Could Remodeling Your Home Save You Money?

About this time last year we were just finishing up our basement remodel. It was a year and a half project that was well worth it in the end. The main reason we purchased this house was due to the unfinished basement and we saw potential for it to be finished, which would add additional living space thus increase the value of our house. By the time September rolled around I was starting my cloth diaper business, which we didn't foresee happening when we started the project. Our main goal was to remodel enough to add value to our home, so we could refinance.

I remember when my husband was working on getting the trim planed so the carpet could be installed. He did it the good old fashion way, without any hearing protection. After a day's worth of planing, he noticed that he had a constant ringing in his ears. After a few days of it not going away he went to a hearing doctor to find out if he did any permanent damage to his ear drums. This got me thinking back to when my father in law got his first pair of hearing aids a few years ago, I never knew the cost of hearing aids until he told us how much he had to pay out of pocket even with insurance. My prayers were answered when we got his diagnosis as temporary Tinnitus, which thankfully only lasted about another week.

We are now using the entire basement that we remodeled for the business. We hold meetings at our house for clients to learn more about cloth diapers, so we have a large playroom set up for the little one's to play while the parents learn more about cloth. The first room, that has a door entry way, is the main office and sales floor and the back room, passed the playroom, is used as our warehouse room. Although the warehouse room is going to be temporarily used as a guest room while my family comes to visit for a week in October after the new baby arrives.

If we ever choose to sell our house in the future, we will be able to count the added space as living space and add two bedrooms to the original two, making it a four bedroom, two bath house. When I have looked into what the value of our house is now, with the additional space and rooms, we have added a about 60k to the value of our home, which is amazing! We might refinance in the future, which could save us a ton of money in the future. Since we would be able to get a lower interest rate and not have to pay a PMI fee each month, which could instead go towards the principle and have the mortgage paid off in a shorter period of time.

Have you ever remodeled any part of your house? What drove you to the decision to remodel?