Renovation Day 35: Home Depot vs Lowes price match! And other ways to save money!

What's up you guys, it's Red here. So I almost thought, I know I said that in the last video, but now it's almost closer to being almost done. There are so many little things that are driving me absolutely crazy that aren't done yet, but because I think it's been a little bit over a week since I uploaded my last video, I'm just going to do another one.

With this video, because it seems like every little video has like a bit of a lesson to it, the lesson in this video is how to save money when it comes to remodeling. The plans here, like where to look and what to do. So first, I'll get into—walk into the kitchen. By the way, follow me on Snapchat. You would know when we did the backsplash; it turned out like it looked absolutely terrible. I wanted a very light gray grout, and apparently what they thought I meant when I said light gray is like this dark, like black charcoal. It looks terrible.

So they ended up ripping it all out and doing it again, and with this, I decided to put these subway tiles a little bit closer together to do white grout. I think it looks a lot cleaner and gives it a nice look in the kitchen. But when it comes to saving money in the kitchen, you'll notice the appliances; I went with the Frigidaire Gallery series where I got the microwave, wood stove, refrigerator, and the dishwasher all in one.

So how do I save some money? I was reading online, and I heard that one of the best things to do is go get a quote from Home Depot, and then what you do is take that quote to Lowe's and ask them to beat the Home Depot pricing. So I did that. I'm going to cut to it right now, so let's go to it.

We're going to try a quick experiment here to try to get the best deal on appliances. What I was reading online, apparently this strategy goes: you go to Home Depot, you get a quote for the appliances you want to get, and then you take that quote to Lowe's and ask them to beat that price. So what I did, I went to Home Depot. Thank Leeds, Labor Day's in the next week, and everyone's offering like these insane discounts. So I went with the Frigidaire Gallery series for the four-piece—like the stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave—and the total after all their Labor Day sales and stuff like that was $2,668.93.

Okay, which honestly is a pretty good price. Like if I were paying retail for this, this would easily be like $3,500. So already I'm saving like $900. But I'm outside Lowe's right now, so we're going to test this theory and see if Lowe's will actually beat the price. So let's do it.

Twenty minutes later… Damn! Alright, so we just finished, and this is amazing! The total came out to $2,281.35, a savings of about $400, and they threw in next-day delivery. So yeah, I just saved $400 by driving down the street to Lowe's, getting another quote, and next-day delivery! This strategy—it actually works! So if you want to save a lot of money on appliances, do the Home Depot to Lowe's strategy. Can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner!

So anyway, you can see that's how I got such a good deal on these appliances, and it really helps that it is Labor Day. So when it comes to Labor Day, I see like all these sales, so it's basically they got a sale, and then on top, like another sale. Like shopping it around, so I highly recommend for anybody who's buying appliances, wait for some sort of special holiday deal and then pit Home Depot against Lowe's.

Some of you guys are saying like I should have taken that Lowe's quote back to Home Depot and seen what they would do. I'm going to do that because I'm going to buy a washer/dryer. So I'm going to start at Home Depot, go to Lowe's, then go back to Home Depot and see what they say, and maybe they can get them like in a brawl together and see who will actually get the lowest price.

So the second thing that I did to save money is when it came to window coverings. I thought I would go on Amazon because Amazon has always been my go-to for buying anything. Like I bought my light fixtures from Amazon. I bought like, what else did I buy? I ended up buying a lot of stuff from Amazon, unless at all, but I thought it would look on Amazon for window coverings. I did, and then I thought, well let me do like Google and then like Google Shopping to find out more stuff.

Oh, before that I actually went to IKEA and priced it on IKEA, so like that here was like a little bit more expensive, and Amazon was like down here. Then I thought like let’s do Google Shopping, and I came up with this website, selectblinds.com. They actually beat the price of Amazon and IKEA for custom-made blinds. So let me show you! This was actually really easy to do, and I like terrible at doing this stuff, but like me and a few friends put up these blinds.

So I would highly recommend it if anybody is like, you know, looking for blinds, this company’s fab! Selectblinds.com! And really, anything—I don’t think it has to be blinds necessarily—go on Google Shopping, and it kind of like pins the prices for like each different thing, and you can find out if someone actually has the best price or whatever you want to buy.

So the third way to save money is that my contractor wanted additional money for replacing all of the outlets in the plants, and it was way too much. We wanted like $40 or $50, and I wish we all knew that's way too much money. So instead, what I did, you go to Amazon and you buy like these little things in bulk for like $2 or $3 each, and they take like 10 minutes maximum to put in.

So I did the entire place for I think it was under $20 of actual material, and not even an hour. Hi! So there you go; that saves a lot of money! And while we're in the kitchen, this little thing I got from Amazon by the way, so I highly recommend for anything like this. A little like miscellaneous stuff, Amazon is the place to go!

