The "REAL" Cost of DIY Home Renovations

so in today's video I'm going to be discussing with you the true cost of renovating we're not just talking dollars we're talking about everything their time your family your relationships there's a lot of information to cover and one of the things you need to know is we're not just going to come at it from a perspective of someone trying to sell you a course to become a house flipper I'm a general contract for the last 30 years and what I'm going to share with you today is insider industry knowledge it's the truth no holding back right in my channel I'm gonna be more of a consumer advocate in this situation and I'm gonna share with you all the dirty all the truth and all the hype that goes around this idea of renovating because renovating or remodeling or decorating or flipping these are all completely different concepts and this terms are used interchangeably but that's just not fair to you the consumer who owns a house and you're getting lost in the shuffle as to what's best for you so listen we're going to take on a lot of information today we're gonna share a lot of valuable tips and tricks places and ways that you can shop to save money different places in the country that it makes sense to renovate and different situations where it might make sense to renovate for you but are you really ready to take that on and are you able to do that as a DIY er there's a lot to cover so let's get started by the end of this video we're gonna be able to give you the information so that you can answer the question should you renovate your house and we're also going to give you the actual cost of this renovation project and I'm gonna tell you the truth of whether or not I think it was a good idea so first let's talk about why we need to renovate because there's a difference between needing to renovate and the desire to want to renovate which would be like changing your or your living space to an open concept and the need to renovate hinges on a few and key ingredients one of them is how old is your because construction technology although it's changed a lot since 1980 the basics of it the structure how the structure is done hasn't really changed very much now there are more options in different building construction styles but if you own a house you're not concerned with whether or not a new modern building is in your future because if you want it you have to move or you got to bulldoze your property renovating an old house is anything before 1980 is basically an evolution of construction technology and so you want to go ah chords in time through that evolution to decide is it worth it for me to open everything up to change a piece of that construction technology that isn't up to speed and by doing so giving you a clean slate to build again and is there any benefit in it really so let's talk about that before 1980 we didn't have very good insulation in the homes a lot of homes are built with 2x4 very thin walls if you're in a northern climate at all it was insufficient they didn't have good vapor barrier technology there were still a lack of understanding I'm air passing through buildings we're still just today starting to get that up to speed but if you can make your buildings so that you don't have air passing then you don't have heat passing and it's a much better environment now that relates to energy cost of a home and may or may not really influence your decision to renovate just because if it cost you a thousand dollars a year more to heat your house in the winter is it really worth it to gut it and start over again to save that money probably not but if your house is made in the early 70s then you've also got the issue of aluminum wiring in a lot of homes back in those days and that can be a fire hazard so now we have this evolution of the need to want to renovate so fire hazards are a good reason to renovate we go back in time during the 40s 50s and 60s the whole construction world was in this race to develop a good technology so there's a ton of different building materials and ideas used back then and they kind of all conglomerated around a National Building Code late 60s early 70s it all came together but for about 30 or 40 years there it was just a wild west of building ideas everybody was an inventor and everybody's trying something different and not everything worked together well so you're gonna have crazy roof lines with massive heat loss and ice damming and water infiltration and mold you're going to have old fashioned steel plumbing pipes on your waste vent and your drains they're gonna be all clogged up and rusting out and causing leaks and issues the older you get the more brittle they are and they can be really dangerous to having sudden major problems and floods in your house you go back even further than that you're getting away from the modern kind of framing of a house where you're going in to stick framing like this old beast and this is what we call balloon framing this is an 1880 house so when you look at this you think well my house is from 1918 80 1860 what am I going to get into there well in this kind of situation is kind of like the difference between a the exoskeleton of a lobster and the skeleton that we have where it's also surrounded by muscle the new construction today they build the frame and you put a roof on it nothing else in the house it can handle the load of a winter and everything else this kind of house here they put these boards up and all of the wood on the outside of this house is what gives it a strength it's not just lateral but it's actual strength because every time a board ends they just scab a new one on and keep going okay and those two nails are not transferring the load of the roof the roof load is being transferred by every one of these boards throughout the entire house and so with that kind of technology requires a different kind of understanding you can't just like this like for instance this used to be a window right down to here somebody just framed it all up closed it up they didn't do a good job it wasn't weathered and look at all this water damage and advanced rot going on this is the kind of problems you can run into so high the older the house gets the more issues you got to deal with for instance if you're going with anything before 1970 you've got to address your asbestos issue now if you're living in a house and you're not going to renovate every year and flip I don't want you to be too concerned most experts would agree on this very simple principle asbestos isn't that dangerous if it's not a you know a lot of exposure over a sustained period of time so just buy yourself a mask take some precaution put a fan in a window get your demolition done clean it all out of there and even if you get a little bit in your system it's not going to cause you any long-term health effect it might cause you a little short-term discomfort but get the mask and you'll be fine don't want everybody freaking out unless you're going to be renovating houses and doing demolition every day of your life it's not a concern for you okay before that we also had to deal with lead now everyone talks about all the toxicity in old homes reality is again the only problem if you're gonna have that window trim