DIY repair budget option

Few people have the opportunity to order turnkey renovations and spend large sums on finishing the apartment. Fortunately, today there are many ways to save money on renovation repairs by doing it yourself. In this article, we have selected the best recommendations for those who want to make inexpensive but high-quality repairs at home.

The budgetary renovation mainly includes finishing works, ceiling and floor renovation. If the estimate allows, windows, interior doors, and plumbing elements are also subject to replacement. It is not recommended to make major changes in the space of the apartment in the mode of saving money. Such work should be carried out by professional craftsmen with experience in repair work, otherwise there is a risk of spoiling the appearance of the room, making mistakes in calculations or running into low-quality building materials.

How to make an inexpensive DIY repair? First you need to determine what work will need to be done in the process. The standard stages of a budget room decoration are as follows:

• Drawing up a work plan and estimates based on your budget;
• Selection of building materials;
• Preparing the room for renovation work;
• Rough wall decoration and floor filling (if work is being carried out in a new apartment);
• Wallpaper gluing, flooring installation, ceiling decoration;
• Arrangement of furniture, lamps, decor elements.

As you can see, all these works can be done independently, with a little skills in the field of construction and repair.

Following the instructions above, repairs should begin with an estimate and selection of suitable building materials. An estimate should be drawn up sequentially for the decoration of each room and for a specific type of work. You should not buy materials with the hope that they will someday come in handy - you should proceed solely from the repair plan and budget.

The first stage of the renovation also includes the release of the future room from furniture, decor elements and part of the decoration. Nothing should remain in the room that will interfere underfoot or deteriorate during repairs. If old wallpaper hangs in the room, it is necessary to remove them and carry out preparatory measures for finishing the walls, the same applies to the floor and ceilings.

When purchasing building materials, do not limit yourself to visiting one store - you should take into account all the inexpensive centers in your city. The assortment in them can be strikingly different, as well as the prices for the same type of product. Of course, in case of budget repairs, it is better to turn to the most advantageous offers. You can greatly facilitate your task and save money by ordering building materials in online stores with delivery.

When choosing budget building materials, it is worth remembering one rule: what looks expensive is not always of high quality. You shouldn't buy cheap materials that imitate wood, stone or tiles just because of their appearance. It is imperative to pay attention to the technical and operational characteristics of the goods.

The decoration in different rooms of the house has its own characteristics. Therefore, before starting the repair, you need to decide which rooms are in particular need of updating the appearance. In the living room, bedroom, nursery and hallway, inexpensive DIY repairs can include the following types of work:

• Plaster and wall plaster;
• Pasting new wallpapers;
• Wall painting;
• Assembly or installation of flooring;
• Ceiling decoration.

In the kitchen and in the bathroom, finishing work also includes:

• Floor and wall decoration with ceramic tiles;
• Surface treatment with water-repellent compounds.

Here we have listed those types of repair activities that you can carry out on your own with some construction skills. However, it is often necessary to do such work indoors, which should be handed over to professional craftsmen:

• installation of suspended ceilings;
• replacement of plastic windows;
• repair of electrical and plumbing.

Although the listed works cannot be classified as economical (due to the use of additional labor and building materials), if necessary, they can also be carried out as part of an inexpensive repair.

In addition to giving up complex installation work and saving on building materials, there are other tricks that will help reduce the cost of repairing an apartment. At the same time, the decoration and the interior will have an excellent appearance.

Still think that a budget do-it-yourself finishing option cannot look stylish and expensive? In our gallery, we have selected photos of inexpensive repairs, which convincingly prove the opposite.

If you want to better understand how to make inexpensive repairs in an apartment in practice, we suggest watching a video with the process of finishing work on a real object.

Making repairs on a limited budget with your own hands is quite difficult, but doable. The main thing is not to be afraid of bold decisions, to use modern and high-quality materials, to act according to the plan. And thanks to the tips listed above, you can reduce the estimate for expensive repairs.

