November 28, 2011

The Master List!

Hola friends!! Ammon is busily working on our house to have it ready before the baby makes his appearance :)  We're almost done with the bathrooms - then we're moving on to the wood floor! Many pictures to come!  Since we've done 100% of the labor and material shopping ourselves, we've decided to let you know what we've found!  There are about 8 different places you can go for any one thing you might need to fix in your house. Ammon, who is a much more patient shopper than me, has hunted down all the best deals for every little thing we've needed!  If I were buying all the material, we would have probably spent double.  I'm not a deal hunter - I'd rather just buy it at the first place I find it.  Hopefully this list will help you when you need something new for your house/projects :D

I'm going to start with what we did first, and go from there - so the list will probably seem incredibly out of order!

1- Roofing supply.
       We started to re-shingle our roof two days after we closed on our house.  At first, we bought most of our supplies from Pacific Supply on Industrial.  We didn't really look around at prices and just assumed that Pacific would be the cheapest since it sells to contractors.  Little did we know - Home Depot was about $5 less per pack of shingles - PLUS they price match and BEAT the competitor by 10%.  When we ran to HD for the last 20 packs we needed - Ammon was in a tissy that we spent that much more at Pacific :)  So - Home Depot for roofing supply.  And bring a price estimate from a competitor to get the price match 10% off :)

2 - Electrical supply.
        Ammon bought almost everything electrical from Home Depot.  He looked everywhere, and they kicked the competitors trash.  There were a few fasteners that he could only find at Dixie Fastener Supply.

3 - Plumbing supply.
       Neither of us had ANY idea how expensive copper was these days!  Plumbing was one of the most expensive bundle of crap on our list.  We found the best deal (and widest selection) at Standard Plumbing Supply across the street from Fiesta Fun.  *NOTE* we did not buy our bathroom fixtures from Standard - they are insanely expensive! For fixtures, we bought a few at Home Depot, and a few at Lowes - the prices are about the same*

4 - Lumber.
      We tore up from the floor up - literally.  We needed sheetrock in almost every size.  We lucked out and happened to stop into Habitat for Humanity's ReStore just off of Riverside Drive.  We got a lot of our sheetrock there for a KILLER DEAL!!! They don't have regularly stocked merchandise there, but when they do get what you're looking for in stock - it will be miles below the regular price.  The rest of our sheetrock we got at Home Depot.

5 - Sheetrock Mud & Texture.
      We bough all of our mudding and texture supply at Home Depot.  But, Lowes is about the same price, too.

6 - Paint & Primer.
      As you've read, our houses previous owner was a HEAVY smoker.  So, we asked one of Ammon's Professional painter friends what kind of primer he suggested.  He said if we had money to blow, go with KILZ professional primer.  We definitely didn't fit that category - so he said the next best option was Devoe primer from Jones Paint & Glass.  We went with Devoe and the day after they primed the house, it smelled like a garden of roses (compared to the smoke smell).  We almost bought ALL of our paint from Jones Paint & Glass.  Their paint and primer is about $3-$6 cheaper than anywhere else we found.

7 - Doors.
      We bought our doors from Lowes, but Home Depot and Burton Lumber were all the same price.

8 - Lighting.
      We bought all of our lights from Lowes.  We have half canned lights and half, what I like to call, boob lights.  We got a 6 pack of "boob" lights from Lowes for $35 full price.  Not too shabby AT ALL!!

9 - Baseboards and Door casing
     Without a doubt, Burton Lumber is where you want to go for Base and Case.  A beautiful 4" baseboard at HD will cost you triple, almost 4X, as much as it will at Burton.  Our baseboard are 6.25" and we paid about $0.72 a linear foot.  We thought, to get that pricing, we would have to buy all of our base off of KSL (which is also a good option), but with Burton, they ordered in EXACTLY what we wanted, gave us a smokin' deal - and delivered it to our house!  We also got matching casing from Burton for about $0.52 a linear foot.  We probably saved the most money in this department.

10 - Thresholds.
    Ammon wanted to redo all of the thresholds to match the new floor.  We bought two at Home Depot and thought they seemed a bit expensive.  We checked a few days later at Lowes and they were about $5-$6 cheaper there.

11 - Outlets, light switches, and covers
     Home Depot!!!  We got a 20% off coupon in the mail from Lowes, so we went to buy all of our outlets, light switches, and covers there.  We didn't even bother looking anywhere else, because we thought the coupon would beat out everywhere else.  Little did we know, Home Depot had everything we wanted in the color we wanted for almost HALF of what they cost at Lowes.  We overpaid WAY too much - almost $150 more than we would have paid at HD.

12 - Tile
    We searched high and low for the perfect shade of tile.  Lowes has a much bigger selection, but Home Depot blows them out of the water on price.  And, coincidentally, Home Depot had exactly what we were looking for - the tile for our bathroom was only $0.98 a sq. ft.  The tile for our kitchen and laundry room was only $1.49 a sq. ft.

13 - Wood Flooring
     We knew we wanted wood.  We knew we wanted black wood.  Browse anywhere for black hardwood and the price is almost insane.  So, we went online!  We were both a little sketched out to buy such a HUGE, expensive material online.  But we couldn't be happier with what we got!  The two places I found that are absolutely amazing are

https://www.floorstoyourhome.com/

and

http://www.laminatefloorscheap.com/

don't let the names scare you.  We decided to go with www.laminatefloorscheap.com for our flooring, and we love, love, love it!! It's so beautiful!! Here's a little sneak preview:


We were okay with a laminate floor instead of real wood, and we think we picked perfectly!  We spent about $1.30/sq. ft. And it's a Utah based company - I don't know why that made me feel happy inside :) Go Utah!!  They also hooked us up with a super nice pad for about $14/roll.  We looked it up online and it retails at $29/roll.  Thanks Laminate Floors Cheap! ;)

14 - Carpet
     We found a hidden southern Utah treasure for our carpet.  GS Distribution!  You would NEVER know they sell carpet, tile and wood when you walk in, but upstairs is a hidden flooring center!  We found the PERFECT carpet for our house.  We told them how much we wanted to spend and the color, and they nailed it!  The price for the carpet, pad and installation was absolutely unbeatable.  They are located at 1357 South 320 East Suite A in St. George.

Hope this helps you as much as it has helped us!! Enjoy!

November 10, 2011

inch by inch!

we are slowly getting our house put together! It's so exciting to see so much changing - especially after such a long time of not seeing anything :) We textured and painted!!!! I was so happy! Sad that I couldn't be there to help - and was forcibly removed when I tried to sneak in for a peek while they were painting.  The smoker smell is finally gone!  It's the best ever not to smell like smoke all the time - now we smell like paint.. I'll take it ;) Ammon and his awesome brothers started tiling our bathrooms and Ammon started rebuilding our hearth today!  It's going to be so beautiful :) I can't wait to move in and light a fire!!  We've ordered our door casing and baseboards AND our gorgeous dark wood floors!  Here are a few update pictures - many more to come within the next few weeks!!

tile in guest bathroom

tile pattern in the showers :)


starting on the hearth!! You can see our paint color, too!