Kitchen Renovation on a budget

Thanks to SoFi for sponsoring a portion of this video. We're on a mission to help people love where they live and no room in the house is more essential than the kitchen. The kitchen is the heart of the home where people gather together. And from an investment perspective, renovating a dated kitchen can add tons of value and help a house sell quickly. But kitchen renovations are expensive and if you don't make wise choices this dream can quickly become a nightmare. We're going to take you along on our latest kitchen remodel where we worked with our clients to achieve a designer look for a fraction of the cost. We'll show you exactly how we did it. Stick around for the full before and after reveal. Hey Flipsters, I'm Lauren. And I'm Lincoln and we are happily married. But not to each other. We're old friends from college and we're flipping houses in the Austin, Texas area. And we're taking you along for the ride. So the Austin real estate market is on fire right now. Prices are at an all time high. And people are moving here right and left, especially from the coasts, California and New York. And once they get here, they're pleasantly surprised about how much house they can afford in Austin. Here they can get a bigger home, more space, and things they're looking for, a yard, etc. Our clients recently moved here from Manhattan. They were in 900 square feet. And between working from home and raising a toddler, they were cramped to say the least. So we helped them find their dream house. But honestly, y'all, it was a lot of work. We had to make four offers before we had one accepted because this market, it's red hot. Hey guys, so I'm just now leaving the virtual showing. It went really well. They love this house. I think we're going to submit an offer. And I've got my fingers crossed that this is the one. I think we found the perfect house for them. It's in a cute, quiet little neighborhood in South Austin. So check this place out. It's pretty nice. It's been updated. The floors, paint was built in the 90s. So it's not too dated. But there is one little problem, the kitchen. So the kitchen was overall in really good condition. It was just pretty outdated. You've got these old brown cabinets that are honestly pretty high quality. They just look a bit dated. And the countertops in the backsplash has a lot of brown going on there. Hello, 90s. Tan is the new beige. There's not any hardware to speak of on the cabinet doors. The light fixtures are kind of, you know, builder grade. The appliances are in pretty good shape. Our clients have big ambitions for this thing. So I think we're going to have to bring it back down to earth. Because honestly, I don't think you're going to get that much of a return on investment if you go too over the top with this thing. And they set an aggressive budget. So it's going to be a challenge to work within it. I think the bones are here on this one. I think there's a few things that we can do to add a lot of impact and value at a minimal cost. Yeah, I'm excited for this. But honestly, one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they get grand visions of what the design can be on this, but they haven't set a realistic budget and they haven't gotten their money right. They haven't set a budget for the project. And honestly, that's going to determine so much of what is possible with the renovation. The best reno is the one you can afford. Hey guys, so this portion of the video is sponsored by SoFi. So let's talk about how you can afford a kitchen remodel. Step one is setting a goal and making a plan to hit that goal. Because if you want the kitchen of your dreams, you're going to need to save up some money. Putting some money aside each month can add up quickly and it can help you achieve the goal that you set. And that's exactly what the SoFi app helps you do. It helps you plan, budget, and work towards your goals. Okay, so let's talk about this really cool product. It's called SoFi Money. This thing is an amazing cash management app. It lets you create these vaults, which are almost like separate accounts that automatically have money set aside into them. So your saving is on autopilot. Okay, so that helps you save your money, but let's talk about SoFi Active Invest. So on the channel we focus on our real estate investment. We also invest in the stock market and the SoFi Invest app makes that easy. So obviously there's always risk when you're investing in stocks, but traditionally this has been one of the biggest wealth creation vehicles for the average person right alongside real estate. What SoFi lets you do is they let you invest in fractional shares. So you can buy a part of one of those companies for as little as one dollar. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step or in this case, one dollar. So if you want to get started investing, you have to actually start and just do it with a dollar. And SoFi makes it easy. Learn more by downloading the SoFi app or check out SoFi.com. To download the SoFi app, click the link in the description. Thanks again to SoFi for sponsoring this portion of our video. All right, now that we've got our money right, time to spend it. All right, so now we need to square up our client's wishlist with what we know we can afford within the budget. So their wishlist for this project is pretty extensive. They would really like some modern looking cabinets, maybe in a bold color. They prefer marble countertops. They really want to beef up that butler's pantry area with a separate ice maker and little wine fridge. They would love a big kitchen island and a farmhouse sink. They're hoping they can move that big fridge to a different location. The main thing that's sticking out to me on this wish list is there are a lot of small tweaks that are actually a lot more complicated than they might seem at first. Let's take this ice maker and wine fridge, for example. In order to put these in the little butler's pantry area, we're going to have to make custom cabinets to fit around these items. That's not cheap. Also, there's not existing electrical or plumbing back there. That means opening up the sheetrock, paying an electrician and a plumber just to run a few feet of line. I think we'd be better served in buying a little bit more expensive refrigerator that has ice making capabilities and has got a little bit of a higher luxury in feel. This is going to give us a very similar feel without blowing that budget. Another example would be moving the refrigerator. All things being equal, would it be nice to have that fridge on the sidewall? I mean, maybe. But wow, you're talking about a big project. Now you've got to redo all of the cabinets, plus electrical and