for dinner if you're not eating the lead it's not dangerous but it's something to consider the older the home the more hazards you're gonna find it's gonna have that old ancient dust smell of the you know the coal that's going to be in there too so air quality is an issue that's why I believe and using a really good air filtration system upstairs one of the things that I like to preach is if you're gonna renovate your house you should live in it there's an added expense that you can avoid these are all things you need to consider when it comes to the cost of the project and we're going to show you how to do them so let's talk about the process for doing the renovation now you have some major processes here you've got to do your demolition right then you have to inspect and repair structure if you have any of those issues then you want to take a look at changing your mechanical if they need to be upgraded because if you're renovating which means you're ripping open all the walls basically the definition of renovation is I'm opening up my walls so that I can upgrade my mechanical systems and my structural if you're not going to go through that process then don't open up your walls remodel your house and that is just the act of removing all of the finishings and putting all new flooring and finishings and furniture things like appliances in kitchen cabinets and tile and paint job lighting that's a remodel but if you're going to renovate means you're changing your mechanical systems so while you have your walls open it's a perfect time to go all in all right if you're gonna do it do it all upgrades your water upgrade your hot-water tank your water purification your panel all right one of the things you want to take a look at is a lot of older homes have a hundred amp service there's a lot of restriction on your capability in the future to do remodeling and adding on to your house if you only have a hundred amp service like in my area I want to add a hot tub but I can't do it unless I upgrade my panel to a 200 amp service that's just against the rules I didn't really know that until it's talking about electrician recently so we're gonna upgrade the whole panel as well we'll get into all these costs in a minute but aside from that the cost of those new systems let's take a look at ways that you can save your money you can do all the demolition on your own this here is basically three days of work we took out everything right back to the original studs and you can see this house here on the walls and the ceiling they've just added the laughs and then put the plaster coat over top there's no strapping no secondary structure this house was a bit of a trampoline so I mean it's only two by eight they're 20 foot clear span across the whole building and yeah they had a they have this structure across the middle to hold it all together but that's really not enough lumber it's not up to code today so as long as I don't change it out I'm fine but I am gonna add some nice thick strapping on there and that's going to help make it a lot more solid and get rid of that bounce when you do your own demolition what you're gonna do is two things hey you're gonna save a ton of money because your labor is free and labor is the most expensive part of any renovation project because what comes along with labor is taxes that's the bottom line most houses you can renovate your material cost is about twenty twenty-five percent the rest of it is labor and taxes so whenever you get a chance to do work yourself you're not just saving on the labor you're saving on the taxes that are all built into the whole economic system of hiring a contractor remember for every dollar you give a contractor sixty cents of that goes to the government in Canada and about 50 cents the United States now doing your own demolition also gives you this added benefit you can take your time be a little bit more patient and pay attention to the nuances of your house in my experience as a contractor last 30 years most of the major costs that have come into a project were associated with doing the demolition because the crews would move too fast through the process they made a huge mess they weren't aware of what was going on around them and they ended up removing something that was delicate and important that didn't make a lot of sense at the time but because of prior renovations you know something may have been done wrong in a house and you took a toe by for out like this and you just knocked it out because well we're gonna put a wall in here and it's not supporting wall but somebody made a modification upstairs that you weren't aware of it became a supporting wall little things like this that you need to be able to pay attention to skin everything back understand your structure okay don't be afraid to take it one step at a time save your money if you have to pull out your saws and start cutting through floors and walls really ask yourself a question what's going on here it's not like on TV where they just take a sledgehammer start bashing things apart you want to peel it back like an onion okay every layer take off the plaster take off the lath clean off the extra flooring get back to the original structure and then evaluate what's holding up what very good question to ask now if you need to learn about structure we have videos on that and if you need to learn about how to do demolition we got videos on that we do specialize on this channel and helping you do by all aspects of your renovation but in this chat we're gonna focus mostly on the overall cost and how to you can reduce your cost so you can afford to do this properly ha now let's get on to the next step yes so the next step in your renovation process is to establish a proper thermal and vapor barrier this is a little bit more tricky with the older houses because they weren't designed for it don't forget in the old days they used to just put on a furnace throw the coal in there crank it up melt everything within 10 feet but it pushed so much heat through the house there was no such thing as condensation in the walls because the heat was blowing right through the outside of the building nowadays we're working with energy efficient furnaces and we're working with more of a comfortable room temperature kind of heating system it's forced there so now we have all of this cold air that's creeping into the building and the freezing point is somewhere between outside and the inside of the insulation somewhere in the middle but if you have places in your thermal and your air barrier that are broken then that cold draft is going to come through you're gonna get condensation and you're gonna get wood that's getting soft like this now it shouldn't be just denting like that in Chipping office it's it's this is because there was no plastic vapor barrier around this area at all the insulation that was in here was just stuffed in like just the whole cavity was filled is inhalation and when it ended up doing was just creating this nesting area for the mice okay and so they've come along and they've done whatever they wanted to do they live quite comfortably and there's all house so we're doing is we're cleaning it all back we're gonna insulate the outside house to this point with that new vapor