Here are some thoughts on saving where you can…
I was just thinking about how crazily expensive renovating a house can be, and so I thought I would try and rack my brains for things we have done to help us avoid unnecessary spending.
Family
If you are lucky enough to have family who can help, they are the best work force you could hire. They come in guns a blazing, care about what you want a tad more than a stranger would but also help you be realistic with your goals and making decisions –
“Laura, do these trees need to be cut down?” Said Uncle Jim…
“Well they do… but we don’t have to do that yet, and I quite like them…”
“No. If they need to come down, they are coming down while we are all here to do it for you”
And so that was the tree situation in the garden done in one day and I am not sat here writing thinking ‘oh I balls, we still have 8 trees to cut down and have no chainsaw or help…’
Plus, they also only cost a few tea bags and some biscuits, bonus.
Charity Shops
Ok maybe not quite for renovating, but handy for things like mugs. Yes mugs. Everyone knows that the way to a working man’s (or woman’s) heart is a good cuppa. Well, I’ve found this is my main duty, apart from all the ground breaking renovation skills that I have, I make a darn good cup of tea. So good in fact, Danny and I drink about a billion cups a day. Mugs, gardens, bricks & tools do not mix so replacing mugs is quite a recurring thing and I don’t want to be spending £5 a mug when in 2 months time it will have no handle and be covered in resin.
Charity shops are also great for little bargains for decorating the house. I found these gorgeous, what I can only describe as brand new, curtains in my local Oxfam. They are V&A Springtime Posey curtains, and they are gorgeous, and an absolute steal for £5.99 and most likely cost £100 new!
Freecycle/Gumtree
We have sooo much rubble to dispose of, it’s mad. So popped a little advert on freecycle and gumtree and someone contacted me saying they were after some rubble for making a new driveway. Bingo! No skip needed. Saving at least £150. Just need to hope they turn up…
We’ve also started our own little pile of rubble up because we will use it for the footings of either our new dining room floor or our extension.
Utilising Your Resources
… in other words don’t be too hasty to throw things out.
After we removed the first half of our unwanted chimney breast, we found out that we could sell the bricks (whole) for about £1 each… unfortunately for this first half it was too late as I had been chucking them out of the window to save dragging them down the stairs and through the house (utilising my own energy resources there!) so a lot of them smashed on impact! Never mind, we are armed with this new knowledge and will be taking the next half down very gently.
Another thing we have done is where we have removed the chimney breast in the spare bedroom, the floor 
boards are now too short and there’s a great gaping hole into the dining room! Downstairs was a built in cupboard next to the chimney breast we removed and so this also had to be taken out. We realised the shelves from this cupboard are perfect for patching up the gaps in the floorboards upstairs! They just need to be cut to size and sanded down. That has saved us money as now we don’t need to buy brand new wood for the floor, it also means that the boards will match perfectly… You find with older pine that the little lines running down it are much closer together than newer pine and less knots… Something to do with the conditions or when it grew I guess.
Trade Cards/Accounts
Get to know your local stores. We regularly go into our local builders merchants and quite often get a great discount now that they know us.
Look out for ‘Trade’ cards. Because Danny works for a building firm, he qualifies to get a trade point card at B & Q. To be honest I doubt it is very hard to get hold of one; he just went in one day when he had his grubby work clothes on and that was his id for working in the trade! We weren’t sure if there was much point but after finding everything we wanted in the main store and adding up the cost, then doing the same with their trade point catalogue we ended up saving about 5/10% of the cost… which if you do that every time really adds up.
I know the above may seem all like common sense but I thought it worth sharing… some of these things we realised too late!
Danny and Laura's Renovation Blog! 