How do you pay for renovations?

[katespade]

How do you prefer to pay for renovations?

Do you charge the costs to a credit card and make payments, save up until you have enough money to pay in cash, or a combination of the two?

[luv2rn4fun]

We pay cash (or credit card and pay in full every month) for everything, big purchases included (cars, renovations, vacations etc). If we can't afford something we save until we have the money. We are lucky that must have repairs are affordable with money we have on any given month. The only exception to this has been our mortgage...and we even paid the previous mortgage off by the end of my maternity leave (no immediate plans to pay off our current home though)

[estrellita]

For big things like the windows, we financed it after making sure the payments would work with our situation. For smaller things, we save money to pay it off right away.

Normally I'd prefer to save up but the cost savings on heating bills and the increase in value on the house is worth it to finance things like windows IMO.

[katespade]

We're making plans to finish the kitchen, which will include countertops, a sink, tearing out some cabinets, and building a bar area. I have no idea how to figure out how much it's going to cost, because H and FIL are going to DIY.

Has anyone done a kitchen reno like this before? Any recommendations on where to start?

[estrellita]

We haven't done any actual renovations (other than the windows) but our plan has been doing a little here and there. So if you don't have the money to do it all at once, you could save up enough for counters, replace those, then save for the cabinets, etc. We do have a separate savings account where we put credit card rewards and other random money to save for things in particular. It's nice to set that money aside for something specific instead of just one big savings pool.

[awick14]

We save for it, the. Use our credit cards to pay for it, then pay off right away. (That way we get the perks of our points on our card.)

Our only exception to this is at the moment because we are updating our house to move tenants in. We don't have all the money to do the updates but we don't want to update everything but the countertops/backsplash and then have tenants move in that maybe there long term and us want to do the renos. (It also will make it easier to rent out.)

[katespade]

estrellita - At this point, we've done everything that can be done one thing at a time. Everything left is connected in a way that means we have to do it at the same time. We won't be replacing the cabinets we remove, so that will save us some money. We also already have the flooring in our garage, so we don't have to worry about that cost.

[katespade]

ewall - We're going to do DIY butcher block for the counters. Luckily, H and FIL both have experience with woodwork, plumbing, and construction. I think that is going to save us a lot in costs, but it also makes me nervous because it's harder to price out.

[katespade]

This is one of our inspiration pictures (cabinets are already done).

[pooh8402]

Cash flow mostly. But we've only done minor renovations so far. In our new home, we're looking at some major renovations, and that will be cash flow too, from the price difference between our old home and our new one. Otherwise, we'd save up.

We would pay with the credit card, then pay off every month, so that we get the benefits.

[chachacha]

We are actually going through our pre-planning/gathering estimates of a basement refinish + adding a bathroom and misc electrical work around the house.

In terms of paying, we are paying credit then paying it off with cash (from our home renovations/repairs savings bucket) so we can get the benefits.

[MrsMB]

Luckily, DH is good about having a rainy day fund set aside. We use money from that to make changes on things.

[grover]

Cash flow. It's how we replaced all the floors in the townhouse, that and DIY.

New house we were planning on cash flowing and hiring out, but now those plans are on hold until we figure out if we're staying here or moving 3 hours away in 2 years.