barrier and then we're going to put mineral bowl all across this cavity here tie the vapor barrier from the basement up and around and tape it all together it's gonna be a lot of work but by getting a good proper seal it's going to make sure that this stays dry and it's gonna get another hundred years out of it the next thing we're gonna do remove this put on route 2 by 10 because the the ways you can save a lot of money in a situation like this is leave the trees don't be afraid to work with what you have and then add on to it to bring in good building practice we can add a two by ten across the whole bottom of this wall in the future if we need to we can put in some floor joist hangers and we can run new floor joists underneath one of the things you want to do when you're renovating an old house like this is try to simplify all the mechanical so that you get all of the plumbing and electrical a wave from the outside walls okay try to get it into the interior walls across the ceilings make it possible to get down and dirty in here because the places where nobody really wants to look are the places you're gonna have problems and that's gonna be where you run into major issues remember this whole house is kind of slid off the foundation just a little bit so what we want to do is make sure that we can tie it all together keep that from happening anymore one consideration that can save you a ton of money when you're renovating is a keep your electrical away from the basement floor ceiling area run it up through an interior wall secondly is move your plumbing I know everyone likes to have a sink on the outside wall near a window but putting plumbing on the outside window in this kind of environment almost always ends up in resulting in a compromise and your thermal and air barrier try to put it in an island or somewhere else in the house keep everything mechanical within two feet and get it away from that foundation wall so that you've got the ability to maintain that over time so we've gone through a bit of the process we've got demolition we got electric oh we got plumbing after that it gets pretty simple you're more into remodeling we're gonna do drywall work flooring it comes down to selections where you spend your money comes down to selections so let's talk about the money now what does it actually cost to do this kind of renovation first of all the demolition what we do generally is we get these large roll-off containers bends they're called 30 yard they're really big and they'll take all kinds of crap and we can get eight tons of garbage in them and so generally speaking you can go through two maybe three on an old house because you have so many layers of remodeling over all the old layers in them so we're looking at about $600 a bin for costs for pickup removal and dump fees so that ends up being a teen hundred let's call 2004 demolition because of Labor's free right buy some pizza and a case of beer have a couple friends over and swing away and have some fun so the demolition is done we've got it all cleaned up and vacuumed out now what we have to do is introduce new electrical system new plumbing system new insulation you start thinking Wow here comes a lot of money but the truth is this if you can wire your own house then the cost of doing all of the wiring work here really comes down to just about 300 bucks that'll buy you boxes and wire-to-wire a kitchen and a living space next to it that's not expensive the money that comes into wiring a house think it's expensive is hiring the electrician because like I said now you're hiring a licensed trade and you're paying a lot of taxes through his business operation to the government I'm having an electrician come in and change out my panel that's an extra cost we're upgrading the service to 200 amp his quote on that is going to be close to $5,000 and I'm ok with that because once I have my panel upgraded that means I have the option down the road to add a working shop to put an expansive outdoor living space and a hot tub all these things I can't do with a confines of 100 amp service so it's a bit of an expense now but it's going to pay off huge dividends when it comes time for resale and all of this work is done the other thing we're gonna have is all the plumbing work that gets done now generally speaking a kitchen is not a lot of plumbing work bathroom is a lot more expensive with the plumbing than a kitchen is all you're doing is putting in a sink and running a dishwasher and those are two basic programs that I'm going to be able to show you in upcoming videos and how to accomplish installing those so we'll just itemized this demolition mm maybe three on the tie high side electrical if you're upgrading your panel and your wiring your own house which you can do in a lot of places you just have to pull a permit 5000 if you need the higher electrician to do all of the labor another five thousand okay and that's just for the main floor if you're doing the whole house don't be surprised I was going to cost you ten plumbing if you're not doing the bathrooms you're just doing a kitchen and you need a plumber instead of yourself then you're probably looking at about $800,000 just because he isn't gonna come out and set a day aside to do your job without making sure he's covering all of his expenses all your government taxes that costs to put a truck on the road all these things come into play and the materials to actually do the work to run the fittings is going to be like about 50 bucks I would suggest watch a plumbing video and do it yourself just saying other than that those two major mechanical now the HVAC system is the only thing we haven't covered yet and the reason for that is in most cases the ductwork and the house is going to be sufficient a real modern HVAC system is really technologically advanced from even something from the year 2000 they've really come a long way with their science and their math and moving cold air around and heat returns but if you have an old system where you're forcing here in every room and your stairwells are the cold air return and maybe you got a great big heat great and you know a grippy grate in the floor where the cold air is going to back to the furnace you're gonna be mid efficiency investing in upgrading that whole system may not be a very good idea but you might want to upgrade the actual furnace unit itself and leave all your ductwork alone and that'll save you an absolute fortune so putting in a brand new furnace runs about two to three thousand dollars just saying you can't really get away from that these are gas technicians and they have a license and a ticket and you can't get that worked on yourself so you're gonna get stuck with it one of those things if if you try to sell your home and you have a brand new furnace and you have a brand new electrical panel that's been upgraded you have new plumbing systems and all new I mean all new new new and new you're gonna get a return on your value there if you can do as much of the work as possible so just to recap we got five for electrical maybe ten we've got a thousand bucks for plumbing we've got a few thousand for heat and we've got a few thousand for doing all the demolition so we're still around ten eleven thousand dollars for a