What You Can Learn From the Nerds’ Home Improvement Projects

Do you have a home improvement project on your to-do list? You might have a deck to build or a leaky toilet to fix.

If so, you’re in good company. Searches for “home renovation” and “home improvement” reached their highest levels so far this year in June, according to Google Trends data.

Renovations and repairs don’t exactly come cheap.

On average, home improvement projects cost about $6,200 each, according to NerdWallet’s analysis of the most recent American Housing Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau.

If you plan to work on your home, knowing what to expect can help you avoid costly mistakes. We asked members of NerdWallet’s editorial team to share their experiences and money-saving ideas from this summer’s projects.

🤓 Nerd: Sara Rathner, senior writer/spokesperson

📍 Location: Richmond, Virginia.

🏡 The project: We’re finishing our basement. It’s something we always thought about doing, especially after visiting friends with finished basements. They were such useful spaces for kids, entertaining and hanging out. I’m looking forward to my basement looking like a cozy family room instead of a raw, industrial space haunted by a vengeful ghost.

💰 Money saving strategy: Hahahaha. It’s so expensive. Like laughably expensive. But we’re only doing this once, so we want to do it right. Money has no meaning anymore. It’s like scooping up a handful of sand and letting it filter out through your fingers.

😮 Something surprising: We interviewed contractors for months. I didn’t realize how many would promise to draw up an estimate, only to disappear. Or how many would send us estimates that were missing major parts of the project. If you get an estimate that seems low, go through it line by line.

💡 Tip: Take whatever you thought it was going to cost and add another $10,000.

🤓 Nerd: Jeanette Margle, head of content

📍 Location: The suburbs of Houston, Texas.

🏡 The project: We renovated an unfinished attic and patio space into a bonus room/bedroom to add square footage to our home.

💰 Money saving strategy: We compared multiple quotes for all contractors to get competitive bids, and decided to DIY some things like painting. We used a zero-interest credit card offer (instead of a loan) to help finance piecemeal items, like A/C upgrades that were out-of-scope for the contractor.

😮 Something surprising: I didn’t anticipate how much even a small home renovation affects the normal working patterns of your household. Managing various parties coming and going at all hours for weeks was harder than I expected!

💡 Tip: Make sure to compare bids apples-to-apples. If you get one bid that includes additional details, don’t assume your lower-priced bid also includes work at the same scope — ask to get clarity.

Front door and fireplace repair

🤓 Nerd: Julie Myhre-Nunes, managing editor

📍 Location: San Jose, California.

🏡 The project: We replaced our front door and added an electric insert to our fireplace. We redid the windows three years ago, but didn’t have the budget to do our front doors — they’re double doors and a custom size, so they’re more expensive. We knew this upgrade would make our house more energy efficient and better help regulate the temperature in our house.

We opted to do the fireplace because we knew ours was not safe to use, and burning wood in my area isn’t very common because of “Spare the Air” days. We have lived in our house for six years and finally wanted to have a cozy fireplace for the holidays.

💰 Money saving strategy: We saved up for the doors, but realized our “ideal budget” didn’t really reflect reality. We have a HELOC, so we did have to dip into that a bit for the doors. We are in our forever home, and didn’t want to settle for doors we didn’t love, so we splurged a bit and got the exact door we wanted. Our house had the original doors (from 1966), so this was a major upgrade.

We were able to pay cash for the fireplace. We joke that the theme with our house is nothing is a “standard size,” which was also true of our fireplace. We had to get a custom insert, which wasn’t as expensive as we thought.

😮 Something surprising: Our fireplace was cleaned and repaired before the insert was added. We’ve never had it cleaned before, and we didn’t realize it could be cleaned without getting the dust/soot in the house. That was cool to learn.

The doors didn’t come with many surprises because we rebuilt all of the windows in our house years before. That project came with unlimited surprises (dry rot, termite damage, sagging windows and more). We expected some with the front doors, but it was a really smooth process.

💡 Tip: Understand your skills and be practical with yourself about what you can and can’t handle. We’ve done a handful of DIY, and I originally intended on doing the fireplace upgrade myself. Once I got started, it was overwhelming and confusing, so we opted to hire a professional.

Really get a feel for the salesperson/contractor and ask all the questions to get an idea of whether you can work with them. They may need to communicate something or collaborate with you during the project, and you don’t want to be stuck with someone you can’t work alongside.

Smart moves for your next home improvement

You can learn a few things from the Nerds’ experiences: Know when it makes sense to DIY or hire a pro, compare contractor bids carefully and build surprises into your budget.

Then, you can start comparing payment options and reaching out to professionals.

Even if you don’t have any home improvement jobs planned, it’s smart to think about how you’d handle unexpected repairs and maintenance costs. A leaky roof or busted refrigerator may come knocking eventually.

About the author

Lauren Schwahn is a writer at NerdWallet who covers credit scoring, debt, budgeting and money-saving strategies. She contributed to the “Millennial Money” column for The Associated Press and managed a team of writers producing content for the series. Her work has also been featured by USA Today, MSN, The Washington Post and more. Lauren has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is based in San Francisco.

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