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We know you loyal readers of Home Improvement Rocks are always on the lookout for great improvements to make your home more comfortable, beautiful and valuable. For most of us though, our dreams often have to be pulled back a bit to stay in line with the reality of our pocket books. Maybe you can’t do more than you can afford, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t squeeze a little more out of your opportunities than might seem immediately obvious. The cost of renovations need not be an insuperable obstacle to the improvements you seek. These tips on saving money on house renovation costs provide you some useful ideas on ways to save money at home and in all your home improvement projects.
5 Hot Tips for Saving on House Renovation Costs
1. Make Your Gifts Count
Hey, half the time people buy you gifts, they haven’t a clue what you really want or need. If you’ve got some big home improvement project in mind, let your friends and family know. They want to get you something you’ll appreciate when your birthday or the holiday season come around. If they know about your home improvement project they can purchase you a gift card from a home improvement store. I know that gift cards can seem kind of impersonal, but then, once the renos are all done, you can have a house re-warming party and invite them all over so they can appreciate the great improvements to your home that they helped you achieve.
2. Get Your Own Gift Cards
This idea isn’t as crazy as it may first sound. There are actually websites that sell unused gift cards at a substantial discount. They purchase the cards from people who’d rather get the cash, even at reduced value, and then they can sell them to you, at a profit to the web site, but still providing you the discount value at the story. Indeed, you can sometimes get the cards for below their face value. This is a classic win-win-win scenario.
3. Sneak Your Purchase in at the End of the Season
It’s quite common for many stores to drop their prices on seasonal items at the end of the season. Home improvement stores are no exception to this practice. After all, all sorts of new stuff is shipping in to fill the shelves; they need to make room, which means getting the shelves cleared. With a little foresight and planning, and resisting the temptations of impulse buying, you can anticipate what you’ll need the following year and get it at great discounts. It’s not exactly like buying next year’s Christmas presents on Boxing Day, but a bit like it.
4. Be Sure to Nose-About in the Clearance Corners
Often, if a particular brand or model turns out to not be as popular as anticipated in the volume in which the shop originally ordered it, they’ll often mark them down to clearance price. Again, they want to get the shelf space freed up. When this happens, you have a great opportunity to save a lot of money! Sometimes stores seem to “hide” their clearance merchandise, so check the back and corners of the store. Often, you’ll find the clearance items back there.
5. Not-Pristine Doesn’t Mean Not Perfectly-Good
There are a variety of reasons that customers will return products. And (I know you’ve seen it) some people will even open, or tear at some corner of a package, right there in the store, for a view of what’s inside. Also, of course, packaging can just get inadvertently damaged in the to and fro of the retail day. All these are opportunities for you to save some money. If a box is opened or even damaged, stores will often discount it. (However, you shouldn’t damage the packaging with the intention of haggling for a discount. That’s dishonest and really below the elevated ethical standards of HIR readers.) Sometimes you’ll be dealing with a product that has a slight imperfection. Sometimes that imperfection will be enough that you won’t want it even with a good discount. Sometimes, for the money saved, you’ll happily put up with the imperfection. And other times, heck, one person’s flaw may be another person’s gem. So keep your eyes peeled for these kinds of opportunities.
We hope these house renovation costs saving tips do the trick for you; helping you find ways to save money at home in your renovation and improvement projects by reducing the costs of renovation, stretching your dollar further, and maximizing the pleasure of your home improvements.