When changing your life for the better, you should start with yourself, your environment, goals, ideals, but it is important to make changes in your own home. A beautiful, comfortable, cozy house is a guarantee of a good mood, positive emotions, and spiritual harmony. Therefore, you should not be afraid to start changes in the apartment, even in the absence of financial capabilities. Repair is indeed very costly, but having organized it correctly, the result is always justified. The main thing is desire and hands.

Prices on the construction goods market have been biting lately, but with a competent approach to business, cost planning, it is easy to avoid overpayments and purchase high-quality materials. Having planned the repair work in the apartment, you should initially carefully consider the sequence of actions. Initially, you need to decide on the following nuances.

1. The whole apartment will be subject to change, or maybe a separate room?
2. With what "scope" to re-glue boring wallpaper, change linoleum or change electrical wiring, heating, make other global changes?
3. How to replace old furniture, is there an opportunity to restore it on your own?
4. Where can I get ideas for updating the interior design, ways to bring them to life with minimal financial costs?

To repair even one room a year is already progress

Often, a budget renovation implies a gradual transformation of each individual room. For the case when apartment owners live on one salary, this is ideal. To repair even one room a year is already progress, do not despair when there is no financial opportunity to carry out repairs quickly.

Starting such an important matter as a budget apartment renovation with your own hands, it is worth very meticulously assessing the state of electrical wiring, water supply, sewerage, heating. After making sure that everything is fine with these communications, you can proceed to assessing the premises themselves. As a rule, the following elements of the apartment are subject to alteration.

1. Walls - initially, they carefully study the state of the rough plaster, if it is strong, does not crumble, that is, there are two ways to renew them.
2. Decorating for wallpaper - when the walls have already been pasted over with wallpaper a little easier, you just need to qualitatively remove the old ones, prime the walls and glue the new ones. If the base is uneven, you will have to putty the walls or sheathe them with drywall.

Preparing the wall for wallpapering
Finishing for painting - the base should be perfectly flat, it is very difficult to hide flaws under a layer of paint, so you should pay maximum attention to preparing the base.

when the walls have already been pasted over with wallpaper a little easier, you should only remove the old ones with high quality
The floor is usually wooden. Here they proceed from his condition. If it is normal, and it is planned to lay linoleum on top of the floor, there is absolutely no need to prepare it additionally. When there are creaks, the floor is cold or squeezed, it should be leveled, and at the same time insulated with ordinary sheets of OSB-plates, plywood, fiberboard. Updating the option, when the floor is already covered with linoleum, its condition is satisfactory, you can simply paint boring linoleum in a stylish print, there is an incredible assortment of paints and varnishes.

Linoleum is usually placed on the floor. It can be painted in a different color or printed.

Ceiling - this part of the room should be even and beautiful, since the most imperceptible flaw on it will become a huge problem. After making sure that it is even, you can paint it with water dispersion paint or paste over with wallpaper, otherwise it is cheaper to order a stretch ceiling. Today, the price of stretch ceilings is quite affordable, and the excellent appearance, the absence of unnecessary labor costs for its installation, simply do not leave it with competitors.

The best option would be to make a stretch ceiling

When starting work, be sure to take into account the following important steps that will need to be taken.

1. Decide on the design, materials, working hands.
2. Draw up a thorough, complete list of required building materials.
3. Examine prices, find the most inexpensive store.

You need to prepare carefully for repairs. It is worth forecasting the budget

Remove unnecessary items from the room, remove old bases from the walls, floor, ceiling.

Before painting anything, it is worth taking care of an overnight stay outside the home for a family in advance, paint and varnish products are very unsafe for people, especially children.

You can paint the walls yourself

Find a specialist who will take on those jobs that you cannot cope with on your own.

Purchase building materials and start work directly.

You can hire a master for those works that you can't handle yourself.

It is a mistake to think that the renovation of the premises begins with the ceiling, it should take its proper form last. You can start from the walls or the floor, depending on what you need to pay more attention to.