major renovation project so now we got to get into the cost of all of the finishing okay so the cost of finishing is where it gets really crazy because this is where you make all your decisions related to your fixtures and your finishings this is where you spend money right it's also the greatest place on earth to save your money and do it yourself because if you can develop these skills that are necessary to get a good result which will teach you in all of our videos then you can save an absolute fortune let me break it down for you once your structure is done all your mechanicals done it's what we call time to close okay now closing means you're installing all your drywall now drywall in and of itself is relatively inexpensive so you can buy the drywall and all the compound and tools necessary to do the drywall this is a 400 square foot space all right floor space so just to give you an idea the drywall to buy this I haven't even mapped this out yet whether before okay we're about 30 sheets of drywall down here okay and it's running about 15 dollars a sheet boom so five six seven so for less than a thousand bucks you can buy all the materials and the tools okay to do a good drywall finishing job here now if you were to hire a drywall company to come in and do this job because it's all labor and it takes a few days for them to get it done I'm telling you right now you're gonna get quotes in between the five to seven thousand dollar range because it's a one-off there's no relationship there's no repeat business they're gonna charge you top dollar to come in here that is why you want to learn how to do this yourself it's not that difficult it's a little artistic and it takes a little time but if you stick with it and you learn the systems that I'm teaching then you can do this yourself and you can save six grand right there now after that you got to pick paint right paint can be expensive believe it or not you've got to get drywall primer ceiling paint finished paint trim paint some before you know it it's gonna be four or five hundred dollars of paint and paint gear in order to finish off this space now listen yes you can get that cheaper but if you want to buy a good quality finish because when you're new renovation you want to have quality built into every step I always preach this if you're doing the work yourself buy the nicest stuff you can for the marketplace that you're in getting a good quality washable paint is the difference between a good and a bad job because it allows you to be able to upgrade you can see a good quality finish when you look at it all right so buy good quality stuff and do it yourself five hundred dollars paint the whole place or you can hire a paint crew to come in here again they're gonna send in a couple of guys gonna work here for a couple of days and they're gonna charge you a few thousand dollars labor is not cheap and it's not because guys are crooks it's because their business model involves so many different layers of hidden and obvious taxes in the system is getting out of control I know in u.s. it's not as bad as it is in Canada but I'm telling you right now if you have to hire labor to do what can be considered to be a relatively simple task I don't mean to offend any painters out there but the reality is is a homeowner who's putting forth a lot of effort can do just as good as a job as a painter who's in a hurry to make a buck just saying now aside from paint and drywall which we've just saved I think about six thousand dollars on finishing there you're gonna need to buy a kitchen you can buy a kitchen in all kinds of different price ranges but you want to get something that has a real aesthetically appeal that when you go to sell your house people are going to be like wow I'd love to be able to work in that kitchen there's a lot of different factors involved in this and this is where we get into the economics of the region you live in because some places where you're living it's not going to make sense to try to do something like the out of the magazine okay this is not show home stuff most people need a functional kitchen and we need to be practical about this there's nothing wrong with buying an IKEA kitchen putting in from mica countertops because they make some amazing products okay it's clean it's functional it's healthy and it's cost-effective so you can put together a kitchen for three four thousand dollars that is gonna be big and beautiful and you're gonna be able to entertain your friends and family and you don't have to break the bank all right now aside from that you can really dress things up with some good lighting fixtures now I've wired this place here to have all kinds of pot light we're gonna do a bit of a coffered ceiling we're gonna show you all that process some crown moldings because they're not expensive but they sure make a project look nice we also have to deal with some tile work you can do that yourself as well 100 bucks so you can do your own backsplash not a big deal don't spend time money wasting interviewing having contractors coming by my goodness it's just not worth the effort when they want to come to a backsplash they want to get paid for a full day's work they're going to be in and out of your house in three they're gonna charge us six to eight hundred dollars unreal Do It Yourself save your money it's a great skill to learn once you do a backsplash you can have a little bit of confidence then you can start taking a look at renovating other places with tile maybe the kitchen floor maybe a bathroom goes on and on the last major expense you got to take a look at is your flooring now depending on the house and the place where you live your renovation you might be able to keep your flooring you might have a hardwood floor surface and you're just going to refinish in that case I'm gonna suggest not doing that yourself this is where I go contrary to usually what I preach but hiring a flooring refinishing company is worth the investment because they're not that expensive for what they do it's a relatively simple process but it requires a certain skill level and it is an art form and a lot of heavy machinery that if you use wrong you're gonna cause yourself a world of hurt and wreck your floors so if you bring in a guy who's a professional in his trade and you give them a couple of dollars a square foot he'll sand it all down and refinish it and make a look brand new I notice a lot of videos on YouTube of people that do it a variety of different ways in their own homes and the camera lies every one of those jobs you see where they've got the belt sander out there doing their floor looks like junk in real life don't be fooled hire a pro for this job and if you need new flooring like me because I'm on softwood lumber here it looks pretty oh it's charming but the truth is it's ugly and you can't keep it clean I'm covering with vinyl because this stuff is amazing it's water-resistant it's flexible and I can get a really top quality product for less than three dollars a square foot I know and it's amazing most flooring out there you really have to watch a price point because you can get duped into buying laminate flooring for 6 & 7 dollars a square foot who the heck wants to buy the laminate flooring for seven