Real life reno': Making sacrifices

DWINDLING BUDGET: Downstairs is almost complete - but it hasn't left much in the bank for upstairs.

Carpet or wardrobes? Which could you live without?

As we head into the final stretches of the ground floor phase of the project (three bedrooms and one bathroom), it's looking increasingly likely that we're going to exhaust our original $100,000 budget without even getting started on the top floor.

The builder's warned us from the start that our budget wasn't enough, and we're beginning to realise just how short we were.

MOVING UP: And down. Finally having stairs has made life a lot easier for moving around the house.

The luxuries are long gone the skylight, new furniture and the indulgent curtains and now we're beginning to question which conventional parts of the home we can live without for a while.

A colleague of mine has, along with her husband and teenage sons, been living through a similar situation for the past few months since they had to stop their new-home build without a kitchen.

But rather than despair, they set up a table, where the main bench would go, stored their food in boxes instead of a pantry, have been cooking meals on BBQ, and generally loving their otherwise perfect home.

WALLS: When they go up, rooms start to take shape.

In the meantime, her husband has been constructing the kitchen himself out of solid pine in his spare time, complete with quality German draw runners, for a grand total of $1500.

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Real life reno': Making sacrifices