7 tips that will make your renovation cheaper and faster

Going to rent apartment, but don't want to spend a lot of money and your precious time for the renovation? Here are some tips, that will help you to save some.

But first, let's take a look, how much I spend on my renovation. At the beginning I was thinking, that 3000 € will be enough for the "investors renovation", but it turned out, that I spent more than double of what I was thinking it will be enough - 6350 € There were 2 rooms in the apartment. So now I know, that for 1 room at least 3000 € is needed.

If you are not familiar with the term "Investors renovation" - I will tell you more. It's the renovation where you use the cheapest possible materials (or buying those, that has discount on them), and leaving the stuff, that can still be used or does not look terribly bad. In my case it was doors, floors, old kitchen furniture, sofa-bed, cabinet, lamps and some other stuff.

Looking at my expenses chart above you can see that biggest part of money (1,75K) was spent for craftsmen, that basically did all the renovation in the apartment (and another 500€ for the materials). He prepared and painted all walls and ceilings, put the tiles in the kitchen and on the floor near the entrance, in the bathroom and toilet (where it was needed) and did all the other works. I would say it was really cheap considering these days prices in Lithuania. Of course, quality was not the best, but it's more than enough for a place that will be rented. The next big amount (695 €) goes to the plumber. This is more than I expected, because machine, that lifts used water to the sewage system had to be bought. Kitchen cabinet in the first (grey) room was custom made for it, so price (600 €) was slightly bigger than just a simple one bought from IKEA or some other furniture shop. In this case I chose more expensive option because the room is small and every centimeter matters. As all wires and power outlets were replaced with the new ones, works and materials costed 504 €. I would say this is optional. You can try to leave old wires and connect new ones to them, but if they are really old and crappy - it's better to get new ones everywhere. Now if you remember cut air ventilation pipe, to fix it and add new pipes for 2 kitchens costed 350 €. That's quite a lot, considering everything was done in 1 evening. But this was a mandatory work, as it's really important to have good smell removal in the rooms. And it was really hard to find somebody, that would do this job.

All other expenses were lower, but than you have 10 of them - amount can get big. I will not extend to detailing them, but if you have any questions, you can ask me in the comments section below. Also, I should mention, that I did quite a lot of supporting work by myself (delivering required materials, taking out the trash, taking down old wallpapers, cleaning old stuff that was good to use and other similar things) that made overall price lower than it could have been.

So what did I learned during the renovation? Here are my tips, that can help you to make it faster and cheaper.

1. If you want to save some money - organize the works by yourself. To do that successfully, get the contacts of the people, that can do a work before you start and call them. Usually they are quite busy people and might not be able to start right away. Let them know when you are starting your renovation and decide on the date they will start.
2. Monitor the prices in the stores. Some stores has lower prices on some products than other. Some things can be bought before you start the renovation. Like tiles for the bathroom or for the kitchen. As there are so many of different tiles, it took me quite a time to decide what I want and what will look nice in my renovated place. I took pictures of all the things I liked (with the prices) so I could decide later.
3. Decide on the prices before craftsmen starts to work. Write them down, so that later it would not suddenly increase.
4. Do not save on plumber works. It's better to pay more now, than later have a flood (or flood the neighbors) and pay again for repairing stuff.
5. Buy the cheapest or discounted materials. They are still good (it's not the food, that can poison you). You can ask for advice the person, that are doing the works but still chose the cheaper option.
6. Use as much old stuff as possible. It's not necessary to replace everything that place would look nice. You can see here what was left during my renovation.
7. Have some extra money. That might help you not to stop the works then finish line is almost there. The sooner you finish - the sooner you can rent your place and start getting your money back.