Willow Street Home Renovation Budget Breakdown: What We Actually Spent (and Made) Renovating Our Semi
If you've been following me on Instagram for a while, or you read my blog posts, you already know Willow Street was a labour of love. What you might not know is exactly what that love cost us, down to the last drywall screw. So today I'm pulling back the curtain and sharing our full home renovation budget breakdown, the good, the frustrating, and the "we'd never do that again" parts.
This isn't a highlight reel. It's the real numbers, the real timeline stress, and the real math on whether it was worth it in the end.
(A quick note before we dive in: this is one post in our Willow Street story. If you want the full purchase story, the before-and-afters, or our weekly progress updates, I've be linked those posts right here, so bookmark this one and check out the renovation before you take a peak at the costs)
Quick Takeaways
We purchased Willow Street for $407,500 with just 5% down, using a Purchase Plus Improvements Mortgage
Total renovation spend landed at roughly $43,500, plus another $8,500 in furniture and appliances
We sold almost exactly three years later for $498,000
Our biggest single expense wasn't the kitchen, it was electrical
Shopping second-hand saved us thousands, without making the house feel "secondhand"
How We Financed It: The Purchase Plus Improvements Mortgage
When we found Willow Street, it needed work. Mostly cosmetic work, or at least that's what we thought at the time. And like a lot of you, we didn't have a pile of cash sitting around to renovate a house before we'd even moved in. That's where a Purchase Plus Improvements Mortgage came in, and honestly, more people should know this option exists.
What Is a Purchase Plus Improvement Mortgage?
A Purchase Plus Improvements Mortgage lets you roll the cost of planned renovations into your home purchase, so instead of financing the reno separately through a credit line, it's baked into your mortgage at your mortgage rate. In our case, our mortgage was $435,000 on a $407,500 purchase, meaning the lender approved an extra $27,500 specifically for improvements. This option is more common than people realize, yet a large share of mortgage consumers have never heard of it.
The lender doesn't just hand you the money. You complete the work first, keep every receipt, and then submit it as a "draw" to be reimbursed. Depending on your lender, you can typically request multiple progress draws over several months as work is completed, as lenders explain it, rather than one lump sum at closing.
How the "Draw" Process Actually Worked for Us
This is the part I really want you to hear if you're considering this route. We were allowed up to three draws over six months, and each one came with an administrative fee, so we tried to minimize how many we did (we landed on two).
The frustrating part? You can only claim a draw for work that's fully finished. Our biggest expenses, electrical, kitchen cabinets, flooring, were sitting on my credit card and line of credit for weeks while those exact projects dragged on, which meant I couldn't submit the draw to get reimbursed until they were done. It became a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: the money was there, technically, but I couldn't touch it until the work it was tied to was complete.
My honest take: I still like the Purchase Plus Improvements concept. But you need to have a good chunk of that renovation cash available upfront, or realistically accessible on credit, because you will be floating those costs for longer than you'd expect.
Where Our Home Renovation Budget Really Went
Here's the breakdown, grouped from our full expense tracker so it's easier to see the big picture.
Category | Approximate Spend |
Kitchen (cabinets, install, counters, hood vent, faucet) | ~$8,300 |
Flooring (2,200 sq. ft.) | ~$8,275 |
Electrical | ~$7,040 |
Doors, trim, hardware & misc. | ~$6,920 |
Painting | ~$4,215 |
Bathrooms (vanities, mirrors, tile, taps) | ~$2,850 |
Plumbing | ~$2,775 |
Drywall, framing & insulation | ~$2,525 |
Windows | ~$615 |
Renovation Total | $43,512.09 |
Furniture, appliances & extras | ~$8,495.59 |
That furniture and appliance number is a good reminder that a renovation budget rarely stops at the walls. A sectional, a fridge and stove, patio furniture, a freezer, it all adds up fast, and it's not something the Purchase Plus Improvements Mortgage covers, so that money came straight out of pocket.
One honest caveat on that windows number: my husband works at a window factory and gets a 55% employee discount, which is why our windows line item looks so low. If you're budgeting your own renovation, plan for windows to cost significantly more than what you see reflected here.
Don't Forget the "After-Renovation" Budget
Here's something that doesn't get talked about enough: our furniture, appliances, and extras added up to roughly $8,500, which is close to 20% of our entire renovation spend on top of it. That's not a rounding error. That's a whole second budget most people don't plan for.
