How we kept our Home Reno below 25K

Hellooooo, it’s been a minute…sorry, we wanted to post more frequently, but I guess we got caught up in adulting with our wedding prep and the settling of our furniture. More on that next time haha!

Anyways, some friends have been asking us about how much we spent on reno (answer’s in the thumbnail!) for our 5-room resale flat and how we managed to keep it to that amount, so we figured this could be our next post that people might find helpful! Here are some tips that helped us.

1. Work with a main con not an ID

Being people who know what we want (or at least are content with figuring out what we want by ourselves) and wanting to save costs, we chose the main con route for our home reno. Why does opting for a main con instead of an ID save costs?

Firstly, what we heard from friends and family is that IDs tend to charge homeowners for ideation (or basically, the ideas they propose for your home reno), which is fine if you have no idea of what you want your home to be like or are struggling to put all your brilliant ideas together haha. But for us, we didn’t want to pay for this when we could simply find home inspo reno on Lemon8, IG, Pinterest and more. At the same time, this could allow us to put our own personal touch on the reno too.

So, yes, there is a caveat, which is you must be willing to put in the work to think of your home design, layout and find inspo ideas. If that doesn’t appeal to you or you are too busy, then we think going for an ID makes perfect sense too. To each their own! :)

Also, we heard stories of how some IDs charge hidden, additional costs as part of their creativity and we didn’t want any unpleasant or expensive surprises. To be fair, I’m sure you may incur some hidden costs too with some main cons (think there are always bad apples, so make sure to do your research before deciding which ID/main con you work with). But I think the likelihood is lower because main cons typically just execute what you have agreed upon with them. They are also unlikely to add things for creative/aesthetic reasons cause that is not what they are being paid for nor is it their speciality and even if they add something, it would more likely be something that they discovered a need to add in the course of the works.

2. Choose the right ID/main con

Regardless of whether you choose an ID or main con, what is crucial is the selection of a reliable and trustworthy one. In light of all the news stories of IDs/main cons that ran away with homeowners’ hard-earned money or did shoddy jobs that required more money to fix, we were wary of letting just anyone handle our home reno.

This is why we decided to only work with a main con our friends or family had previously worked with. Sure, reviews do help to shed some light on the quality of work, but companies can use AI/chat bots/fake accounts to do so as well. Furthermore, the reviews might have been written at the completion of reno works before problems arose or written for the sake of unlocking discounts (like what restaurants do). Ultimately, your family and friends will have your best interests at heart, so we felt we could trust their recos because they wouldn’t lightly reco someone to us too if they were a poor ID/reno. This is how we ended up working with the main con (his company states they do interior design but for us we felt he was more of a main con) who did my parent’s house reno and I personally recognised the quality involved too. Thankfully, he stuck closely to what was agreed upon, there were no hidden or additional costs and he even completed the work ahead of schedule while being responsive as well as reliable. Hit us up on telegram (@regineyzx) to ask us more or leave a comment if you want his contact!

3. Minimise hacking, carpentry and floor tiles

Hacking and carpentry are two of the main drivers of reno costs, so we actively avoided it where we could. At first, we wanted an open concept kitchen, but after we learnt the costs, we decided we could live without it. Also, Nic’s dad who is a veteran air-con contractor with a wealth of experience and reasonable rates (let us know if you want his contact for air-con servicing!), shared with us that an open kitchen would be bad for aircon circulation, so we were further convinced.

As for carpentry, we decided to repurpose what we had instead of having new carpentry. One such example is how we repurposed the section below the cabinet holding our DB Box, by placing shelves inside to make it a shoe rack.

4. Prioritise what you can live with

As much as all of us want to build our dream homes, you may be faced with scenarios in your home reno journey where you are unable to do everything you wanted due to financial costs. This is where prioritisation comes in! Choose what you can live with for now and choose what are the essentials that you must have.

This is how we ended up opting for grouting to remove stains in the white lines between our floor tiles and basic cleaning instead of marble gum to make the floors shiny like a hotel lobby, because the price difference was a significant one. Similarly, the doors were pretty old but so were the parquet floors that had scratch marks on them, so we chose to replace the doors instead as we felt the marks wouldn’t be obvious once we had furniture in the room. Also, though both the toilets were well-worn, we decided to only hack and re-do the whole master toilet to save funds since we felt that this was the toilet we would use everyday. As for the common toilet, we figured our friends and family would only visit now and then so there was no need to invest so much in it, so we mainly just re-did the floor tiles, changed the sanitary fittings and shower.

5. Choose a flat with renovation works you like

Mindful that we had to budget for our wedding and house expenses (purchasing a flat, reno, furnitures), we wanted to keep our reno costs to a minimum. So we were deliberate to look for a house with existing features we liked and would want to keep or repurpose such as the carpentry, lights or renovation works. Thankfully, we found one and in our case, there were a few things we kept such as the lights, parquet floor, floor tiles while others such as the kitchen cabinets and bedroom wardrobe were repurposed by re-laminating them.

(remember to link to first how to choose flat article)

6. Or choose a flat that isn’t heavily furnished

Huh? Isn’t that contradictory to your point above? Well, let us explain. A house that contains existing renovation works is good, but only if you like it. It can become a pain if your house is filled with renovation works you absolutely hate and end up hacking, cause hacking is one of the main drivers of costs for reno!

So, if you can’t find a house with furnishings you like, find the next best thing - one that is more bare in nature! Cause although you can’t use existing stuff to save on costs, at least you can save on costs to hack down stuff you don’t like!

Bringing it back to our experience, we really lucked out because we found a house with reno works we liked but it was also pretty bare, meaning we didn’t have to hack anything unnecessarily and could repurpose things we liked. Praise God for having the best of both worlds!

So yep, that’s the end but feel free to drop us a comment or DM us if you have any questions :)

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