• New Bathroom (only ~ $800!)
• New Kitchen (only ~$3000!)
• Leveled, graded and seeded ~10,000 sqft of lawn (~$500 including bobcat, before water bill)
• Took one day off to ride the bike

I know, I know you want pictures:

So what can an enthusiastic geek, patient wife and a few tools manage on a $2,000 budget? We spent ~$1K more than really warranted for the fun of ‘competing’ with the crowd who spend $19K The ‘miserly $2K’ bought us the following Beat-the-Joneses bragging rights :
. Spanish Marble on the floor (i.e. not the cheap Chinese stuff)
. Italian ceramic tiles on the walls
. A (low-end) whirlpool tub
. A semi-upmarket vanity and top (not cheap!)
. Semi-upmarket brushed nicked fixtures

All-in-all I think I spent ten to fifteen solid days and my wife assisted at least half of that time. With lessons learned we hope to knock out the second bathroom in about five days, but it will not have a custom framed tub, need the floor leveling etc.

So was it worth the effort? Absolutely – with occasionally re-caulking that bathroom should last until this subdivision is torn down. For those think of remodeling or moving: it is only a 5′x10′ bathroom and still feels no where near the luxury of most new suburban houses, even though it is better appointed.

This post is long enough already, so I’ll end with a few photos, you can view all the photos after this jump. If people are interested I will fully write up remodeling the next bathroom. We hope to soon rip out the kitchen too so watch this space.

Why did I buy an ex-rental house again?

Almost two days of work were needed to install this bath!

Attention to detail, no corner-cutting-contractors here

Pimped!

• Ceramic tile removal took me an hour per 12->15 sq/ft – A pro jobs costs $4-6 per sq/ft. It is hard work and for more than 100sq/ft I recommend hiring help or at least renting/ buying a hammer drill
• Laying prefinished floating engineered hardwood took me about 6 hours per 100 sq/ft. All my downstairs rooms apart from kitchen laundry room cost $3500 in wood + underlay – circa $10k for pro installation or less if you do not let installers take shortcuts. The wood is BR111 Engineered which looks good and is not ‘too’ harmful on the rainforest compared to solid which looks just the same. Environmentally I believe it is better than carpet as the wood will obviously bio-degrade when it is finally ripped out in hopefully twenty plus years. It can be resanded but that costs > $5 per sq/ft so almost no one actually does it
• Shed painting took almost no time at all with the Wagner sprayer. Prep + cleanup took about three hours.
• Wiring Cat 5 + surround sound takes AGES! There is no wonder you only normally see this in high end houses; the labor cost must be massive.

Oh yes the other rooms and half bath total replacement are weekend projects during these colder months. I wonder why so many people loathe DIY?

The doors are new too! My Father + Uncle built them thankfully

The Wager Paint Crew sprayer just rocks – took about 4 mins for the whole shed per
coat

What a wreck

That trailer rules. It folds for storage and you can buy one here

900 sq/ft of wood – FYI this would fit in a small SUV

Weapons of choice – be careful, hands don’t grow back

Urgh! Is that my Family Room? It looks like a building site

A shop vac – that will come in handy

Getting started…

Hours pass… still getting started

Day 2 and i am barely 100 sq/ft in?!?!

Wish I were behind a VDU and Keyboard right about now

Day 3 – Will I finish today?

Ok that’s is until tomorrow! Suzanne helped today and it was about twice as fast, it is much less boring with two people

Day 4; Sunday before the new job starts – A final hour doing the stuff that I could not reach yesterday – phew!