Posts Tagged ‘do-it-yourself’
I am not sure if I blogged about it or not but I recently gutted all of the insulation and framing out of my unfinished basement. You see, I had found some mold. The result is one heck of a cold basement which lead me to do some reading on the subject.
I have read that you can up to 20%-30% of you heating bill just by adding proper insulation. I am proof that since I took the insulation out of my basement that it is way colder down here. I haven't been cranking the heat but instead wearing extra clothes and keeping extra blankets handy.
Depending on the size of your basement it's probably going to cost a few hundred dollars or more but you can expect to get that back over a two or three year period in heating savings. It's also a project that for the most part you can do yourself if you have a guide on how do to do it. You can read the source article as it is excellent in covering some of the different kinds of insulation that you can use in your basement and goes over everything from top to bottom.
Posted in 
Tags: 
So tomorrow the plumber shows up to start my bathroom renovation. He gave me quote awhile back but I decided to start the gutting process myself. I broke the tile wall and took the plaster out over two Saturdays and took them to the dump. When we spoke last week he said he would do the quote over because I had one a fair bit of the work myself.
You would be suprised how much money you can save by doing your own prep work before paying a tradesperson to do it for you. It cost us less than $30 to dispose of it at the dump and about 10 hours to get it down to the studs. I am pretty sure the plumber would have been charging me more than that. I will keep everyone updated how it goes and how the final bill compares with the original when they were doing it all.
