How to save money on repairs: designer tips

Recommendation points

• The first advice is to refuse redevelopment
• The second tip is to abandon a clear interior style
• The third tip is to give up “Wishlist” and “Fishechek”
• Fourth tip – choose a stretch ceiling instead of gypsum board
• Fifth tip – finishing only where it is visible and needed
• Sixth tip – inexpensive doors
• Seventh tip – ready-made, standard furniture
• Eighth tip – inexpensive analogues

Need to renovate and have a limited budget? Our tips site has already given you five tips to help you reduce your renovation costs. In fact, there are many more such tips. Here are the recommendations of practicing designers, whose clients asked to reduce the estimate for repairs.

The first advice is to refuse redevelopment

This is a very expensive part of the renovation work. Let’s say that you can demolish the wall yourself, but many questions and costs arise, starting with the removal of construction waste, agreeing on a new apartment plan and ending with the need to make a new floor screed. Redevelopment is definitely not worth including in budget repairs, costs will increase significantly.

The second tip is to abandon a clear interior style

For example, the classic style of the interior does not tolerate falsehood. Here we need plaster moldings, parquet, status furniture. Surprisingly, minimalism also turns out to be very costly, for which furniture with the most laconic facades has to be ordered, and all storage places must be carefully hidden. Refusal from such expensive interior styles in favor of, for example, a much simpler and more affordable contemporary or rustic Provence can significantly save on decoration and furniture.

The third tip is to give up “Wishlist” and “Fishechek”

Often the owners want something like that, not realizing that there is not enough money for everything. Saving is to give up a jacuzzi in favor of a regular acrylic bathtub, from a home sauna in favor of a shower, from a real fireplace in favor of imitating it, from a designer chair in favor of a mass market, furniture from IKEA, for example. You need to immediately think about what you can completely refuse without losing the functionality of the rooms. For example, velvet curtains on an expensive bronze cornice – do you really need them? It is quite possible to get by with the Roman.

Fourth tip – choose a stretch ceiling instead of gypsum board

The cost per square meter of the stretch ceiling already includes its installation. You will have to pay only for the installation of lamps. And to work with drywall on the ceiling, you will have to hire a master. As a result, as practice shows, a stretch ceiling is much cheaper than a complex, multi-level gypsum board or careful alignment with plaster followed by painting.

Fifth tip – finishing only where it is visible and needed

Indeed, you can put cheaper tiles under the kitchen set. And in the bathroom, put tiles only on a third of the wall or in wet areas, and paint the rest of the walls. There is no need to glue the wallpaper where the closet will definitely stand or behind the kitchen cabinets. You do not need to carefully level the walls if the furniture will not be close to them and you can mask the irregularities. Cost reduction is evident.

Sixth tip – inexpensive doors

Interior doors are becoming a significant expense. Designers advise to abandon more expensive sliding doors, not to close non-standard doorways with them – you will have to order it on purpose, which is expensive. In addition, the products of Belarusian and Russian factories today are quite at a level in quality, and such interior doors are much cheaper..

Seventh tip – ready-made, standard furniture

The more furniture you have to order, the more expensive the furnishings are. It’s cheaper to buy a standard kitchen than to invite a master to take measurements and do something individual. Therefore, you need to order furniture only if there really is no way out. In addition, you can save money by giving up, for example, pillar cabinets in the kitchen and built-in household appliances that have to be hidden behind facades. If you decide to order furniture, you can find a small carpentry workshop where they will cut sheet materials according to your drawings and measurements..

Important! It is quite possible to assemble furniture with your own hands. There will be significant savings in the work of specialists.

Eighth tip – inexpensive analogues

Designers are convinced that high-quality quartz vinyl tiles are better than parquet, on which they tried to save money. Polyurethane stucco moldings are much cheaper than gypsum, MDF – solid wood, and Russian wood-like tiles will cost two times cheaper than Spanish.