The bathroom requires a responsible approach; often, in the absence of good ventilation, it is here that such a hateful mold appears. To prevent this from happening, you should definitely check the ventilation, if it is completely absent, you need to install it. The most popular material for bathroom wall and floor cladding for many years has been ceramic tiles and their derivatives. It costs differently, it is quite possible to find a budget option, as a last resort, you can always take plastic (lining). It washes well, does not absorb moisture, is easy to install, but it “ages” a little faster. If you plan everything carefully, it is not at all difficult to carry out a budget repair of an apartment with your own hands.

Bathroom renovations should be handled responsibly

Thanks to the availability of the Internet, you can find a lot of options for ideas for the decorative transformation of your home. The main thing is not to miss something that can be given a second life. For example, decorating the doors of an old wardrobe with inexpensive full-length mirrors, it will definitely not be worse than modern wardrobes. Apply mosaic, decoupage to the glass doors of Soviet cabinets, sideboards, or paint them in bright, juicy colors, paste over with self-adhesive tape. All this is quite affordable.

An example of restoration of an old cabinet

When the farm has a lot of things or items that need to be kept away from prying eyes, you need to build a so-called wardrobe yourself, simply by attaching sheets of chipboard, OSB plates to special corners, and hide numerous shelves behind fabric screens of interesting colors or prints. An exquisite option is very fashionable today - to decorate a hall or bedroom with "wicker" curtains. It is easy to make them, there are many instructions on the Internet.

When transforming your own home, you should always remember, getting rid of the old, life will surely be filled with something new and wonderful, and order will reign in all its spheres!

The usual everyday business: the apartment clearly needs repair, but there is little money. How to make an inexpensive do-it-yourself apartment renovation? It seems to be the simplest, obvious way: superficial cosmetic repairs. That is, plywood wallpaper, ceiling whitewash, painting, fixing squeaky floors; possibly - replacement of windows.

However, if we calculate the labor costs and the consumption of materials, it turns out that by increasing the labor costs by half, and the expenditure of money by a quarter, you can give the apartment a completely different look, and for a long time. How much you need to invest specifically depends on the prices in the region, but the general methods by which you can make an apartment cozy and elegant inexpensively are the same.

Saving money when repairing an apartment with your own hands costs, like the Earth in ancient legends, on three whales and a slowly hurrying turtle under them:

1. We are not afraid of work. Nothing happens out of nothing. Or money or labor.
2. Wherever possible, we do not change the old, which has lost its appearance, but renew it.
3. We attribute the maximum savings to the place where it will not affect the quality of work and will not be visible.
4. We distribute the costs of labor and money in time: having conceived repairs in the summer or autumn, we spend a year on preparation, and then we pile up and quickly do everything. To lay out 200-300 thousand rubles at once is a problem, but breaking them up in parts for a year is quite possible. In addition, there will be time for seven times measure - cut once.

The only area where you will have to invite a specialist is alteration and strengthening of electrical wiring, if it is old and weak. Here, the only way to save money is to negotiate with the DEZ electrician. He will do the work in pieces, in his free time, but the likelihood of hack-work will be even less than that of "branded" specialists: after all, he will then serve all this.

It is better not to save on electrics and wiring, but some points, such as installing sockets, can be done independently.

A good specialized tool makes the job much easier and cheaper. But buying it is expensive. Therefore, it is better to rent a tool as needed. In terms of costs, it will come out a little if you decide in advance on the design and draw up an approximate plan for the production of work for yourself.

The best time of the year for self-repairing an apartment is early and mid-autumn. It's still warm, you can do outdoor work, and indoor work with open windows. And at the same time, prices for building materials will already fall significantly on the eve of the winter calm. Savings without loss of quality can be up to 15% in the sale of summer illiquid assets. If, for example, 200 thousand are postponed for repairs, then the savings will amount to 30 thousand, and this - a hallway or a bathroom - "candy".

