First Person: DIY Remodel Saved Thousands on Labor

One Sunday morning, our one year daughter was fussing nosily at church. My husband took our fit- throwing child to drive around the surrounding neighborhood for twenty minutes. When he returned to pick us up, he told me, “I found the perfect house for us.” Two weeks later, we went to the open house and were overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done to update this old home. Nevertheless, I fell in love with the space and two months later, we were knee deep in remodeling projects.

We started with the kitchen, kitchen hallway, dining room, and hallway bathroom. We started frantically spraying wallpaper remover, scraping, and pulling off bits of wallpaper like crazy. In hindsight, I would have sanded over it and we would have textured and painted right over that thirty year old, impossible to pull off wallpaper. After the wallpaper was removed as best we could, we borrowed a texture gun from a friend, completely taped up the trim, and taped plastic over the doorways and sprayed California peel all over the kitchen, dining room, and front hallway bathroom. My husband sprayed and I dragged with the trowel after him. It was hard work and messy since it had to be dragged quickly before the textured dried.

The next step was to paint. Painting ourselves was a very time-consuming project. We painted the above mentioned areas plus all the living room trim, walls, three bedrooms, the laundry room, and an upstairs bathroom. We did it ourselves and the cost of wallpaper remover, paint at $35 a can times 16 cans, and brushes are an estimated $800.

The next step was getting rid of the burnt orange double sink in the kitchen. We replaced it with a $400 huge stainless steel sink. We also replaced the old stovetop with a nice, shiny black one for $565. The old, rusty white dishwasher, we replaced with a closeout black dishwasher for $463. We also replaced the old garbage disposal with a stainless steel wine fridge for $595. For the finishing touch, we added knobs on the kitchen cabinets for $140.

We also updated our home thirty years by replacing old light fixtures. We replaced the dining room glass plated light fixture with a newer, wrought iron chandelier. We also replaced the entry light. Together the new lighting cost $300. The total costs of remodeling and updating the inside of our old home was $3263. DIY remodeling projects saved us thousands of dollars and we couldn’t be happier with the result.

Photos by Esther Millette of home remodel/update.

Posted by john in Home Improvement

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