or shower. I'll start with this room, one of our bathrooms. I didn't need the extra counter space because of having the cupboard below to hold my stuff. The cabinet was an oak cabinet that had the varnish fading. It looked dated and old. The faucet as you can see also had a dated look to it. (Also, this was our go to bathroom during the renovations and we were not living there in this filth!!)


Something you may not know about me and Zach, but are probably aware of is that we are the most frugal people ever. (Possibly to a fault!) We NEVER pay full price for anything and always try to find the good deals. We often browse the clearance section at Lowe's and that is where we have found some great faucets for CHEAP. I believe this faucet was originally $250 or so and we got it for maybe $25. So for this vanity I sanded it and use a good furniture spray paint. The paint cost $5. The granite top was the most expensive of the project but I used a coupon from those smart card things so it was $20 off. The granite top ended up being right around $200. So for less then $250 we got this awesome fresh look that completely changed the bathroom's appearance!


This ugly tile was creamy/peach colored and just didn't capture the eye because it was only partially up the wall.


One of the things I do to keep tile jobs cheap is using the basic in-stock tile at Home Depot. It is usually 59 cents a sq foot. I put the tile way up the wall so it made the room look much taller then it really is. It also gave it that calming spa feel that I was going for! A new showerhead off the clearance rack at Lowes was $5 and in-stock Home Depot faucet completed the look! (I took the pic with the blue painters tape still on the top)



By far the cheapest and EASIEST upgrade/change is PAINT! You can get a gallon of paint for $15 and redo a whole bathroom. I love painting. It is that instant gratification when working on a project!
This is our bedroom where we took out carpet and put in engineered hardwood floors that we found on clearance at Home Depot. The walls were white so 2 cans of Olympic brand paint from Lowe's and we had a whole new bedroom! I stripped the popcorn ceiling too.





2 comments:

Lori said...

WOW! Great changes! You guys interested in helping us remodel our bathroom? I am only half-kidding.

Stephanie said...

you guys do such a great job.