Well I will go first. We did 7 bathrooms. One of those has 2 of everything ( 6 boys share). 5 of those baths had full tile surrounds, pebble shower floors, hex bath floors. Each shower had its own unique deco band to give each its own appropriate look. The 2 other baths are powder rooms and have no tile. All inclusive grout, tile, deco bands, etc. it was the bargain price of 11,000.00. I forgot that the price also included the extensive subway back splashes in the kitchen. Now it may seem like a lot, but for what we did it is a good price in my opinion and many others. I could have easily spent 3 times this amount but did do some stock tile like the Daltile subway, at less than 3.00 per sq. ft. it was really a bargain. Here are some pics. I also included kitchen back splashes just so you could get the scope of how much tile we bought. I must say I have 10 cases of subway left over so that makes it even less costly as I will probably sell it.

We bought a condemned old farm house(1902) about 3 years ago. We do everything we are capable of doing ourselves because I think we, as homeowners are pickier than the contractors we hire. Besides, it is so expensive to hire out every little thing! Little off topic:(I was at Home Depot the other day waiting for paint, and I over hear the conversation between a contractor and Home Depot employee. The contractor is asking what kind of paint to buy for the exterior of a house and the guy at Home Depot shows him a brand of paint. But the contractor wanted something less expensive. So, the Home Depot guy shows him the less expensive paint and says it will last 5 years max. The contractor says, I don't give a sh**t, it's not my house. ANY CONTRACTORS READING THIS: hope you don't all think like that because we as homeowners are getting more informed, pickier, and demand more professional results for the money you charge. Okay, now that's off my chest, what we've done: Strip, varnish, reglazed all 16 windows. Stripped all woodwork in the house. Everything was painted white and full of grease and cow poop. Doors, trim, baseboards... Gutted and redid entire kitchen, hung cabinets, built a bar. (hired out granite countertops) Removed wallpaper, replastered, and painted. Put in an upstairs bathroom. (hired out plumbing and granite) Gutted and redid downstairs bathroom. It was full of bugs, grease, and cow poop and there was no running water. The pipes had froze and exploded in the wall. It was GROSS! We build walls, closets, insulate, do trim work, tile work. Changed our butlers pantry into a bird room for our parrots to live in. They have there own window and we put in a door with a big window so they aren't secluded from us. I have so many horror stories from crappy contractors that we do what we can ourselves and are choosier when hiring out. We hired out rewiring our house and outbuildings.(we didn't hire the contractor who told us he couldn't give us an accurate bid because he wasn't sure how long it would take or how many guys were needed. lol) We hired out our furnace and ac with all new venting. (we didn't hire the contractor who wanted to rip out plaster walls, drop the ceilings lower, and leave a bunch of exposed vents for us to "box cover". We also didn't hire the guy who wanted to concrete over our 100 year old floors for in floor heating. lol) We hired out our cedar shingled roof because our roof is sloped and neither one of us likes heights. (We didn't hire the contractor who told us he was licensed, bonded, and insured but upon checking further, there was no record. We also didn't hire the guy whose bid was double the guy we hired) I'm always a wreck when hiring contractors. Sometimes you have to babysit. The original electrician we hired(friend of a friend, never again will we hire a friend of a friend)... we didn't live at the house yet, stopped out one day to see how it was going... there the 2 of them sat drinking beer. I was livid! Can you say fired! DIY projects can be a lot of fun... more customization for a better price and sometimes it turns out better than hiring the work out would have. Our projects coming up are installing new wooden storm windows, built in bookcases with a fire place for the dining room, and redoing our rough looking stairwell. Here's to all you DIY's!! Sometimes it's the best choice.

