Remodeling your kitchen on a shoestring budget: Part 1

My husband and I have always been very lucky in that we have owned our own home since we got married.  We started off in a small town home in Orem, Utah which we later sold so we could build a house in Spanish Fork, Utah.  When my husband got his first job as a pilot up in Alaska we left our nine month old home in Utah in the hands of renters as we moved into rental in Anchorage.  At the time, we weren’t sure how long we would stay in Alaska so for the first time in our marriage, we decided to rent .  After our lease was up in our first apartment we moved to a duplex across town which we again rented.

As we realized that we were going to be staying in Alaska long term  my husband and I started to get the itch to buy a home so we would no longer have to throw away money on rent.  This was a problem for two main reasons.  The first being that the equity that we had walked out of our townhouse with was now tied up in our house in Spanish Fork.  The housing market in Utah had taken a big plunge and we knew that we would not be able to sell it for enough to get back what we had put into it.  The second big issues is that while my husband makes enough money to provide for our family, housing in Anchorage is much more expensive than we had anticipated.  After much research, thought, prayer and investigating we decided that we would be best off buying a foreclosure that was in our price range.  These are not easy to come by but we fortunately knew a great Realtor with connections into the HUD foreclosure market.  To make a long story slightly shorter, we ended up with a foreclosure that had been sitting vacant for over a year that the bank just couldn’t seem to get rid of.  My friends and family can attest to the fact that I am not exaggerating when I tell you what terrible condition this house was in.  I honestly wanted to smack some sense into my husband when he first suggested that we put an offer on this house.  There were giant stains all over the carpet, the walls were filthy with who-knows-what, the kitchen was a rat/ roach infested nightmare and I felt like a terrible parent for even taking my two daughters into that house when we first went to look at it.  We later found out that the previous owners had kept chickens in the crawl space. No, I am not joking.

We ended up “winning” the 24 hour auction on this house by a mere $100 so my lucky husband got to spend most mornings and evenings before and after work this summer working to make the house inhabitable. Meanwhile my daughters and I camped out at my cousins home in Eagle River (they were saints to let us stay there while they were out of town for a few months).  We began by painting the living room, ripping up the carpet and refinishing the hard wood floor that had been hidden beneath it.  We had to pay a plumber to re-plumb and service the boiler but other than that, my husband did all of the work himself- with the exception of a couple times I was able to get sitters for my kids so I could help or for the few angel friends who volunteered some time and the use of their tools.  Once the house was somewhat livable (meaning the electricity, heat and plumbing all functioned) and I had sprayed every surface in this house with either bleach or Antibacterial 409, we moved in.

In the following months we have continued to work on little projects here and there such as replacing all of the doors and doorknobs, putting in molding, fixing more plumbing problems and replacing the front door.  Last month I fell in love with my husband all over again when he gutted and redid out bathroom.  I am so impressed with the great job he did tiling (thanks Jared for the saw and lessons!), redoing drywall, adding in an extra outlet, replacing the toilet, ripping up and replacing the floor boards and doing everything else that can possible be done to a bathroom.  However, it wasn’t until I was talking to a friend of mine last week that I realized how much money we saved by doing the work on the bathroom ourselves and by looking for deals on everything we purchased.  This friend has also had her bathroom redone and spent about $4000 in supplies and by hiring out the work while we had spent less than $1000.  From that realization comes the first part in this series as we begin our kitchen remodel.  Want to see what we can do with our kitchen for as little as possible?  Check back as I update you every couple of days on our progress (yes, there will be pictures).

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