Special mention should be made of non-liquid assets. A significant share of the cost of repairs will be spent on finishing materials: plaster, putty, floor leveler, assembly glue, sealant. All of them have a limited shelf life, so construction companies, which obviously do not have leftovers from the season to spring, are selling them at a bargain price. Therefore, look everywhere in advance for advertisements on the sale of building materials. Professionals do not need 50 kg of Aquaslay for leveling the walls, which expires in a month, but they will be enough for two rooms for you. The savings will be 70-80 rubles. everything, but the hen pecks by the grain.

Find more ideas on how to save on building materials here.

A sore point for cheap self-repair is the replacement of plumbing. If it is still "alive", only filthy, then it can be cleaned and painted. How to do this will be described below. But if there are chips and cracks, then whether you want it or not, you need to change it.

For such a case, here is information for you: new settlers, especially in houses above the budget category, often immediately start major repairs at the entrance, and excellent, completely new faience and cast-iron plumbing ends up in a landfill. Landfill operators (simply landfill scavengers) have long turned this circumstance into a profitable business.

They do not make direct contact with strangers by office phone, but it is quite possible to reach them using word of mouth methods. The rate is from one third to one half of the factory price for a household item. And do not think that you will be taken to the dump and shown where it lies. In the back room you will be offered a choice of clean, carefully washed products, which you can sit on even right away.

The next sore point is the removal of construction waste. The operation is not cheap and requires a lot of paperwork. Exit: a basement, a barn, a summer residence or a closet and a few used bags of plastic sackcloth, bought for a penny. Construction waste does not sour and does not rot, it can then be poured into a container in a house trash can. There is nothing illegal in this.

For lathing, various ancillary work and sewing large surfaces, you will need wooden battens and plywood. You can buy slats not planed, but a slab - waste from sawing industrial wood. The croaker is on sale raw, but if it is purchased in advance, in March-April, and kept in a dry room until autumn, it will not be inferior to edged timber in terms of the quality of wood.

As for plywood, waste packaging plywood from disassembled used containers can be turned into water-resistant in the following way:

• We buy a 10 l canister or two PVA putties; it looks like a very liquid PVA glue and is cheap.
• We cover the floor in the country house, in the shed, in the attic or in some other non-residential premises with plastic wrap. The air temperature is not lower than +13 degrees.
• We lay a sheet of plywood on the floor, pour a puddle of putty on the center of it and disperse it with a brush.
• We cover the plywood with plastic, lay the next sheet, putty in the same way, etc.
• We put heavier oppression on the plywood soaked in PVA; better - dispersed over the area: bricks, pieces of metal, concrete, old TV, etc.
• After a week, we repeat the procedure, turning each sheet over.
• After another two weeks, the smooth, waterproof plywood is ready for use. Additional exposure under pressure will improve its quality.

Boards and large pieces of thick timber can also be obtained from used containers - pallets for cargo. Advertisements for their sale are not uncommon.

A very economical repair option - sheathing the walls and ceiling of living rooms with laminate; for thrifty owners richer - MDF. When cladding on a wooden lathing from a slab, in 80% of cases, alignment of walls and ceilings is not required, which already excludes large expenditures of labor and money.

You can save even more by sheathing the walls up to your waist or up to your chest, and pasting them up to the ceiling with non-woven wallpaper. The work is simplified and cheaper, and the bottom of the walls, which breaks and gets dirty the most, will be reliably protected by resistant material.

The most economical flooring option is marmoleum. Floor preparation for it is not required in 90% of cases. But for a bathroom and toilet, marmoleum is not suitable; here you will have to fork out for tiles, especially since you will need a little of it.

If you want to have a plank-like floor in the rooms, then laminate flooring will not be much more expensive, but the floor may need to be leveled.

The walls in the bathroom can be covered with laminated hardboard instead of tiles - it is hygroscopic and does not require surface preparation.

If you intend to glaze and insulate the balcony, then it is better to do it separately from everything else and in advance: from the end of March to the beginning of May. Outside, the balcony is decorated with siding, but inside it, instead of traditional MDF or lining, you can sew it up with plywood, pasting it with self-adhesive film.