For us, that category included:
Appliances — fridge, stove, dishwasher, and a freezer, which alone made up more than half of this line
Furniture — a sectional for the new open-concept living space, plus patio furniture for the backyard
Organization & storage — toy storage, cabinet locks, and floating shelves
Outdoor extras — a deck box and umbrellas for the patio
Finishing touches & hardware — an island, a dining room light fixture, and other small fixtures that didn't fall under the main reno budget
None of this was covered by our Purchase Plus Improvements Mortgage, since that only applies to the renovation itself, so every dollar of it came straight out of pocket. If you're budgeting for your own project, I'd strongly encourage you to set aside a separate "after the reno" budget for exactly this kind of thing, rather than assuming your renovation total is your final number.
What Did We Actually Renovate for $43,500?
When I say we spent approximately $43,500 renovating Willow Street, I don't mean we painted a few rooms and swapped out some light fixtures. Over the course of the renovation, we touched almost every part of the house.
We opened up the main living space, installed a new kitchen, replaced flooring throughout approximately 2,200 square feet, updated the electrical, renovated the bathrooms, completed drywall and framing work in the basement to add another legal bedroom, replaced windows, updated trim and doors and painted throughout the house.
Some projects were purely cosmetic. Others like electrical, plumbing and dealing with the basement leak, were things you don't necessarily notice in an Instagram before-and-after, but they still took a significant chunk of the budget… and a lot of time.
An important note about these numbers: our renovation total reflects what we spent, not what the renovation would have cost at market labour rates. Gray and I completed a significant amount of the work ourselves, so if you're planning to hire contractors for most or all of your renovation, please don't use our $43,500 total as a direct budget comparison. Your number will likely be much higher, and that's normal.
Of course, the numbers only tell part of the story. Check out our Willow Street home renovation before and after to see everything we renovated and just how much this house changed from the day we got the keys to the day we sold it.
The Big Three Expenses: Electrical, Kitchen, Flooring
Electrical was our single largest line item, and I'm genuinely fine with that. It's not a skillset I have, and it's not somewhere I'm willing to cut corners. Wiring done properly is a safety issue, not just an aesthetic one.
The kitchen came in a close second, and it's still the decision I'd make every single time. From personal experience hearing what people love about our renovations, kitchen renovations tend to be the favourite and would likely see one of the strongest returns of any home improvement project, often recouping most or all of their cost at resale. I truly think that our open-concept kitchen ended up being one of the biggest selling features of the whole house. Followed closely by the master bedroom with ensuite and walk-in closet.
Flooring was our third major expense, and it's also where we found our biggest single savings win (more on that below).
How We Kept Costs Down Without Cutting Corners
If there's one thing I want you to take from this post, it's that you don't need an unlimited budget to make a house feel finished and beautiful. You need to be a little scrappy and willing to hunt for deals.
Shopping Second-Hand: Habitat ReStore & Facebook Marketplace
Habitat for Humanity ReStore and Facebook Marketplace were two of my absolute favourite resources during this renovation. ReStore locations typically sell donated building materials at a steep discount off retail price, and we used ours for things like:
Our kitchen sink
Shower doors and tile
Light fixtures
Vanities & countertops
Tools we needed
Between ReStore finds and Marketplace deals on light fixtures and our island, we saved a meaningful amount without anyone walking through the finished house guessing where things came from.
Looking for more behind-the-scenes on building a business and a life you actually love? Read more on the blog or get to know how it all started.
Where We Splurged vs. Where We Saved
Looking back at the full budget, a pattern shows up pretty clearly, and it's the philosophy I'd want you to take into your own renovation.
We splurged on: electrical and the kitchen, the two things that affect safety, function, and resale the most.
We saved on: our own DIY labour, ReStore and Marketplace finds, the employee-discount windows, and clearance flooring.
A budget-friendly renovation doesn't mean buying the cheapest version of everything. It means being strategic about where the money really matters, and being just as intentional about where it doesn't.