dollars a square foot but these products are out there be careful you can get real good quality at different price ranges and we're gonna do a video soon about all the different flooring options and what you can buy to save your money and be really happy with your performance that one's coming up soon know when you're gone through all of that you've got your structure all your mechanical your closed up you got all your finishings on there really isn't much else left to do so yes let's talk about the total cost for this renovation 400 square feet kitchen and living space gutted to the bone right and rebuilt I'm doing all of this myself my whole cost at the end of the day is I can't tell you yet because we haven't talked about appliances one of the biggest expenses you're gonna have in a renovation is your appliances no one wants to see your old appliances in a brand new kitchen so here's my advice I've got a tip and a trick for everybody out there who has to buy appliances tip number one go to two different stores that are both offering the best deals in town and make them bid for your project put them to war against each other and they will do it it's a simple process you go to one store you get the price say I need stainless steel I'm doing the stove fridge and dishwasher what's your best price you don't have to buy the highest-quality thing on the market remember appliances are kind of like windows they stopped making improvements in quality that are really effective and make a big difference at the end of the day you want a fridge to keep the cold stuff cold and the frozen stuff frozen it doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles in it right keep your money down to minimum there's no return on investment for a five thousand dollar fridge versus a thousand dollar fridge it just isn't going to happen in most houses in most markets so if you like me and you want clean water or you want ice cubes you make ice cubes and you get water from the tap you don't need it in your fridge now a stove is a stove as a stove because you need it to get hot and cook your food that's it if it wants to be pretty and you want all the bells and whistles you can spend as much money as you want but if you want to be practical you can get a fridge stove into dishwasher for a thousand dollars and if you want to do even better than that get another guy involved and tell him that the other guy said 900 he'll match that price put them to war against each other it's amazing how easy that happens now I live in Ottawa and all the appliance companies have their retail shops set up in town where the expensive stores and expensive rinse so what I did is I drove 20 minutes into the country and I found an appliance store that's in a small town that's almost a ghost town his rent is dirt cheap and he got me the best price I've ever seen and you know what it's not the end of the world I'm going to go pick it up myself with my pickup and even if he threw in his delivery fee it was just a great deal so that's what I did to save my money you can do the same now with all things involved all right all the costs involved I'm telling you right now I got a upgraded panel for 200 amp whole new electrical new plumbing fixed the structure brand new thermal break Brandon who vapor barrier everywhere right everything's been upgraded everything's brand new cabinets counters appliances the whole the whole kit and caboodle we're in at about seventeen thousand five because I'm doing it all myself the cost of this renovation if I hired a contractor is fifty to sixty just saying the benefit of this on my house I'm gonna make money there's no doubt about it the question is for you when it comes to determining the value of your home and if it's a good idea for you to renovate is this if I put X number of dollars in what's my house worth when I get done what's the real estate market like what's the job market like as a trending up or down all these are questions you need to ask because there are some places in this country that if you bought a house and renovated it you're gonna lose money it's not a guaranteed win now if you renovate and you DIY it you're probably going to get ahead every single time but then it's the cost of your time and your relationships and your hobbies and everything else in life style and quality of life you've got to make that informed decision but if you're like me taking six months to a year to renovate your house and having a place that's worth a lot more than what you bought it for is a fantastic financial situation to be in and I just can't wait to get to the other side because well I'm doing a YouTube channel I'm probably gonna buy another house and keep on doing it all right so we've answered the question about whether or not it's a financial gain to do a renovation and the answer is if you're doing it yourself almost anywhere that you ever grab a hold of an old home and want to renovate yes you are going to make some money and you're gonna have a financial success but life isn't all about money there is one more important factor that you need to factor into whether or not you're going to renovate your home and that is the stress factor whoo it seems to me nowadays that everybody is living right on the edge of stress and I tell you this younger generations got one thing really right there really re-evaluate the whole reason I do things why do I do this the stress factor that's involved the quality of life issues I'm loving this concept it's really helped me to take step back and reevaluate some of my own decision-making process there is an amazing amount of stress when you're living in the dirt when you were displaced from your kitchen for maybe month two three six depending on how much DIY you're doing so because for me this is my kitchen I have a wife and and it's a really big decision as far as doing the DIY doing videos on a process like that it drags it out to be honest with you I mean it takes a lot longer to do this for us on camera and there are a certain amount of stresses in life that you can add on to your life and you can still function and still get out the other side and still be married but honestly you need to take that into account for yourself what happens to you if you got six months of living in the dirt of not having a kitchen having a barbecue all the time having to use microwave dinners to survive how in the world are you gonna do it so about a week ago we started doing some filming on my process to do a living in a house of a renovation while you're changing the kitchen we talked about a lot of great things we're going to share that footage with you now and bring you up to speed and one of the reasons I wanted to do all this information today is I recently saw something on the internet you know somebody had bought some crappy 1970s home and they're gonna renovate it and they're trying to appeal to middle-class America and it was like yeah not really it was such a huge project it was a little ridiculous most people don't have a budget for that so I thought you know I'm just going to take a step back bring in some new information for this video tie all this together so that you guys have got the information and the tools you need to have a realistic understanding of