Getting started on your home DIY projects: Designer's advice

DIY (Do It Yourself) projects around the house have gained steam over the last couple of years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inflation may currently be hindering home projects, illustrated in retail earnings from Lowe's (LOW) and Home Depot (HD).

While DIY projects may seem overwhelming, they might be able to save you tons of money while investing in your home.

DIY Designer and Max's (WBD) Home in a Heartbeat host Galey Alix joins Wealth to discuss the best ways to get involved in DIY projects and decrease expenses for home projects

"If you have a contractor coming over and you're going to get a quote on a major, let's just say kitchen renovation... and your budget is $50K and the contractor quotes you $80K. And doing your due diligence you get maybe three other quotes," Alix explains "And $80K is still your lowest and you're thinking, how do I swing this? What you do is you ask your contractor to give you an itemized invoice for what every single thing they are doing is going to cost, and that you don't tell him why."

This allows anyone to figure out what would be needed for an expensive renovation project and if they can do it themselves or with friends for significantly cheaper.

Alix, a former Goldman Sachs executive, also suggests finding inspiration and guidance from social media: "I recommend going to YouTube... There's a lot of people like me out there who are posting videos on how to do things yourself."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Wealth!

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

Home improvement retailer, Lowe's reported quarterly results this morning that were greatly affected by the sluggish home improvement backdrop brought on by high interest rates.

Lowe's called out quote, continued pressure and bigger ticket, do it yourself.

Projects.

Our next guest sees a further drop coming in home renovations and is here to provide some affordable diy tips that could help you as housing prices, interest rates and inflation continue to weigh on Americans here with more.

We've got Gaily Alex who is the Diy designer and host of the Max Show Home in a Heartbeat.

Gaily also a former Goldman Sachs executive.

So no stranger to what's taken place both in the stock market as well as the economy and keeping tabs on that.

Give us a lay of the home renovation land though and, and how consumers are doing from your purview.

Yes and so great to be here.

Thank you for having me, Brad and it's been, it's been a wild four years, right?

We started in 2020 we had this pandemic and everybody was forced to be in their homes and with nothing else to do so they're looking around their homes and they're thinking I can do, I can do more with all this time that I have.

And on top of that, I think a big catalyst for this diy movement that we've seen over the last few years was zooming and video conferencing because now you're inviting all of your work colleagues every single day into your home.

If you're conferencing from your kitchen or your office, and people are thinking I I need to show up better.

I want my home to represent me better.

So it really started this movement but in the same way that that movement increased.

So did housing prices, so did inflation, so did interest rates and now you have this compounding effect where people's budgets that they have to do these home renovations and even their own D Y projects are just getting cut because of having to pay a higher mortgage or having to dip deeper into their savings to pay for their first home.

And so now we're sitting in this environment where people are just scratching their heads going.

I really wanna make my home better, but I don't know how to afford it.

And so that's where we're starting to see a decrease in home renovations.

What are the projects that you still see people doing on their homes, the diy efforts that just have to get done?

So I always say there's different levels of diy, right?

There's kind of the beginner where it doesn't cost a whole lot to go buy a couple of cans of paint and some blue tape and to paint some walls, maybe you can get some caulking and recock all of your fleet, all of your baseboards.

Excuse me?

And you still get that new house snack and it feels really fresh and it feels different but it, it wasn't a lot of sweat equity or money you had to put into it.

But then there's these people that want to do these major kitchen renovations and these bathroom overhauls and that costs a lot of money.

So it's uh it's, and there's a video of me doing my own kitchen which you now see behind me, I got a compound under that stone.

That's why it looks a little different.

Um But even the cost of compounding concrete, all of these materials are so inflated right now.

So it's getting really, really expensive uh to, to do these bigger projects.

Ok.

So how can you make sure that you're also cutting down on the costs to still complete those projects?

I am so glad you asked that question.

One of my favorite tips is that if you have a contractor coming over and you're gonna get a quote on a major, let's just say kitchen renovation.

But this, this is an umbrella approach.

This works with any renovating you're doing.

But let's just say it's a kitchen and your budget is 50 K and the contractor quotes you 80 K and doing your due diligence, you get maybe three other quotes and BK is still your lowest.

And you're thinking, how do I swing this?

What you do is you ask your contractor to give you an itemized invoice for what every single thing they are doing is going to cost and that you don't tell him why you just say I'd like an itemized invoice.

Then what you do is you go through very carefully that invoice and you say, oh, demo, $8000 my friends.

And I can do that in a weekend and you don't have to worry about damaging anything because that's the whole point of demo.

You're trying to damage everything.

So you can, you can pretty securely do that yourself.

Save 8000.

And then it might say waste removal where they take it to the dump and they're gonna charge you $900 for that.

You can run a pickup truck for 1999 an hour from Home Depot and load it up yourself.

And it costs 200 dollars to drop it off at the dump.

Or if you have bulk pickup, wait till that time of the month and put it out on the street.

And then it might say electrical and plumbing and these are things that maybe you don't feel comfortable doing.

And if it could cause a risk to any sort of fire hazard, you shouldn't.

So let the professionals do that and then you keep going down the list and maybe cleaning and painting is another $2000.

You can do that.

Then now you just kind of go through and you do your own slashing of labor costs and take that on yourself and put in a little sweat equity.

That's your only currency you have to spend.

And now you just brought your kitchen renovation from 80 down to maybe 60 which is a little more palatable kayla.

Just lastly while we have you here, it seems like if we see mortgage rates continue to tick lower than you could have.

A lot of people come off of the sidelines, potential new home buyers even who may be going into negotiations may be going into settlement and unaware of where they can also cut some costs because there are diy projects that they can do once they get in the home.

What are some of those top projects that they should perhaps be removing from the build out process and they themselves then perhaps initiating once they get into the home, like the, the big things are kind of unavoidable if you need a new roof or you need all new flooring, that's pretty hard to do yourself if you're embryonic in the diy space and, and haven't done it a lot, but I recommend going to youtube, go to social media.

There's a lot of people like me out there who are posting videos on how to do things yourself.

And I think the really easy thing would be like scraping the popcorn off of your ceiling, just make sure you wear a mask because you can get really sick if you inhale that and, and, and again, it goes back to painting.

I think that's one of the easiest things landscaping.

You can do yourself, you can paint the whole outside of your house.

You don't have to spend $18,000 with a professional painter.

So I say, lean into the painting and uh and then leave the, the really challenging things to the professional and just know where to spend your money.