The Flooring Deal That Saved Us Thousands
This one still makes me smile. I called well over a dozen flooring stores looking for the best price in the style we wanted. One store was clearing out its remaining inventory, and we took the whole lot. That single decision saved us almost $1.50 per square foot. With the house sitting at 2,200 square feet (we put flooring everywhere). Savings of $1.50/sq ft over 2,200 sq ft translated to savings of $3,300 for us, that turned into serious savings on one of our biggest line items.
Savings of $1.50/sq ft over 2,200 sq ft translated to savings of $3,300 for us
The lesson: the extra hour of phone calls is almost always worth it on big-ticket items.
What We DIY'd to Keep Our Renovation Under $45,000
Here's the honest split, because "we renovated the whole house for $43,500" can be misleading without this part.
What Gray and I did ourselves:
Demo throughout the house
Drywall and framing
Flooring installation across all 2,200 square feet
Trim and door hardware
Assembling and installing vanities & countertops
Light fixture installation where we were comfortable doing it ourselves
What we paid professionals for:
Electrical, done by a licensed electrician, no question there
Plumbing, handled by a plumber we trust
Kitchen cabinets and countertops, fabricated and installed by a countertop company
Painting, including the ceilings, done by a professional painter
Tile work in the ensuite bathroom
That painting line deserves a bit more explanation, because it wasn't just a coat of paint. Our ceilings still had stucco on them, and I was worried the smoke smell in the house wouldn't fully lift unless it came off. Our painter actually talked us out of the expensive specialty smoke-blocking paint that would have let us skip that step, and offered to scrape the stucco himself for less than what that paint alone would have cost. So a good chunk of that painting line wasn't really about paint at all, it was labour for a job most homeowners wouldn't think to budget for, and in our case it was the smarter financial call even though it meant hiring it out.
Between the stucco removal and the actual painting, it's still the one line item I'd handle differently next time. Not because the work wasn't worth it, but because it's genuinely a job anyone with patience and the right tools can do themselves, stucco and all.
An important note about these numbers: our $43,512 renovation total reflects what we spent, not what it would have cost at full market labour rates. Gray and I did a significant portion of the physical work ourselves, so if you're planning to hire contractors for most or all of your renovation, please use our list above as a guide to what's included, not a direct dollar-for-dollar comparison to what your own project might cost.
What Didn't Go As Planned
Renovations rarely go exactly to script, and ours were no exception. We found a basement leak partway through that wasn't in the original plan, and it needed to be dealt with before anything else could move forward.
It's a good reminder to build a little breathing room into your budget for the things you can't predict, because something will come up.
Electrical came in over budget. We were originally quoted somewhere in the $4,000–$5,000 range, and it ended up at just over $7,000. The scope grew along the way, we added extra pot lights, and ran into complications getting the basement pot lights installed that required extra labour.
A basement leak wasn't in the original plan, and it needed to be dealt with before anything else could move forward.
The flooring didn't go smoothly the first time. We put down our flooring, realized it was the wrong colour, and had to tear part of it back out to replace it with the correct shade, which created waste we hadn't budgeted for.
Project delays affected our draw timing, which is what led to those extra interest charges I mentioned earlier.
If you're planning your first DIY renovation, my advice is to set aside 5–10% of your total renovation budget specifically for the unexpected. Something will come up. It's not a question of if, it's when.
Did We Actually Make Money on Willow Street?
Here's where I want to be really transparent, because "we made money on our house" can mean a few different things depending on how you do the math.
Purchase price: $407,500
Renovation investment: roughly $45,000
Combined cost: $452,500
Sale price: $498,000
Closing costs: $30,000
If you compare our sale price directly against what we put into the purchase and renovations, that's a gross difference of $45,500. But once you factor in the roughly $30,000 in closing costs on the sale, our actual breakeven point was $482,500, which puts our real, after-costs profit closer to $15,500.
Neither number is wrong. They're just answering slightly different questions, and I'd rather show you both than have you assume we walked away with a number that wasn't accurate.
This isn't meant to be a formal investment-return calculation. We lived in Willow Street as our family home for almost three years, so I'm not including normal homeownership expenses like mortgage interest, property taxes, utilities, or insurance in these numbers. I'm simply comparing what we paid for the house and renovation against what we ultimately sold it for, minus the major selling costs.
Worth mentioning too: because we'd been paying down the mortgage for three years, we walked away from closing with real cash in hand beyond just the "profit" on paper, some of which went straight toward paying off a car so we could close on our next mortgage. That's a fuller money story I'll save for a post about our current renovation.