the actual overall cost if you're actively involved so if you have a budget and you want to have some secrets for a no-stress renovation when you're living at home watch the rest of this video and enjoy it so today I'm going to discuss with you the most important secret when it comes to doing a major house renovation they'll keep you on budget and keep you on time and that keeps everybody happy whoo let's get into hey so welcome to my living room this is a little crazy because we're doing a whole floor plan readjustment here we're taking a walls putting a new structural load so part of the process was I had to put in this temporary wall here because for some reason this house was built without any load-bearing right down the middle of it so it's all sagging and while I did that I figured I'm gonna throw up some shelves and I created this little storage area here for all my tools and materials that helps to keep me organized listen when you're renovating your house there are three major things that you need and that is storage staging area and scope isolation I'm going to break that down real quick for you because storage you are going to be packing up it's almost like moving day especially if you're touching your kitchen everything has to be packed up and put somewhere where you have access to it so you can still function to whatever degree you're gonna have kitchen facilities available if you're reducing yourself just to take out and barbecue that's a no-brainer but if you're like me that is a waste of money I like to set myself up for the temporary kitchenette if I'm ripping a kitchen out I like to stick a couple of things somewhere have a sink have a countertop maybe a toaster oven have the basic luxuries of life even redirect the stove power and put the stove in the fridge in another room I like to be able to have the ability to cook my own food over the course of six or eight weeks of a major house renovation if it's on time you're gonna spend thousands of dollars on takeout and needless expenses if you can't cook secondly mmm staging area Wow I can't even think about this but most renovations that go bad are because they don't have enough room they don't have room to set up they don't have room for for their tools and materials kitchen cabinets you want to have that all unpacked and on site before you get busy okay because there are two ways to renovate a kitchen one is you go with a knock down kitchen that you can buy at IKEA it's there it's available and that's the direction we're heading because our timeline and budget is too tight for us to go fancy the second is if you're going upscale and you're buying wooden Katniss you've got to have that stuff delivered on-site inspected and unpacked and put somewhere where you're not gonna have any damage caused to them so you've got to have enough square footage to unpack your whole kitchen inspect it because if you have problems before you put it in you can fix it if you wait until you're ready to install your cabinets to find out that a gable end has been smashed by a forklift of the factory and you can't put that corner cabinet in you can't install your whole kitchen and that's the wrong time to find out when it's time to do the install so you always have to unpack everything first for inspection so you need a staging area you got to have space to receive deliveries to put your materials to set things aside where's the drywall gonna go when it shows up all these questions you've got to have answers before you start now in our house we don't have a garage so we've actually commandeered the entire living space from next to the kitchen to turn it into our staging area so we've got my tool boxes on wheels I've cut my temporary situation here and that leads us to our third thing scope isolation scope isolation is really simple that means once you start renovating a space you don't want to do it like a road construction crew you don't want to do the left side the back side the right side you want to do the whole room at once you want to do framing electrical plumbing you want to close everything up you want to do it all in stages the entire room you don't want to go if you have four rooms on the main floor and you're renovating the whole main floor renovate everything at the same time don't do one room at a time if it's at all possible that will dramatically decrease the amount of time and energy and money you waste okay so we're going to go in a quick little tour I'm going to show you my plan and strategy for our kitchen renovation and hopefully that'll help you and then we're going to show you how to set up a temporary kitchenette piece of cake let's get started so we've dealt with the staging area we've got that all set up right so now we have two other issues left we got the storage and our scope isolation for storage we have an issue because my living room is taken up I still have my front hall area has a little bit of finishing work to do but we want to get into this part of the renovation before the trim and final paint because we're expecting there to be maybe a little damage with all the materials coming back and forth and we're concerned about the timeline because we're in a four-season climate and winter is coming now this is the deal it's got sofas and tables and chairs and I've got to get them somewhere where they're not going to be damaged I've got two options one is I could put them all on a corner put up a plastic sheet and that's what we're gonna do today because it's raining outside and I don't want to be dragging my leather couches out to my storage pod that I had dropped off which is just a portable outdoor box I had them drop one in my driveway here we've got luxury of having that kind of space available so I'm going to take advantage of it that's all going in there as soon as the sunshine comes back up for Dave we're just gonna put a kind of plastic wall we're gonna show you how to do that in case that's your only option as well the other thing we got to do boxes buy a bunch of boxes we're gonna pack up everything in this kitchen and we're gonna put it in boxes and we don't know overstuff anything so that we can stack them floor-to-ceiling and put them upstairs in a bedroom on one wall out of the way we're gonna just take out a frying pan probably a couple of bowls and a couple of coffee mugs other than that we're gonna go all paper and plastic during the renovation whew now that should be easy and then we're gonna have to be able to have somewhere to clean our dishes so that's what takes us to the next stage setting up our temporary kitchen welcome to my new kitchen yes I know this is a bathroom and it used to be a 3-piece but a year or so after I moved in here we actually had a flood in here because all the plumbing in this house is done wrong we have no venting it's the first time I've ever moved to a house in my life that didn't have a nice one vent stack sticking out of the roof so this has been just a nightmare I just walled off the old tub shower area had to be all removed and demoed and so I just kind of slapped together this into a two-piece but for our purposes it's awesome we're gonna open this wall back up again remove the toilet bust a huge hole in the wall over there and create a new galley area