When deciding how to make an apartment renovation economically, you need to pay special attention to windows and doors: they account for a significant share of the costs. As for windows, here is the most economical option: self-installation of wooden window frames. It is more expedient to buy them in March-April, when prices for commercial timber fall, and to put them in late spring - in early summer, when the tree dries out and shrinks properly. The technology of installing wooden windows into openings is quite affordable for an average home craftsman.

It would be better to update the doors. Remember your homemade waterproof plywood? Here it is sheathed both sides of the door, on mounting glue, laying the door removed from the hinges on a plastic mat and under oppression. At the same time, at the same time, you can cover the window in the interior door, if it is not needed.

This will make the door thicker. Two options are possible here:

1. Reinstalling the hinges is not the best way for the lazy.
2. Remove the old lining from the door; it is most often made of building cardboard or thin fiberboard, and put on a new, plywood frame. In this case, the chipped corners immediately "go away".

In both cases, the new door is pasted over with self-adhesive wood or with a different texture and varnished. And you will be surprised (pleasantly, of course) with its new look. And the hard plywood cheeks will ensure the door's durability. It is better to cover the slopes of the doorway with doborks from the same plywood: it will come out cheaper and more beautiful than re-plastering.

Dirty plumbing, if intact, needs to be cleaned. The rather expensive active detergents recommended for this can be replaced with much cheaper table vinegar - after all, it is also a weak acid - followed by washing off the sagging deposits with the most common washing powder. Just do not use abrasive detergents - they will scratch the glaze and objects, especially the toilet, will get dirty very quickly.

For cleaning with vinegar, make kvash - a knob made of a rag on a stick. Vinegar is poured where it does not leak, or sauerkraut is dipped into it, and the drips are cleaned with circular motions with pressure. Particularly "stubborn" spots in the grooves are removed with small kvash and technical hydrochloric acid. All this, of course, is done with latex household gloves, a plastic apron and with doors and windows open. It is also advisable to wear a respirator, at least a cheap "petal".

Tiles that are not chipped or cracked can be restored using a method well known to motorists; they renew the worn-out plastic spoilers and bumpers in this way:

• The entire lined surface with my pemolux; it is impossible to use active acid detergents! For a bathroom in "Khrushchev", 1 liter is enough; on a larger - respectively more.
• After pemolux, we wipe it with a rag, abundantly moistened with the same table vinegar: pemolux is alkaline, and the vinegar neutralizes its residues.
• We wipe it several times with a wet cloth "to a clean cloth"; now we got rid of the dirt stuck into the surface.
• We glue the edges of the tiles with masking tape ("paper tape"), except for the seams.
• We paint the seams from a spray bottle with nitro paint in two layers; the second - after the first is completely dry.
• We remove the tape, splashes and drips of paint on the tiles are removed with a cotton swab moistened with solvent 646 or 647.
• We buy a can of liquid silicone grease at the car market or in a car shop, and properly spray the tiles with seams.
• If the grease is absorbed immediately, you will need to spray it again.
• If after 2-3 days silicone is still "taken" on the tile, wipe the surface with a rag moistened with vinegar.

The meaning of this treatment is that the silicone tightens microcracks and pores in which dirt accumulates. Processing is enough for 3-5 years, and then it can be repeated.

The cast iron capital bath can be repaired with epoxy or acrylic resin. Complaints about its fragility arise from a violation of the technology for preparing the coloring composition and its application. With strict adherence to the technology, the restored bath will serve for another 10-15 years.

It is not at all necessary to change it to an expensive stainless steel or brass and make a bypass (bypass) for it. The heated towel rail is cleaned to metal after cleaning the bathtub for painting with the same cord-brush in the drill chuck. If no fistula is found, it is painted with the remains of the compound from the bath painting. The look will be no worse than modern branded ones, and the durability is like a bathtub.