After over a month of having people working in my basement, the carpet was finally laid yesterday.  Not only does it look great and even smell great, it feels great.  My wife and I are “barefoot people” – we like to be shoeless at every opportunity.  So picking a quality carpet and pad was an important investment that will help us enjoy the space even better.

There are a lot of places you can choose to cut back to save money when doing a renovation, but flooring is one of the last places you should look to cut corners.  You really need to focus on quality when purchasing and installing a carpet and pad, hardwood, tile, or even vinyl flooring.  The floor is going to take a beating over the years and the cheaper you go, the quicker it will wear out and look bad.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to know if you’re getting quality until a few years later, but here are a few measures you can take to reduce your risk and check the quality of your product and your installer:

When purchasing carpet, it’s best to get your hands on it and really work it hard. Take a sample and pull on the threads, bend it at least 90 degrees, and twist it as hard as you can.  If the pile come loose easily, if you can see the burlap backing when bending it, or if it twists too easily, you may not have a quality carpet.

Get at least a “6 pound” carpet pad, but preferably at least an “8 pound”. The better pad you buy, the longer your carpet will last and the better it will feel under your feet.  A thicker pad draws away some of the force when walking on the carpet and helps the carpet stay in good condition longer.  And for “barefoot people” like me, it makes for a softer (and warmer) step when barefoot since it acts as both a cushion and an insulator.  If you’re installing it in a basement, make sure to upgrade to a mold-resistant pad.

Inspect a few tile samples before buying in bulk. Ceramic tile is usually fairly uniform, as long as the tiles all come from the same run.  But natural stone tiles, such as marble, vary widely due to their natural sources.  You want tiles that have similar coloring and are thick and strong enough to withstand years of use and abuse.  And if you’re installing tile in a bathroom, make sure to get tiles that have some texture.  The last thing you want to do is crack your head open by slipping on some wet, smooth marble tiles.

Hire an installer on recommendations. Sure, you can hire installers from a home improvement retailer such as Lowe’s, but they are merely subcontractors who happened to bid the lowest and meet the retail chain’s minimum quality standards.  Our house’s upper two floors were installed by Lowe’s subcontractors and we already have some trouble spots just two years later.  We opted to hire a different installer for our basement because he came with the highest of recommendations from multiple sources.  The job he did was fantastic and you can barely tell where the carpet seams are and the stairs are magnificent.

Remember that your flooring is the hardest thing to change. Furniture can be moved around, walls can be repainted, and decorations can be added, but your floor probably won’t change for at least a decade or two.  Good flooring is truly an investment in the space it fills.  If you get poor quality or it is installed improperly, you’ll see it and regret it every day you walk around the problems.  Flooring is the one place it truly does not make sense to go cheap. Buy and hire for quality and you’ll love the results for years.

Photo by: Rachel’s flickrs

(c) 2007-2009, That One Caveman, http://www.thatonecaveman.com

Photo by: Kristin Roach

At our church’s last rummage sale, we found a wonderful twin bed and frame for $10. It was the perfect size and design for her bedroom, but the frame itself wasn’t in the greatest of shape and the previous owners had painted it blue for their son. There were a number of dents and dings in the headboard and places where the paint had either rubbed or peeled away.

After working down all the surfaces with a heavy-grit sandpaper, the original beauty of the headboard began to shine through again. I was able to work out most of the problem areas and clean up a few of the scars of this furniture’s eventful life with a little elbow grease, then I followed it up with a fine-grit paper to leave a nice, smooth surface.

I invested about an hour to work the headboard back into shape and it really made a difference. Most of the blue was gone and the piece looked refreshed – almost as if it was happy that someone was putting in the effort to make it beautiful again.

Once the sanding was complete and I wiped down the wood, it was ready to accept the paint. To speed the project and eliminate some of the difficulty of brushing paint into tough corners, I opted to coat it with a quality spray paint.

Working with spray paint takes a decent amount of patience and a steady hand, otherwise the paint job will come out poorly. You have to take short, even strokes and never let your hand stop in one place for any amount of time or you’ll end up with drips. And if you’re working outside, you have to constantly fight the wind so your paint will go on its intended target instead of the neighbor’s car.

But after two coats of white satin enamel spray paint, the headboard looks almost brand new. It how has a paint job that will last and it will fit in nicely with its new home.

So, for less than $20, my daughter had a complete bed, frame, and headboard that matches her new room that would have cost over $100 if I bought it new. If you’re willing to put in the effort of finding quality furniture pieces and then refinishing them with love, you can save a tremendous amount of money and fill your house with found and renewed furniture that will last for years.

Featured in the Festival of Frugality – The Veteran’s Day Edition hosted at One a Quest To Be Debt Free.

(c) 2007-2009, That One Caveman, http://www.thatonecaveman.com

Starting this weekend, we will begin the process of finishing our basement. Finally, I’m going to get a real office of my own, a “proper” home theater area, a play room for the kids, a kitchenette for entertaining, and a respectable bathroom in what is currently unfinished, dead space. But finishing a basement properly is expensive. My parents just had theirs finished and the final total is somewhere around $17,000.

But, I’m lucky; the guy who finished their basement has taken a liking to our family and decided to donate his time on my project as long as I do some of the work, too. Since I will only have to pay for materials, my outlay will be somewhere between $8,000 and $9,000. But, if you’ve been keeping track during my net worth statements, my savings (including emergency fund) is hovering somewhere around $11,000. While I could pay for my basement outright, I have decided to handle half of the load myself and initiate a personal line of credit from my parents for the other half.

I almost always recommend against taking loans for something you technically can’t afford and especially not from family, but I felt the deal I was offered was too good to pass up – especially since I desperately need a quiet, private office at home to work. I’m not going into hock over the deal, but it’s still risky since I’m using part of my emergency fund to pay for a “frivolous” upgrade to my house. Hopefully, the benefit I gain from having my private space to work and write will more than offset the temporary risk we’re taking by accessing those funds.

But taking a loan from my parents in this case was smart because it allows me to maintain liquidity in case of emergency and it was the only way to ensure I could get started right away. Instead of taking the full balance up-front, I have opted to use their generosity as a line of credit at 0% APR (at their insistence – not mine) with monthly payments of $200. If I borrow the full amount I expect I need from them, that turns into a 2-year loan. In all, it’s not a good deal and will garner a huge return on investment when we eventually sell the home.

Usually, I prefer to maintain a position of lower risk, but as I wrote earlier this week sometimes you have to decide if your home is worth taking on a bit of extra risk. Since I would like to eventually start working from home full-time, a true office is necessary, so this reasonable risk opens up many new opportunities for us. Hopefully it will pay off in the near-term and not just long-term. But only time will tell. Of course, this will make my net worth statement bottom out, but in the long run it will just be a small blip on the larger, growing curve.

Even as I start this process, I still cannot recommend taking this same path because it goes a bit against my normal financial sensibilities. But there is where the personal side of personal finance comes in. Right now felt like the right time to move on the deal (especially before the new baby arrived) and we had the funds and available credit to pull it off. If I were to do it differently, I would have put it off for a year or two more to allow me to save up everything I needed, but this is a deal that could only happen now. I guess this is a “do as I say, not as I do” sort of situation that I’ve found myself in.

Oh well! Wish me luck on a successful remodel!

(c) 2007-2009, That One Caveman, http://www.thatonecaveman.com