Lighting budget for your build?
livingreen2013
11 years ago
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lzhwong
11 years agolucy0214
11 years agoRelated Discussions
Building on a Budget $150K or less
Comments (73)I am a huge fan of a fixer upper. I feel you get the most bang for your buck with one. If you are not a visual person and if you are the type to reject a house because it's dirty or the paint color is wrong, or you don't like the carpeting, then find someone with vision who can help you to "see" the possibilities. I have done that with three different places. Our first place back in 1987 had wall to wall mustard colored carpet, mustard walls, ceiling and trim. Underneath the floors were gorgeous hardwood floors. We painted, wallpapered, redid the kitchen, replaced the nob and tube in that house, had a gorgeous bungalow and sold it for a small profit during the recession in 1993. Our second house had half the house turned into a doctors office. We removed the doctor's suite of offices including his "lab", and created a wonderful family home, updated the appliances, updated the wiring, painted, papered, tiled, etc and sold for a profit during this last recession back in 2010. In fact ours was the only house to sell during a 6 month period in our neighborhood. 6 years ago, my new DH and I bought a condo in a good building in FL. The building was built in 1982 and everything in the condo was original! We (meaning I designed the changes and the GC did the work with his crew. I'm getting too old to do the work myself now, but did when I was young,) gutted the condo, redid everything including moving non load bearing walls and just sold it this past spring for a hefty profit. Here's a link to the condo listing. Here are a few pics of what the condo looked like originally. This was the original kitchen. I didn't move the appliances but updated them all and donated these and the kitchen to Habitat for Humanity.This was the original view looking from the kitchen to the dining room. I opened the wall up and made a walkway into the dining room instead of having to walk around the foyer. This is the view toward the front hallway and into the kitchen from the living room. This was the view from the living room to the dining room.This was the original guest bathroom. The red one in my redone pictures.And this was the master bedroom looking towards the closet and the bathroom. In my redone condo photos, it's where the chinese chair is. The closet blocked the balcony door.And this was the master bath originally. Yes you could sit down while brushing your teeth. And finally one more of the master bath. We switched the shower with the bathtub to open up the room. Funny thing is I walked into the condo and knew it was right and with some work could be perfect because the bones were there. The layout was good, the view fantastic and it met our needs at the time. My point being that with a little sweat equity if you're handy and some vision you can turn what Vanilla Ice calls a Dud into a Stud. And if things like the kitchen are workable such as the one in my picture above, you don't have to do it all right away. You can live with the kitchen as is, and update as you have the funds. We did that in both our houses....See MoreRenovating on a 35k budget - design/build firm? architect? DIY design?
Comments (50)Do you have a Habitat for Humanity store or something similar in your area? You might consider trying a place like that and keep an eye out for nice cabinets that have been removed from another house that you could use in your remodel. Sometimes they have the counters too if they come out without breaking. Often these are removed from really large homes and there are enough cabinets for a smaller home and the extras can be used to make filler strips etc to make it look custom to your home. This is rarely an overnight exercise -- it could take quite a while and lots of searching to find something that could work, but it would be more budget friendly than all new. With your current budget you'll be choosing from the bottom end of the cabinet market. Also with your budget you should be considering that you might need to do some of the work yourself which is going to be tough with small children. You mentioned you can save $1000/month. Even if you waited a year to add to your savings that would make a significant difference to what you can afford as well as a contingency for other things that will definitely come up, its not an "if" but "when" when you start renovating and taking out walls. Plumbing or electrical or both could give you issues or pipes might need moving, venting moved etc. Plan carefully and come up with a "must have" list, then a "nice to have" list. Work with someone you can trust and work through what you can get from your must have list with your current budget. Good luck and congratulations on the new home....See MoreThanks to Houzz we stayed on budget for our production home build
Comments (3)@just_janni - I was surprised to hear that, too. Neither 'designers' asked me about my aesthetic, our furniture, how we styled our past home, our goals, colors we preferred, or anything that let them know about us so they should help. Maybe my coming in prepared they didn't want to interrupt me? EIther way it's done and I now can move onto window treatments....See Morecondo building, six tenants, small entrance remodeling. $100k budget
Comments (13)Hi Mary, We also live in a 6 unit condo building (120 yr old rowhouse) and in addition, we just last month returned home from subletting a *gulp* 4th-floor walkup on Irving and Cambridge, downtown Boston. FWIW, back home a few summers ago, (we only have 1 renter, the other units are primary) we took about 1G out of our reserves, painted all 3-floor hallways ourselves, updated all the old horrid lighting with LED simple light fixtures from Amazon (which made a massive change..for the better!) and had our carpets professional cleaned and just those simple fixes were amazing. All of this was planned in advance, we all voted on it, my husband is the Board President, if we had hired outside resources this would have cost us a fortune. The renter joined in on the fun, we had a beer and pizza party afterward and everyone felt they were represented and adding much-needed sweat equity. Steps in Boston are so narrow and steep in historical buildings. Would start with your interior lighting and step management. New windows will be extremely expensive. Changing the front door will also require wiring for the doorbell. Honestly, before coming up with a color scheme, perhaps create a punch list and have everyone vote on this. 100G for all you're mentioning will not cover this amount of work. Please let us know what happens, will be very interested in your project!...See Morevirgilcarter
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