Was Willow Street a Good Investment?
Yes, with an honest caveat. We purchased during a very competitive market, and looking back, we likely paid a bit more than we should have for the property itself. That softened our overall margin.
That said, the renovation choices we made, especially the kitchen and flooring, held their value and helped the house sell, and we walked away with a profit rather than a loss. If I'm being fully honest, I think there should have been a slightly wider margin, and that's a lesson I'm carrying into the next project.
What I'd Do Differently Next Time
I'd build a larger contingency into the renovation budget from day one, instead of absorbing surprises like the basement leak after the fact
I'd have the renovation cash more fully accessible before starting, rather than relying so heavily on credit while waiting on draws
I'd keep outsourcing electrical (no regrets there), but I'd DIY the painting again
I'd negotiate harder on the purchase price itself, since that's where our margin took the biggest hit
That last one is easier said than done. We were one of dozens of offers on Willow Street, so we didn't have the luxury of starting low and negotiating up. We had to come in with a confident number knowing we might be overshooting, or risk losing the house to someone else entirely. We did get the house, but there was no guarantee of that when we signed the offer.
Follow Our DIY Home Renovation From the Beginning
Want to see how this renovation unfolded week by week? Catch up on the full story below—from getting the keys and tackling smoke damage to kitchen surprises, flooring, trim work, and finally seeing the house start to feel like home.
Whether you're planning your own DIY home renovation or just love a good before-and-after story, there's plenty more renovation chaos, lessons learned, budget decisions, and progress to come.
UPDATE: Want to see how it all turned out? Years after we first introduced our little semi-detached fixer-upper, I finally pulled together the entire transformation. See our complete home renovation before and after →
Home Renovation Budget FAQs
How much did it cost to renovate our 2,200-square-foot house?
Approximately $43,512 for the renovation itself, plus about $8,496 for furniture, appliances, and other extras that came after the main work was done.
How much should you budget for unexpected renovation costs?
As a general rule, I'd recommend setting aside 5–10% of your total renovation budget for the unexpected, especially if it's your first DIY renovation. Between our basement leak, the electrical scope creep, and our flooring redo, that cushion would have made a real difference for our stress levels.
Can you include renovations in your mortgage in Canada?
Yes, through a Purchase Plus Improvements Mortgage, which lets you roll approved renovation costs into your mortgage rather than financing them separately. We used one for Willow Street, and it allowed us to add $27,500 onto our mortgage for improvements. Requirements, draw limits, and fees vary by lender, so it's worth asking your mortgage broker early in your house-hunting process if this is something you might want.
Is DIY renovating actually cheaper?
Often, yes, in terms of dollars spent. But it's not free. Our $43,500 renovation total doesn't include the value of the hundreds of hours Gray and I put in ourselves, and it doesn't account for the added stress of living through a long renovation timeline. DIY can absolutely save you money, but it's worth weighing that against your own time, energy, and tolerance for a longer project.
What was the most expensive part of our renovation?
Electrical, coming in at just over $7,000, ahead of even our kitchen renovation.
Did renovating our house increase its value?
It certainly seemed to help. We sold Willow Street for $498,000 against a combined purchase and renovation cost of $452,500, and buyers specifically pointed to the open-concept kitchen and the primary ensuite as standout features.
Where did we save the most money during the renovation?
Our flooring deal was our single biggest win, saving us roughly $3,300 by buying out a store's clearance inventory. Shopping second-hand through Habitat ReStore and Facebook Marketplace made a real dent in our budget too, especially for the finishing touches like light fixtures.
Final Thoughts
Willow Street taught us so much about budgeting for a renovation with your eyes open, not just your Pinterest board. The numbers weren't perfect, and the draw process tested my patience more than once, but shopping smart on materials and doing the work ourselves made a real difference in the end.
If you're mid-renovation right now or thinking about buying a fixer-upper of your own, I'd love for you to follow along on Instagram and YouTube for our current home renovation, happening in real time. And keep an eye out here on the blog. I'm planning to put together a full breakdown of our first home renovation too, the one that came before this house, and I'll link it right here once it's live.
Curious about anything I didn't cover, whether it's the mortgage process, the draws, or a specific line item? Drop it in the comments. I'm always happy to answer.
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