I have to say that I wasn’t shocked to read on Unbeige today that Home Depot was closing all of its Home Depot Expo Design Centers. I’d heard earlier in the week that Home Depot was cutting jobs but I didn’t realize that so many of the cuts would come from these upscale design centers. According to one news source, Home Depot Expo never really took off since opening in the past 10 years.

I can’t say that I’m not surprised. When my husband and I were renovating the kitchen in our old house, we decided to check out what the Home Depot Expo nearest to us had to offer in terms of cabinets, kitchen sinks and countertops. Having explored regular Home Depot and Lowe’s locations to look at Krafstmaid and other well-known cabinet brands, we were blown away with the products at Home Depot Expo. Not because they were so amazing but because they were so much more expensive than what you could find in a regular store. I’m talking three and four times more expensive than the highest-end Kraftsmaid cabinets, which is what we ended up buying from a local home design center.

FYI, news reports say shoppers can expect there to be liquidation sales on products in Home Depot Expo stores starting immediately. But be forewarned: as I wrote in my thrift-store shopping post, it’s important to know the real price of items and not to let liquidation sales suck you in to buying things you don’t need or can’t really afford. At Home Depot Expo, liquidation sale discounts start at 10%. That’s hardly earth shattering.

Not-so-great liquidation sales aside, what are some of the right ways to save on any renovations you may be considering? Here are some ideas to consider.

1. Don’t buy new if you don’t have to. We are having our second design meeting with our builder today for a renovation for our new house that will take care of many of the issues we knew this house had when we bought it nearly two years ago. One of the ways that we’re going to avoid buying new is when building a much-needed pantry. You see, we’re going to take the current 10 X 10 kitchen space, close it off and turn it into the pantry. This means that we’ll be able to reuse all of the cabinetry that exists in the kitchen. So not only will this save money, but it will save the earth, too–reusing cabinetry is like green rule number one when it comes to renovations.
2. Build the most for the least amount of materials. This is a tip that my mom shared with me after she did a recent renovation on her home. She discovered that if she could keep the dimensions of her building project within the specs of regular building supplies, she would save money. How? Well, if the builder was laying plywood in a space that required him to cut the wood and toss the scraps, then she was paying for materials that would end up going to waste. However, since most plywood comes in 4 foot X 8 foot sheets, if she could keep her project dimensions of multiples of 4 or multiples of 8, she would literally get the most bang for her materials’ buck. (You can apply the same line of thinking to 2X4s, 2X6s and the rest of the lumber you might need for a project.)
3. Find a way to get materials at wholesale cost if possible. In our last kitchen renovation, we ended up spending most of our money on countertops. That’s because we relied on our local home improvement store to take care of everything having to do with our countertops–from measuring the template to ordering the materials–and they marked up the price on all of this significantly. We’ve since learned that there are countertop wholesalers that, if you bring your builder along–or a letter from a builder you know–you can get all of that custom craftsmanship done at a wholesale price. Lesson learned, won’t make that mistake again when we build our new kitchen this spring.
4. Ask how much your elbow grease can save on the job. Once we decided on a builder for our renovation, we were upfront with him on what our budget was. And we also said that we were willing to roll up our sleeves and get dirty during the renovations if it would help to save us money. I’m glad we said this because this is what we found out: if we had the builder get our interior to just taping and spackling–and left the detail work to us–he could chop off a massive amount of our renovation bill. True, this will mean that when the renovation is done, our work has just started. But in order to save five figures on my project? I’m willing to make that sacrifice.

Let me know if you have additional ideas to share on how you’ve saved on renovations, too.