water in the new wall, plus ripping up flooring. Same goes for that island. In order to put that in, we would have to run an electrical line. This house is on a slab foundation. That means we'd have to chip into the slab just to run an electrical line, not to mention damaging the brand new flooring in there. I just don't think you add value there. Okay, Mr. Negative. Now that we've covered what they can't do, let's talk about what I think they can do on a realistic budget. So I know they love the look of the shaker or the modern front cabinet. Problem being, they need a lot of them. And nice cabinetry is expensive. Yeah, and these are in really good shape. I agree. I think my only real problem with these cabinets is the color. So what we can do is we can take them apart, sand them, paint them with a high gloss, bold color, and I think we'll be able to achieve that same look at a fraction of the cost. I like using faux marble quartz countertops in our projects. And just to show you I'm not a cheapskate, here's an idea where we can add a high-end look without affecting multiple other items in the kitchen, and it's in the backsplash. So we've got to rip out the old backsplash anyway, and normally we could just put up like a subway tile or an interesting tile pattern, but they really like the look of using the countertop material as the backsplash, and I got no problem with it here. I love your idea about adding the backsplash because I think it's going to be a huge impact for a minimal cost, and because they're sacrificing other areas like the cabinetry, we're able to do that. Thanks for inviting me to your design scene. I was thinking like this is a good addition. I think we should do this more often. I don't know what I'm doing. You wanna do this again? Sure. All right. All right, so I am loving this cabinet color. How gorgeous is this? It's a Sherwin-Williams Mabel. It's actually the color of year 2020, so some good things happened in 2020. Our client was torn between this and the Halcyon Green color. We threw it up on Instagram just to kind of see how you guys felt, and you agreed with her that this is truly the color of the year. The Halcyon Green we ended up using in that little house on the prairie project. If you haven't watched that, go check it out. But anyway, I just love how bold this is. We're pairing it with these gorgeous quartz countertops, which we're actually gonna run in the backsplash as well. I think it's going to look fierce. So if this is the first time you're seeing this kitchen, you are behind the times, my friend. You obviously are not following us on Instagram at Austin Flipsters because we are showing you the day-to-day of our business. We're showing you behind the scenes of our projects. We're even letting you vote on design decisions. So go follow us at Austin Flipsters. Keep in mind when you're painting cabinets, you want to do a great job sanding them down, getting all the little nooks and crannies. Use some sort of varnish remover. I'll put a link down below to an excellent blog post. And then a stain blocking primer and plenty of time to let them air out and dry before putting them back on your cabinets. The plane has landed from New York. Our clients are in town. They're about to move in. Let's go check it out in three, two, one. Cool. It looks amazing. Obviously, the first thing that stands out is the color. The cabinets. Maple blue, Sherwin-Williams, color of the year 2020. It looks great against the gold hardware. I love it. I think it's bold, but it doesn't feel like too much. One of the areas where we spent some dough that I think was so worth it was extending the countertops of the backsplash. Such a classy look. Super cool. I am totally jelly. Wishing I had done this in my own house. The trickiest modification was this farmhouse sink because we actually had to cut out into the existing cabinet base, reframe it just a bit so that it could support this heavy sink. It's tough when you go cutting into existing cabinetry. You got to be very careful. I think it turned out great. And it was just enough room for this big farmhouse sink to fit, which I love. I think it's beautiful. Now, this was a bold choice on the faucet. Again, not only do you have this sprayer, you've got the pot filler too. Like that's a heavy duty faucet. And look, we even matched the brushed gold for the garbage disposal button right there. Boom. We got these West Elm light fixtures throughout. What do you think? Brass and glass. Totally on trend. All right, guys. So this is one of our rare projects that includes a fridge. Here it is. And it's amazing. It's got four quadrants. Check this bad boy out. Boom. Link in description. They ain't good. I love this little butler's pantry that they have turned into a coffee bar slash bar bar. So this is like all day long, right? From morning till night, this space is awesome. Unless you don't drink coffee like this weirdo. And then what, you'd be here for tea? Then you're just a freak. Okay, so I'm really happy with how this turned out. I'm glad that the client seems to enjoy it as well. But I could totally move in here. I love it. That's what's most important. You know, when you're flipping a house, it's what's going to have mass appeal. And when it's a project for someone specifically, it's what they're going to like. You want to make sure that you pick selections that will help with resale. Yes, but also that you love. Their whole purpose in moving from Manhattan to Austin was to enjoy their space more. So I think they got a massive return on investment, both from increasing property value. This adds a ton of value. But just from a lifestyle and enjoyment perspective. Exactly. If you guys are thinking about flipping your own houses or even renovating your own properties, check out our course. You're going to skip the line on all the hard lessons that we learned right out of the gate that we paid dearly for tens of thousands of dollars. You guys can learn from our mistakes and get on that rocket ship to flipping your first house. The first 10 students to use the coupon code KITCHEN at checkout will receive 25% off. Well, this was a really fun one. I loved working with one of our subscribers and it was a little bit different. I think it turned out beautifully. Yeah, it's a little bit different format video-wise for us. So let us know in the comments whether you like this or not. And if you haven't seen one of our traditional full before and after videos, go check it out. We'll see you on the next one. Go ahead. Like this video. You like this video, right? You like us, right? You like us. Some of y'all. Some of y'all like us. Some of you want us to just shut up, but that's fine. You can hit the like button too.