SYNRGYdesign

Finding a good deal for the items you need during a home remodel can seem impossible.  You generally are in need of certain items within a certain time or you will hold up the progress of the home remodel.  It never fails that the items you need are generally not on sale so you end up having to pay full price for them only to find out a few weeks later that it is on sale.  Murphy’s law always wins whenever you are pressed to buy something and you need it right away.Most homeowners will generally have some time during the planning and design phase of their home remodel to find the items they need to purchase.  I’m talking more about fixtures and appliances.  You generally will pick these items out during the design phase so that the design and drawings can accommodate the fixtures and appliances.  But what do you do if you just buy a house and start remodeling it and you do not have the planning or design phase?We were faced with this when we recently bought an REO.  Our planning and design was basically done during our very short escrow period (21 days).  We most of our weekends (this was also right before christmas) looking at appliances and countless hours on the internet comparing products and trying to find out what is out there (I haven’t been appliance shopping in almost 7 years so there was a lot of things to get familiar with again).Did we find some good deals?  Everyone seems to ask us that I think because they know we are architects and they wonder if we have the inside track on getting stuff.  Yes, we can get some things at cost in terms of materials but those are really only for the specialty items and we have not really found anything that really beats just going to home depot or lowes in terms of building material supplies.   We probably could get some fixtures and appliances at cost but our budget is too tight even for some of the manufacturers that would be offering to sell us items at cost.But we did find good deals and it was mostly by luck and just plain persistence in trying to look for the best deal.  Anyone can do the same things we did we is just basically spend a lot of time researching the products and looking up the items on the Internet.  Luck has a lot to do with finding the great deals.  We just happened to be at the right place at the right time and because we knew a little about the appliances we were looking at we knew when there was a price mistake on certain things.For example our cooktop was a great deal because we were able to get it for $750 when it normally sells for $1700.  How did we do that?  We were actually already set on getting another cooktop that was selling for $750 but when we went on one of our endless trips to another appliance store we noticed they had this particular brad for sale at the same price as the one we were going to get.  We liked the look and new it was an expensive brand so we got it.  The store had made a price mistake in labeling it and changed the price the very next day (I went to look because we were unsure which model we got).  I just happened on a great deal on a kitchen faucet that normally sells for almost $1100.  There was a price mistake on the website of a major retailer that had it listed for $43.83.  I knew the brand and it looked like it was way more expensive then $45 so I just decided to get it and see if they would honor the price.  I was not even sure what I was getting except that I like the look of it because it was something that I had been spending literally weeks looking for.  I learned the faucet was $1100 after I had made the purchase as I went to the brand website to see what the specifications are.  The store did honor the price and we now have an $1100 faucet for $47 and change including tax.Those are two really good examples of finding great deals but only because we knew the brands and their approximate costs.  You do not have to be an architect to get these deals.  All you need is some time looking at the different models and manufacturers out there and really knowing what they are selling for before you actually start going to the store to look at them. 

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