We might spend way too much time on Amazon! So, oh, and we finished the hardwood floors, which I should turn up pretty good. I'll show you the bathroom now and the fourth way to save a little bit of money.

So the bathroom is just about there. I'm honestly, I'm really happy with it. You know, it might not be everyone's style, but what I really wanted to go for is like a 1920s kind of vibe mixed with something a little bit newer, mixed with something Spanish. I know it's a lot of styles, but I think that looks pretty good. The shower door came in, by the way; this looks big, super happy with this.

Honestly, all I think the bathroom needs at this point is like a little toilet paper holder, a towel rack, and two little shelfing, which we’re probably going to Amazon to buy. Take you to the bedroom here. Okay, these two blinds—so they went up, looks pretty good! I’m going to probably get like something over the top of them so it looks a little bit cleaner. It’s nothing to do with the blinds; it's just these windows, like very 1920s, and they're not straight.

So I’m going to do something just to taper off the line a little bit more. The other thing to save money is you can do a lot of this stuff yourself! Contractor! Get ready for this! Contractor wanted $60 to put in the doorknob and lock. $60! Now Home Depot is like $17. The whole kit takes probably 20 minutes to put in yourself. Save money! $60 is $60!

Actually, more like a $40 saving there, but again, $40 saving is $40 saving. And one of the last things that you guys haven't seen for the last year—All this crap is gone, which looks so much better! So I’m going to wait until more of this stuff is cleared out along the side. They look like some trash over there.

So anyway, until everything is cleaned out, and then I get to power wash this, and then when the garage door comes in, I can get a little bit more serious about the landscaping. And I’m going to make another video about the landscaping coming up. I just want to wait for it to be perfect and cleaned.

I think that’s pretty much it! Thank you guys so much for watching! And by the way, I apologize for not uploading more videos like in the last week or so. Well, I've honestly just been so stressed out with this place and getting it done and like trying to have this place done by September 1st, which passed, and I'm not quite there yet. There are so many little miscellaneous things, and I've just been so stressed out by that that I haven't had time to make any other videos.

To be honest with you guys, if I'm not in the mood to make a video, I won't make it because I know it's going to be crap, and I don't want to release anything that's not like I'm really proud of—than like a 10 out of 10. Otherwise, I feel like it's just going to be kind of lacking. So anyway, that's the reason why. I’ll get back to it; I’m just going to wait for everything to settle down and for me to have a little bit more time to dedicate to this.

But as always, you guys, thank you so much for watching! If you haven't already, make sure to add me on Snapchat and Instagram, and click that subscribe button! And I care about that! YouTubers now say like, hit the little bell, so I can ask you guys to hit that little bell so you know when I upload, so you don't miss anything! That's it; that's all I can ask!

Thanks for watching, and until next time! So one other thing I've noticed when you work on your own place is that if you've got an idea or something in your head, and the actual finished product turns out a little bit different than how you had envisioned it, you can still hate it.

And that's been the way it was with me. There have been a few things in this place, and I just had a different idea of how it would look like in my head, and it came out a bit different than that. Not that it looks worse; I've got a lot of compliments on this place. It seems like nobody notices little things that I notice, but I just don't like it.

And that's one of those things where it's very hard not to get caught up in your head just because you think of something that you thought was going to turn out a certain way, and it doesn’t. It doesn't always mean it's bad. That's something for me that is very difficult to get over. And also, when it's your place and you notice like all the little things and you're the one that's doing them, you're the one that's like there all the time—you notice all the little subtleties that no one else pays attention to.

But just the color of the backsplash was one of those things that, you know, for some people, they liked it, and they didn’t even notice that. For me, it just looked terrible! Maybe it did look terrible; it probably actually did look pretty bad. You did something like the stove; it juts out by like an inch, and that really bothers me. I think for most people, they wouldn’t even notice something like that, but it really bothers me.

It's still like something like that has to be fixed. There are also like little tiny things, and like the baseboards that aren’t totally lined up that I just can't stand, or there are several pieces of paint on the wood floors that I just can't stand. There are little things all around here. It's very difficult. That’s one of those things that I think you just have to release it and just accept that there are flaws and that nothing will be 100% perfect, and you just do your best.

You have to move on because otherwise, you would stop chasing that 1%—where it could be like 99%, and like that 1% takes like 10 hours to do. But one little thing—and I’m stealing Anthony’s behind me filming; I’m stealing his quote on this one. But it's very true—when you start getting to that point where you're chasing that 1% where it doesn't really make a difference but it takes you like a hundred times more effort to do than everything else, that's when you know you should be taught to stop.

So I'm about getting to that point where it's just like, you know, I'm chasing those little fine details that really don’t make any difference, and that’s something that I’m working on myself. So I'm not perfect—I'm doing the best I can when it comes to that sort of stuff.