Looking out for deals!

We still had to wait awhile after we'd found "the" plan we loved. We were actually in the middle of doing a total renovation of the house we were living in (DH's old bachelor pad! lol). David (AKA: "DH") totally gutted that house room by room (with us living there; we're still coughing up dust! blah!) but the money we'd make off this house after we sold it would enable us to pay off our land so we forged ahead. As usual, it ended up looking amazing in the end. I honestly miss it, not the neighborhood, but we put so much love into that house... I confess, I have this bad attachment to stuff (houses & cars especially!).

Anyways, so while we were busy with the renovation -- we still kept our eyes out for good deals for our new-house-to-be-one-day (follow that??). My husband is a good deal finder, I'm learning pretty well from him. Every bit of money saved on one thing helped us be able to afford something else!

One of the main reasons why we decided to build our own house was to control the money aspect of it. Everything is so expensive now-a-days and it would be hard to build what we wanted being a one income family using a contractor. Plus, we knew we could build it cheaper and still use the best guys to do certain aspects of it that we wanted to sub out --> ending up with a lessor mortgage and a nice house with all the upgrades that we wanted. :)

Being the bargain hunters that we are (I didn't nickname my hubby "cheep cheep" for nothing... and I don't really mean a bird!), I thought I'd share some of the good deals that we've found so far. ;) Granted, some things have been just pure luck or someone-knowing-someone kinda deal too. Either way, our garage is *full* of house stuff now and every penny saved could be used on something else.

Kohler drop-in tub for master bath -- regular price is over $700 -- we got it on Ebay for $51.00 brand new, never used, still in the org box, plus $220 to have it shipped to us -- still saving us around $500!!

David found a nice, brand new in the box kitchen sink faucet at a yard sale for $20 -- we later found out it retails at Lowes/Home Depot for over $400! The man having the yard sale worked for the faucet company and didn't need it. David also talked him into a bathroom faucet for $5! Even if we don't use these, we can sell them for a small profit.

Awesome rug for the master bedroom at Lowe's -- regular $350 -- on clearance for $109!! (It's beautiful too!) The sales lady there gave me a deal on the smaller version of the same rug for $20 for me to put in the master bath (I think it was marked regular $49).

Interior doors (3 panel style) at Lowe's -- we upgraded to solid core for FREE using their special promotion AND saved 10% off our entire order!

We saved $300 with our footer guy... just because he was behind schedule and we decided to wait on him (only b/c he's the *best* around). :)

And we saved another $300 with our foundation/block guys... just because we paid with cash! I guess cash is king! lol

David found a septic tank for free -- not used! (very important, lol). Someone had built a house that he called a 3 bedroom... but b/c he'd put in closets in 3 other extra rooms the codes department said it was a 6 bedroom. He had to take the smaller septic tank out of the ground and buy a bigger one (what a pain huh?). He gave it to us for FREE, but we did have to pay $200 to get it moved and set at our land.

We ordered our kitchen cabinets last year (ugh... they've been in my living room at our rental house since LAST March!) because Lowe's was running an awesome deal. We ended up with some free upgrades (saving several hundred dollars) PLUS they had a promotion were for every $1,000 you spent, you'd get back a $100 Lowes gift card. I think we ended up with over $1,000 in gift cards between all the kitchen/bathroom purchases we made. See! It all adds up! :)

David found a 12x24 ft wood building that someone wanted to get rid of. IIRC, he paid to have it moved to our land. I don't know how much he saved... but I'm sure it was atleast several hundred dollars easily. And it's come in handy having a shed there for storage -- I tried to talk him into turning it into a chicken coop... but it's "no" for now. He did say he'd give it up after his workshop is built for a homeschool room if we're able to homeschool next year. That'd work!

We bartered free interior stair parts for David to do some audio/video work at the guys house. He figured we got about $600 in parts in exchange for about 2 hours of his working, the guy had all the parts in his garage and just wanted rid of them. ;)

We often shop the clearance aisles at Lowes, you never know what you'll find. Actually we go to Lowe's so much that David knows one of the managers now. He said he'd work with us on getting our appliances. We love Lowe's! We got all of our old appliances from them too and they were just really good to work with, I think we saved 10% last time which isn't a lot but it does cover taxes! ;)

Due to the economy too, we've saved just by paying cash. I think we've saved money on getting a crew to insulate (itchy, itchy!) and hang drywall (it took them 2 days versus taking DH wayyyy longer by himself!). So, paying cash has helped too.