here from upstairs that gives me the ability to seal off the other room with plastic and duct tape and separate my work environment from my living environment that's going to be key so we'll remove the pedestal sink we're gonna put in the laundry tub and the little pantry area and that'll be enough for us to get through the next few weeks fingers crossed hopefully we'll still have a wife when I'm in now it's time to put up our plastic wall now this is a pretty simple system if you've used it before you know what I'm talking about but I love zip one I've been using zip ball system for years and years and years mostly for dust control but you'll see a lot of guys in the business you know they'll be using zip wall or temporary plastic closures and they'll be using it for asbestos removal and all that sort of thing truth is you can use this concept just for dust control and it's really nice to be able to establish where you're working and where you're not basically all you do is you roll out your plastic it's the length of the wall that you need cut it and stick it in place and then tape it to the wall doesn't get much easier than that measure plus a couple feet done when I'm using plastic as a dust barrier I prefer to go with the mediums medium grade plastic and here's the reason why I find it really easy to tape up so I have this roll around all the time of medium plastic this is not vapor barrier plastic it's just medium plastic and I'll take about a foot in lay it over the peddle of the extension pole and this just drops in like this slide the lock and it's telescopic extension pull the core twist and locked so that's a spring-loaded connection here and if you leave a couple of inches at the top then when you come down here you can lift the pole pull your plastic underneath and stretch it out and now it'll hold it nice and tight in the corner get that part up there as well beautiful there we go now we've got what we call scope isolation we're gonna make a mess over here but everything in here will stay relatively clean all we gotta do is stick a fan out the window create a bit of a negative pressure and my stuff is not gonna get dirty whoo and tomorrow when the rain stops I can pull this down we'll run it all out to the pod which is just a storage locker I don't know if you got pods where you're from but I'll guarantee you there's a company out there that'll drop off a temporary storage locker on your property a couple hundred bucks a month and you're good to go so for the sake of showing a few tips and helping people in you know what sometimes not knowing how something is put together means you're gonna do something silly to rip it apart like oh yeah yeah yeah if I had a dollar every time I saw somebody pull out a sledgehammer door do a demolition in the kitchen now here we go almost every Formica countertop in the world this is a stall with these screws there's usually two to four screws in every cabinet okay you just take the two minutes it takes to unscrew them you're gonna lift their right off okay so once you've undone the screws yes Curie no because we're careful with this I should be able to use a good section of this countertop has my temporary countertop in the other part this we're gonna do is we're gonna disengage this cabinet here set it in position and then measure and cut that cabinet counter top to fit nice and simple so in order to get these cabinets apart you just have to undo the screws this is just some MDF one by twos that have been tacked on with a brad nailer this isn't exactly a cabinetry 101 something of a homemade job you here just a few Brad nails let's go straight to the bin everybody go there's my new kitchen cabinet for the bathroom and so here's just a thought first glance this looks like a that floor is nice so it would it's salvageable but look at the size of this gap here okay that's from shrinkage overtime and this this this here this is the last fill job somebody refinish this when they put all this goop it's just chipping up all of this that's what keeps coming up every time you watch all that deflection in the floor when you're walking is causing these things to break up a little chunks popping out and so then every couple of years you're gonna be left in this huge gap with nothing but dirt debris and garbage you can refinish the floor every three to five years just so you can feel your gaps up again not gonna happen so this is why we're covering it all up we're going vinyl nothing I can do it to save this floor it's a shame but if I keep sanding it there won't be enough structural integrity left to hold me up from falling through now listen for the purpose of putting it in the garbage the best way to do it let's remove the doors right and you want to basically set this up so it's nice and flat in the garbage bin okay so everything you can do to make this flat now you can take it out that'll use up a lot less space it's a lot easier to handle too right so we're just gonna remove the sink which is turning off the old shutoff valves wow this is really here nice and tight I'm gonna cut away all the silicone and I'm gonna salvage the plumbing I have one and a half inch pipe I got a p-trap like a shutoff valves we can just breathe and engage the brand-new laundry sink here a couple of fittings we'll have that done so I'm gonna get Matt to rip this out throw it in the garbage and then we'll get to installing the new kitchen it oh yeah does install well way gotta love it when the drain just breaks off like that now in situations like this just because you have the valve closed doesn't mean it's gonna work especially the whole buns so we're gonna try taking this off if it keeps on leaking we'll have to turn off the water until we're done our install hit that same good so just take our laundry tub now these things always come with the legs okay just tape to the bottom installation instruction is pending all this so these are the leveling feet and stopper and this is a type of plumbing that what you can use we're going quick and simple today so we're actually just gonna thread this bad boy right on here this will be our drain plumbing now done let's get the legs in first before we lift it up in a position so we can see that our sink is too high the drain on this thing is actually further back towards the wall as well so we're gonna take our trusty of a pipe cutter here this will help keep everything from getting out of control message right little solvent redirect that in line back towards where it is man's butt six inches off the wall and we're using two 45-degree angles just to move the pipe line into position before I set that last pipe in place I'm gonna attach my faucet sometimes attaching the faucet first is just a really good idea because this is a temporary kitchen I went to the store about the cheapest faucet I could find 30 bucks I'm in business show my new holes come on - fossa we're good to go taking special note here that they've marked the hot water supply intake with the little tab and that they're gonna be different lengths so the longer one is gonna be for hot water better solve them on the pipe and inside the fitting lift and I always go finger tight and use a wrench to just give it another quarter turn or so there's a gasket in