A few thousand dollars can go a long way in a residential renovation if you do the work yourself. In this post I’ll show you how I transformed one worn down rental unit in a $12,000 duplex for less than $3,000 in materials.
This duplex started out in rough shape on both the interior and exterior. At first glance you may notice the sagging second-floor front porch is simply not safe. You don’t need to be an engineer to see legitimate structural issues have arisen after years (decades?) of neglect. The front gutter span bottoms out in the middle. Water, which otherwise flows downhill, has nowhere to go. If you look closely you can see a small tree has sprouted in the newly formed second-story marsh.
If this were my house my first dollars spent would either secure or demolish the front deck and roof. But this is not my house. I was brought in by an investor to make a unit rent ready as quickly as possible, but also look picture ready for a sale next year.
I was able to flip the unit in just under 5 weeks and almost 300 hours of my time.
Kitchen Renovation
Cabinets and countertops will typically be the most expensive part of a budget kitchen remodel. The simplest way to save money is to paint what is there. By only replacing the bottom cabinets with a closer match to the uppers and adding matching budget hardware to both, the kitchen looks much better for less than $1,000 in material.
The original floor is now covered with Allure vinyl planked flooring. Installation is only slightly trickier than working with Legos. Remember to stagger your seams.
Painting
For paint sheens, I use flat on the ceilings, I use eggshell on the walls, and semi-gloss on the trim, doors, and cabinets.
Spraying as opposed to painting with a brush and roller takes, by no exaggeration, one-tenth of the time. Having painted doors and trim by hand and by sprayer, I can never go back to painting by hand.
I use a Graco sprayer which was recommended to me by a seasoned professional painter I trust. In his experience, Graco is the brand most often used by pros as it clogs less frequently than the cheaper Wagner model equivalents. The Graco Project Painter Plus was well worth the ~$260 I paid for the paint sprayer.
Before spraying water-based paint I painted the wood by hand with Kilz Original oil-based primer. Oil-based or shellac-based primer is necessary for the water-based paint to adhere to a wood surface. I’ve had painters recommend XIM UMA primer as well for tough to paint surfaces like Formica or plastic.
I did not spray the oil-based primer because it’s much harder to clean out of the sprayer than water-based paint, AND I do not want to find out what it’s like to get oil-based paint in my eye. Water-based paint causes temporary discomfort if it gets into your eye. Oil-based paint can cause real damage.
Again painting by hand takes a ton of time. I use a cheap pair of anti-fog (important) goggles that seal when I do spray oil-based paint. A cheap Tyvek suit will save your clothes.
Dining Room and Living Room
Fresh paint, refinished floors, and a new light fixture in the dining room and living room brightened the place up for less than $600. I cover refinishing the floors in the next section.
Refinishing Hardwood Floors
Refinishing the hardwood floors took me about 30 hours between the dining room, living room, hallway, and two small bedrooms. I rented a drum sander from Home Depot to even out the hardwood floors using almost a dozen 26-grit sandpaper rolls. This house is nearly 100 years old and the floors have cupped ever so slightly throughout most of the floor. This means that multiple passes are required to sand down the floor to even out the low points and remove the old stain. This can be an aggravatingly slow process. I used the drum sander for 3 days at a rate of $65/day. In hindsight, carpeting or vinyl plank flooring would have saved a couple days.
I also rented an essential tool known as a floor edger to remove the stain along the baseboards. I only needed the edger for one day at a rate of $42/day.
My biggest lesson learned this time around is to keep paint off the floor at all costs. Because I knew I was refinishing the floors, I didn’t worry about covering the floors while spraying. Overspray got everywhere. Paint on the floors gums up the sandpaper 10x faster than a clean floor.
Because this is a budget rental in a low-income area I did not scrape the corners that the edger could not reach or install a shoe-molding. Budget projects like this have many opportunities to get pulled down the wormhole of infinite work. Time-saving measures like this won’t catch many comments from renters, but buyers may be quick to point out the corner-cutting.
The trick to applying oil-based polyurethane to the sanded floors is to use a lamb-skin brush attached to a broomstick. Use a piece of tape to remove any stray hairs out of the package. The pad sheds very little and spreads smoother than a roller.
Bedrooms
Bathroom
Hallway
