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Big Impact Home Improvements on a Tight Budget – Flooring

Big Impact Home Improvements on a Tight Budget – Flooring

If you have been reading my other blog about our new get away home purchase, you know that I am trying to keep to a super tight budget. If you haven’t, here is a quick summary – manufactured homes depreciate, especially ones that are older, so it is likely you will never see a return on your improvements. However, if you are like me, you will want to make the space look and feel like yours. For the next few posts, I am going to share my favorite ways to add a lot of style and bang while saving money.

No matter what, you need to get rid of any carpet. Carpet is just a dirt trap. The couple we bought our manufactured home were super clean and keep the place nice and tidy. However, carpet just doesn’t hold up well even after years of good use. Luckily for us, the bedrooms were the only spaces that had carpet. Another bonus was the floor product that was used during one of the previous owner’s improvement phases was still available and inexpensive (our home had two previous owners so I don’t know if it was the first owner or the second that did the flooring upgrade). My husband really wanted to hire a contractor to install the flooring. I reached out and obtained a quote. They were going to charge $1,450.00 in labor only to install the flooring. That quote did not include installing baseboards or the flooring material. I knew the flooring was $1.89 per square foot. I had experience installing that type of flooring previously, so I was not intimidated by the process at all. With only an original budget of $5,000.00 for interior improvements, having contractors do the work along with the cost of the materials and flooring, would have wiped out more than half of my budget. I quickly convinced Babe that we could do it and with the savings of $1,450.00, it could pay for a new refrigerator and stove if we did our homework and shopped smart. He agreed and the flooring installation began. We decided to just do one bedroom at a time to limit how torn up the house would look.

This was the product. A wood look vinyl plank. This is a great product to hold up to years of wear and tear from family gatherings (at a lake.. hello water) as well as it is super easy to install. Plus I loved the tone of the wood look and that it was at my favorite store… HOME DEPOT!
This was the bedroom before from the realtor listing site.
We lightened up the walls and were going to wait to do the flooring until later but realized there was already some slight issues with the carpet.
When you tear up carpet, you should always anticipate some other issues when budgeting for improvements. Luckily the floor was solid and just needed some Kilz to address the issue.
Why pay someone when you can do the job in a day yourself! $$ money saved! Yay me! The product cost for the flooring for the master bedroom and closet was $490.00. I still have two more bedrooms to buy materials for but they are slightly smaller.
I am very thankful that I loved the flooring in the living areas that they already had down and was able to buy the exact same product.
I shopped around on-line and was able to get this little area rug for the bargain price of $72.00 and free shipping!

Here is a break down of the flooring current costs and anticipated costs.

  1. Master Bedroom – 200 sq feet including closet $490.00 for the flooring (including extra for waste)
  2. Master Bedroom threshold x 2: $20.00 total
  3. Master Bedroom baseboards – seven 1×4 x 8′ boards at $6.71 a board for a total of $50.85
  4. Master bedroom area rug – $72.00
  5. Projected cost of red bedroom floor to be replaced $330.00
  6. Projected cost of baseboards for red bedroom $50.85
  7. Projected cost of Blue bedroom floor to be replaced $330.00
  8. Projected cost of baseboards for blue bedroom $50.85

I figure that currently puts my expenses at $632.85 spent on flooring and baseboards for the master and with a projected expense of $761.70 for the remaining two bedrooms, that is grand total of $1,394.55. This is still a lot of my original $5,000 interior budget however, I did save on installation which would have added an additional $2,000.00 and completely annihilated my budget.