these and so it seals up pretty nice remember when you're doing this sort of work that most kitchen faucets have got a shared valve system so if you only connect the cold side first and then you do a pressure test or a water test he'll come up about water supply hose samaritans connected before you start doing any testing on your treating system and we have a kitchen faucet that's good for six to eight weeks okay the next step is to remove our toilet we've already done this on camera multiple times so put a link in the description if you don't know how to really move a toilet you can watch it another video but we're gonna open up this wall get up the sawzall cut our door start removing some cabinets and reinstall them in here for our temporary kitchen okay so the plan is the bathroom behind here and the old tub area is up there alright but I need the width of my cabinet dirty yeah here so I am going to be opening this up like a walk way 30 inches wide that'll work out so I'll remove all of this yeah and then inside I'll have my pantry and my other cabinet fabulous well it's been one of those kind of days today you know max dog is injured my son's going home with a virus he's sick Max is getting married in 48 hours it's just the wrong day to try to film the rest of this video so we're gonna do is we're gonna open up the other side of the wall and then when he'd come back from our wedding we're gonna finish this video off with a tour of the finished product you know the funny thing is I can t remember the condition of the old tub space behind here I don't know if it's all demoed or man I can't remember a damn thing the insurance restoration company came in here they did the cleanup because then we had the toilet back up with a sewer backup so it was nasty so we had to put all new flooring so I know they ripped out the tub but I just can't remember oh I hope there's not too much to do back here let's take a look ah my old shower oh and my tub okay yeah so I've got to finish ripping all others out before I can open up the hallway all right that's for Matthew I'm heading off to Max's wedding with them and I'm gonna leave my son here to finish this demolition when we come back which is in just a few seconds from now we'll show you all of the finished product and we'll do a tour but the plan is to put a 30-inch cabinet with a countertop here and then floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinet on this wall right here so that we can have enough dry good storage and counter space and a sink to be able to function around here within a few weeks anyway let's just do this and we'll see in a second so now that you've seen all my organization secrets we're gonna take you back into the kitchen to show you the finished project because to me is a little bit fun I know my wife's really enjoying it it's kind of like a little European apartment kitchen but it works so let's go take a look tada not so glamorous I know but man is it functional listen this is separated from the construction zone by a door I got a huge sink I've got my coffee machine I got a microwave I even bought one of those little hot plates I can plug in it's just got to be careful usually when you do a temporary kitchen the electrical is not set up so I can't run my microwave and the hot plate at the same time blows the breaker not a problem we got some storage I got my fridge I got my dog food setup and my garbage cans everything I need right here in this cute little 30 to 40 square foot area this is reason that we are not going insane because we can cook and we can keep our area clean huh doing six months without a kitchen will drive you crazy I've done it before for whatever reason you just wake up in the morning angry and you don't want to live like that so if you're gonna do a major renovation consider finding a place in your house that you can make a temporary kitchen do the kitchen renovation and then come back into this space later this is just changing some flooring and remodeling you can remodel the space after you've had a temporary kitchen it easy enough that is my secret to success all right so now that I've exposed all of my secrets and tips and tricks for you you a better understanding of what it is that's possible let me ask you a simple question how old is the home that you're thinking about renovating what are the challenges that you have and yes put your questions in the comments section because I'm one of the few youtubers around here who actually answers your questions I don't know I must be doing this for about an hour and a half every morning and a couple hours before I go to bed every night but I'm feeling like it's really important so this video particular forget all my rules I usually tell people ask your questions in the newest video in this video I'm going to be answering all your questions for a long long long long time so if you're just watching this now and you haven't seen this channel before ask your questions we're here to help all right don't forget to give us a thumbs up button let us know if you like this kind of information if it's helpful and subscribe to the channel hit the button in the bottom of the corner if I don't tell you you're not going to do it then you're going to miss out on all the videos that are coming up about the rest of this kitchen renovation and you don't want to do that because we're going to share with you secrets of where to go shopping how to save your money how to do all these projects yourself and we're going to turn your house into an absolute paradise that you can afford that's the secret right we want to be realistic with these with these projects on this channel things that people can actually afford to do well we're all in a different place in life but if we all work together and strive together we can all make our place better so now we have to ask the big question is renovating your house in your future is it something you can see yourself doing either as a DIY er or just hiring someone out to do the all the job for you I just want you to put an answer in the comment section just click on yes or no if you're gonna be a renovator it's all we want to know and if you have questions throw them in there thanks a lot for joining us I know that was a mouthful today hopefully the information was helpful and if you're excited to see how this project is going to turn out then I'm going to encourage you to just click this right here we've got a videos of relating to the whole renovation of this house outside and inside and you can follow us along on our journey

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 715,820

Rating: 4.9468851 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, home renovation, diy bathroom remodel, kitchen remodel diy, home renovation diy, home renovation on a budget, real estate investing for beginners, home renovation costs, kitchen remodel cost, bathroom remodel cost, bathroom renovation cost, kitchen remodel diy vs contractor, kitchen remodel diy steps, diy farmhouse kitchen remodel, kitchen renovation, kitchen renovation on a budget, kitchen renovation tips, kitchen renovation cost, small kitchen remodel cost

Id: weTsUYj0FXI

Length: 56min 39sec (3399 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 09 2019