Home Interiors and some tips to save money

Home interiors is one of my hobby and i am always fascinated about it. I am regular reader of at least 2 most popular interior magazines in India. But one thing that really worries me is the high cost associated with interiors now days. People have started giving a lot of importance to home interior designing and they are ready to spend at least 10% – 20% of the total project cost. That works out any where between 3 lakhs to 6 Lakhs for interior alone. But it is not advisable to spend that huge money when you buy a home on Loan.

One of my neighbors recently spent around 6 Lakhs for interior designing for his 2000 sq ft apartment in Velachery. It was really looking marvelous and defiantly there is difference when you do it by your own design or hire a designer to do so. I had visited a couple of popular design offices in Chennai, SpacioDesigns being one of the them, but their cost is roughly around Rs 600 per sq ft.

So you have to shell out any where between Rs 1.25 Lakhs to 2 Lakhs for Kitchen alone.If you pay 2 Lakhs towards home repayment, you can save up to Rs 16 Lakhs in home interest. My point here is spend money wisely. I would strongly advise not go for design firms but rather do it by your self. It does take your time and energy but you would save a lot of money doing yourself.

Problems doing yourself
a) Need to find a good carpenter or contractor who does things on sq feet rate for labor alone rather than charge for the entire work.

When I was doing my house interiors, I got hold of a guy who was working with several architects in Chennai. I hope you understand that Architects just do the design everything else is done by these carpenters or contractors. I was really surprised when I checked the labor charges. It was just Rs 110 per sq ft. So even if you a do a big kitchen work with all those modern pullouts and fancy accessories the labor charges alone come to less than Rs 20000.

b)Other major expenses in any interior work the materials like Plywoods, Sun Mica, Fevicols, Knobs, Keels etc. Believe me the designers make a huge money in the materials. All designers usually buy Commercial quality plywood’s which usually cost around Rs 40 per sq ft.

They never use Termite resistant, Boiled Water Resistant Plywood’s (BWR) like Sharon or Century Ply (Rs 60- Rs 70). The life of BWR ply is more than that of commercial ply. I bought Commercial for all room work and Century Ply for kitchen and bathroom work where you expect water.

You have to undergo a one time pain of Buying these raw materials. Most of the
accessories for kitchen is available for cheap at parry’s corner whole sale shops. There is not much need to monitor the contractors as their job is associated with job completion and you can have an easy control on the inventories. If you can buy Inventory as and when needed then you save more.

The ideal cost for the entire house would come to around Rs 1.2 Lakhs compared to Rs 3 lakhs when you hire a design firm to do so. That’s a huge saving. Rest of money can be spent on buying home appliances or others.

If you are looking for a contractor to evaluate the cost of home interiors, let me know. I can give the contact person details who can do this for you. You just need to tell how the design should look and work out a labor rate alone. You can buy the materials and pay him weekly according to the job completion.

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