Hi, this is my first time posting, and if it is too long, I apologize. This is about our odyssey in creating our kitchen on very limited funds. We wanted top quality while having little extra cash to put away. We ended up purchasing one piece at a time, while looking at Craigslist/Boston Globe online/etc. I researched which were the high quality cabinet brands (here, thank you all!), and bought a set someone was removing. We found it online in the Boston Globe. Very high quality, lots of pullouts, and if you are at all creative, this can give you a good opportunity to think outside the box. Our Quakermaid cabinets have lots and lots of features (pull outs, 4 drawer stack, dividers, lazy susans, etc.), we made sure that the set we purchased had more than we could use of lots of different sizes, (which has been very helpful in fitting as well as in creating a recycle center elsewhere in our home.) We paid $2,500 for 19 of them, with extra fillers included. We have installed a plate rack, created a baking center (by cutting down a cabinet which had strange side cut outs - we leveled the top and have a lower surface to roll out dough,) and are creating a kick drawer under one of the cabinets, per instructions on Ikea Hacker. I check CraigsList every morning and evening for about 20 minutes. I was the second caller on some gorgeous Oceanside Glass Tile (Veil blend with white, iridescent white, iridescent clear and frosted tiles.) It was left over from a job, and the first person to see it didn't know what she was looking at due to the tile's clear tiles appearing brown on the backing paper) and I paid the outrageous price of $5 a square foot. I still cannot believe that. It was a good thing I checked that morning, as the seller said that he had many, many others call about the tile. Last Saturday I drove 3 hours to pick up just the sink I wanted. I paid $500 for a 60" long Kohler Pro TaskCenter (with cutting board, rack, strainer included - it acts as its own countertop, and has a built in stainless drainboard.) It retails for over $3000. It is about 2 years old, and stunning. It was advertised (I check multiple CraigsList locations) including the faucets, which I did not really want. I was planning on removing them. However, when I had a chance to really look at them back at our home, I fell in love with them. They are very high quality - Vinnata Faucet, matching Wellspring filtered water faucet, and matching soap pump, all in Vibrant Stainless. The faucet may not work well - I don't know. Based on what I was told, however, it works fine - they had bought and gutted the home, and were totally renovating. I at first thought that the styling was too traditional for our kitchen, but believe that the Vibrant Stainless finish will work well with our knobs/pulls and really pull things together. A new Vinnata in Vibrant Stainless costs more than I spent on it all. We ended up looking for this type of sink because we could not afford the soapstone we really, really wanted. We purchased butcherblock from Ikea - gorgeous and affordable. We finished the baking area with beeswax/mineral oil, and will be treating the counter on both sides of the sink. We may use the Ikea product, or wait for good weather and use Waterlox. We installed a stainless hood I found half off on ebay, which was through a local retailer, which saved on shipping. I purchased cabinet knobs a while ago when a local store was closing - I purchased a few more than I needed, just in case our plans changed a bit - we still saved quite a bit. We installed the cabinets ourselves. Two years ago our local big box store had an insane sale on overstocked appliances, and we picked up our Frigidaire Professional with Convection Range for $299 (true story) and our Maytag french door for the same. The unexpected sale ended in three hours, so we lucked out. While I keep checking Craigslist, the only things we anticipate paying full price for will be the flooring (we want Forbo Click Tiles) and the electric installation. I have tiled our entryway, and will practice before installing our glass tile backsplash, but feel confident that I will be able to master a good tile install. I did an estimate the other day, and believe that when all is said and done, we will have spent under $6,000 and our kitchen will have an added value of close to $50,000. Finding the time to work on it is challenging, but we continue to make progress. From dark, gloomy early 70's to light and bright modern, we can see it coming together. This type of doing the work only works if you don't move your main supply lines, are willing to spend the time moving around your floorplan (google sketchup is helpful, but I finally made a 3D scale plan to help me visualize the space). Lots of time, but believe it or not, my DH and I are closer because of working on this common goal together. I think having strangers traipsing through the house for months would be much more stressful. Doing it this way takes patience, luck, flexibility and knowing what you are willing to settle for. I will post photos when we are done, but just wanted to say you can pay for it in cash and have a kitchen that you are truly happy with.

DH and I bought a 1960's fixer-upper. The money we saved on the home's purchase price (compared to homes in the area in better condition) went into improvements, including the kitchen. But we were on a tight budget with the kitchen, and I watched every penny, and tried not to get carried away with all the stuff available out there (reading this forum makes that hard!). We also stayed within the original kitchen's footprint, since moving walls, plumbing and electrical really add enormously to a renovation's cost. Neither my DH nor I are any good at DIY stuff, so we did pay for outside contractors for the work. But I purchased almost all items myself from appliances to granite to sink and so on down to even the xenon undercabinet light bulbs. Although I did not put in actual labor, I put in plenty o'sweat equity in the form of hours spent on the internet looking for deals. As others have said, when you shop via the 'net, you save the tax, and usually get free shipping (if a website did not offer free shipping, I usually moved on to the next one). But it was hours of my time, plus the time spent tracking everything once ordered, awaiting deliveries, and inspecting everything upon arrival. So I saved dollars by not having the contractor do that, but used up a lot of my time. I did have the contractor purchase all building materials like drywall and the like cause that is beyond what I could do. I also saved money in small ways, like I chose almost all white appliances, saving with each one a couple of hundred dollars over stainless steel. I sold my old appliances on Craig's List, and maybe made a few hundred there, but hey, it all adds up. Without all the work I put in, we couldn't have managed it without going into debt. And we did not want to go into debt.