Couple’s thrifty kitchen reno saves $15k

When Lissa Schindler and her husband Troy settled on their property a week before Australia went into lockdown, they thought they had made a terrible mistake.

They had lined up several tradespeople to come through the home and suddenly all their plans were in limbo.

It was quite a nervous wait, we thought we had made a really bad decision at the time,” says the mum-of-two, speaking to news.com.au. “We had gotten trades through prior to buying the house, and then we had to cancel them.”

“It’s taken a bit longer than it would have, we had to shut down the site and get trades back.”

Just over a year later, they’ve nearly finished the renovation.

Buying in the west Brisbane suburb of Oxley, the couple was initially attracted by the house price, which Ms Bar says was “really cheap” for the area.

“Sometimes you see a house and you immediately have a vision of what it’s going to be and other times and you’re attracted to it because it was really cheap. We were the latter.”

Now onto their fourth renovation, Mr and Ms Schindler’s specialty is transforming a home on a tight budget. Documenting their overhauls on their Instagram page @the_thrifty_renovator, they keep costs down by sourcing second-hand appliances and furniture from Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace, DIY jobs, purchasing direct from factories and buying pieces at clearance sales.

By doing this, they were able to build their current kitchen from scratch for only $4200 – a job that Ms Schindler estimates could have easily cost them $20,000.

“We’ve got stone benchtops, two pack cabinets, and the oven which we got from Gumtree was only $380 but would have cost $1500 full-price,” she says.

“The kitchen itself was $2500 and that was a cabinet, tap, dishwasher and stone bench and we got that from someone who was pulling it out of their house. So it was second hand but it was amazing.”

RELATED: Couple’s 11-week reno transforms 80s brick home

Similarly, despite not being able to afford a marble slab splash back, they compromised and purchased a set of marble veneer tiles for just $100 on Gumtree. Their bathroom tiles were also bought second-hand.

“We got them for $200 because someone changed their mind and they couldn’t return them,” adds Ms Schindler.

“It can be lot of effort looking and trying to find that but we save a lot of money.”

While Ms Schindler is proof you can do a “renovation on a tight-budget,” the mum-of-two says you do need to be “quite savvy” and flexible when it comes to on-trend design features and fit.

“When you’re doing second-hand kitchens, you’re never probably going to get the most-perfect fit, so you might need to add in an extra piece of stone, or get extra fitting work done,” she says.

“Our stone bench was too big for the space but we took out a cabinet and got a stone mason to cut the stone to fit. We then used the spare cabinet to create a European laundry.

“We try and use everything that we get so there’s no waste.”

When it comes to other small and affordable changes which make a big difference, paint is another “pretty affordable way to transform a house”.

“My tip is to get lots of quotes from people because you can get a wide range of quotes that can range from thousands of dollars and to just get references from them and check on what they’ve done,” she says.

Both hobby renovators with full-time jobs – Ms Schindler is a marine ecologist and Mr Schindler works as a graphic designer – they admit they’ve come a long way from the renovation of their first home.

“We love renovating and really love a before and after. That’s what really drives us,” she says.

“It’s now become more of a challenge to see how cheap we can do it, whereas when we started out it was because we couldn’t afford more than that.”