We were told our home renovations would cost a fortune so we did it ourselves and saved £8,000 – here's how | The Sun
A PAIR of DIY enthusiasts have revealed how they saved £8,000 on their home renovation after doing it themselves.
Zack Greystone and his wife Natasha bought their home with plans to refurbish – but were told it could cost up to an eye-watering £12,000.
They decided to do the project on their own to try to make the changes for less, using money-saving tactics.
Zack explained: "When we first moved into the house, it was absolute garbage, it had a sloping garden, lots of dirt everywhere.
"We got quite a few people around to quote us on the garden, and they said around £12,000 to £15,000 just to do a little bit of Indian stone and wooden planters – which we thought was a lot of money.
"So we set about doing it ourselves, we designed the garden ourselves, we did all the plans ourselves."
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Zack, a civil servant, said they ordered the equipment and all the tools in and completely redesigned the garden themselves, learning how to do it all on YouTube.
He revealed: "In the end, we ended up spending £4,000 on the entire garden which included all the furniture we bought, all the materials, the tools – which saved us about £8,000 in total.
"This is just a passion for us. We got interested in house design in our first home eight years ago.
"We're both really creative people so we see a vision and go for it – it's what we've done with the garden.
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"We had it in our head what we wanted it to look like and it has turned out like that because we wanted that – and knew we only had acertain amount of money."
They now run their popular Instagram account @The_Greystones, where they share their gorgeous projects to over 10,900 followers.
The couple stayed motivated throughout, and shared their top tips for refurbishing your garden on a budget with The Sun.
Saving on supplies for their garden renovation is one way the savvy duo cut costs.
Zack said: "Once you've decided it is what you want to do, you can then use open sources like Google to find different suppliers and compare the prices.
"You can often approach them and try and haggle the prices down a little bit more. If you can price match it to somewhere else a bit cheaper, they tend to offer it a little less as well."
Shop smart
That's not all. Zack added that shopping locally and making smart decisions was essential in saving cash.
He said: "We went to local nurseries which a lot of people aren't aware of to get plants for your garden.
"Local nurseries are the places that often supply the stores, so you can get plants a lot cheaper from there.
"One plant which you might pay £35 for, we paid £16 – it's often a massive chunk cheaper."
Going to your local builder's merchants saved the couple hundreds of pounds.
Zack said: "That's what we did with the soil – we went to a local farm and they delivered the soil and put it on the drive and that saved us about £400 just by going directly to them.
"It's just about being smarter with where you go to get your products, and trying to go to local and smaller places because it tends to be cheaper."
Buy budget furniture
Zack added: "Especially with the cost of living, people don't want to spend as much money on garden furniture."
The couple purchased their furniture at JYSK, a bargain furniture brand.
They got their corner garden suite for £599 instead of £1200 – an impressive saving.
Aside from heavy lifting, Zack said time was their biggest challenge.
Natasha, who works as a bank manager and Zack, a civil servant, had to fit in their DIY adventures in evenings and weekends to work around their full-time jobs.
Zack said: "Come rain or snow, we had to do it. We've had this garden for 2 years and every year we improve it and do something better to it.
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"It's about having faith in yourself to go out and do it."
He added: "Doing it all yourself saves a lot of money – the labour is the biggest cost. If you can learn how to do it, you can do anything you want. You just need that little bit of time to learn how to do it."
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