There’s no shortage of ways to save money at Lowe’s.Deals of the day, appliance deals, scratch sales, atomized paint discounts, clearance sales, Black Friday and half a dozen other annual sales, military discounts, dubiously cheap installation services…even discounts you get on subscription recurring purchases — — the list goes on and on.
These are all good, but certainly nothing to brag about at a party.No, to really wow the people who show up to the block party on their lawnmowers, you have to hack the system somehow.No, don’t hack it like Crash Override and Acid Burn mocked the Secret Service in Hackers.More on life hacks.Some of our tips are off-label, unapproved tactics; some are officially endorsed by Lowe’s but hated by Lowe’s staff; and some are new take on common shopping tips and tricks.
You’ve probably encountered scratched appliances at Lowe’s; most get lost in open fridge boxes, dripping and unboxed water heaters, and dishwashers with suspicious casserole smells.Discounting items that are in disrepair isn’t uncommon, but it’s becoming rarer as stores return or write off damaged items.But you can still buy some imperfections at Lowe’s by looking for recycling bags.According to Collin of shopping blog Hip2Save, the bags are usually clear plastic bags that companies put in when the original bag cracks, and mortar, mulch or topsoil spills over the floor.
You can save 10% on items in a recycling bag, no matter how much spilled, but you can also save up to 50%.Some stores go further, selling recycled spills for a dollar, or combining them into pallets and selling them for almost nothing.Lowe’s doesn’t advertise a policy on discounts on items in recycling bags, but you can glean some details from posts and reviews on sites like Tomtoville.But in the end these treatments seem to be entirely up to the store, so your mileage may vary.
If you happen to need 700 joist hangers or 1200 pounds of sand, it’s always a good idea to buy in bulk, like in Lowe’s brilliantly named Lowe’s Buy In Bulk program.But that’s not what we’re talking about here.No, we’re talking about the fun and economy of buying big items and keeping them separate instead of buying a bunch of little things.Case in point: If you’re in the market for a half-inch threaded rod (don’t we all?), you can pay up to $2.68 per foot for 1, 2, and 3 foot lengths.But the electrical department has a strut section where you’ll find 10-foot poles for $16.98, or $1.70 per foot.Beware: this doesn’t always work.A 10′⅜” pole is actually more expensive per foot than 2′ and 6′ long.
Savings of this size can be found everywhere at Lowe’s: You can get a 2-foot PVC pipe for $13.15, or a 10-foot pipe for $21.91.The same applies to short boards, quarter plywood.Of course, if all you need is a two-foot piece of 2″ 40 PVC material, you can save $9 by picking up the short tube.This strategy depends on how often you start needing larger numbers.
You probably know Lowe’s worst lumber for cheap in the logging department, and you probably know they’ll cut expensive lumber for you.But did you know that you can buy someone else’s expensive lumber for very little or nothing when someone leaves a scrap?As with Home Depot, this is apparently what happens when a Lowe’s customer buys lumber for the first and last time, or when someone has so much money they don’t bother to keep half a sheet of lumber.As Ais​​le of Shame points out, plywood is about $60.Depending on who you ask, someone else’s trash can turn into yours…especially when wood is so expensive.
However, this may not be your best option in terms of efficiency.Once you befriend the supervisor on site (via crafting by Hunts), you can usually get it from various free lumbers scrapped at construction sites.These will include cutoffs, but also boards that are completely unusable (for their purposes), and sometimes they just buy too many boards.
You’ll occasionally see reports that you can get free plants from Lowe’s because some stores put their write-off plants (probably past sell-by annuals) in the bin for people to haul away.This seems to be against Lowe’s company policy, even if you get permission, and it’s dangerously close to the illegal practice of “propllifting,” in which people multiply some discarded plant material into new plants.
What you often have access to are plastic potted plants, and the pallets they are shipped in.These are great for breeding, and Lowe’s has a recycling program that keeps them out of landfills.In fact, they will take pots from plants purchased elsewhere.These pots and trays are usually available for free at Lowe’s and Home Depot (via Mavis Butterfield and Brie at TerraForums).In some stores, these products are highly competitive, so check early and often.
According to the LBM Journal, even before the pandemic shortages, lumber quality had declined, so understanding how to pick a good plank from Lowe’s lumber pile is more urgent than ever.Buying wood that is bent, bent, kinked, cupped, twisted, latticed or cracked creates more waste that increases your costs.By understanding how to choose wood in the store, you can eliminate a lot of warping risks.
You can of course research wood grades using resources like Thomas Publishing’s excellent primer, but grades won’t necessarily tell you warping, all you really need to do is look at the boards, Brett McKay of The Arts advises Manly.First, inspect the plank for cracks (cracks only appear halfway through the plank), splits (cracks all the way through the plank), wobble (separation along the growth rings), and unstable knots that may fall off.Consult the picture above and look down (or “line of sight”) down the length of the board to check for any of these issues.Lastly, check for telomeres and discard any planks where you can see full circular growth rings, as avoiding pith/heartwood is a good way to avoid future warping (via Growit BuildIt blog).
A surefire way to save money is the time-honored practice of substituting items you “need” with something cheaper or more readily available.When it comes to tools, you can realize instant and substantial savings by using cheaper but powerful alternatives, rather than buying expensive specialized tools to use once and store forever.You can always make replacements at home or in the workshop at any time, such as the (sometimes silly) tool replacement suggested by Sparetoolz, but look for replacements in both Lowe’s contracts and improve the options available to you.
Consider the sudden and inevitable need to create a circular hole in a piece of wood.Lowe’s offers many good ways to do this (spade drills, forstner bits, and hole saws), and maybe some bad ones (such as carbide burrs).These have their own uses: shovels and augers (spiral or helical bits for large, messy holes that can go through or partially through a board); Foster bits for flat-bottomed neat holes; and hole saws, which Can only be cut on one board (via Empire Abrasives).Let’s say you need a 1″ hole through a 2×4 board.Browse through these three drilling options from Lowe, and spade bits are nearly half the price of the most expensive options—good to know if you’re looking to save money.
Strictly speaking, there are more types of tape and fasteners in a hardware store than there are stars in the Milky Way, which may not be entirely true, but since our brains can’t fully understand it, it may be fair to say.Sometimes you’re stuck looking for a specific, very specific item, such as a stainless steel ¾” reverse thread ¼-28 socket head cap bolt.(Good luck!) But in many cases, alternatives will work just fine, and often save you money in the process.(Remember, when looking for replacements, nuts, bolts, and any other metals they come into contact with should generally be matched to avoid galvanic corrosion, APP Manufacturing recommends.
One thing you’ll find yourself doing over and over in the DIY world is unrolling, winding, and storing extension cords.Unless you like and use the chainring method for storing your rope (via the Wirecutter), you may end up with a coil and strongly need a strap around it.Velcro can be used for this task; Lowe’s sells three packs of 12″ for $3.98.But try some blue painter’s tapes that you probably already have.It’s fairly sturdy, doesn’t leave adhesive residue, and you get 720 times the (60″) length to wrap more than three cords at a time.The substitutions are endless; check out any of the Tips and Tricks Youtube video for more advice.
When we think of alternative materials, we usually think of cooking.Home improvement items are not always replaceable.This is usually a safety issue and therefore usually a building code issue.Options like “thin line” or “DWV pipe instead of 40″ are not options, they are creating disaster.But some alternatives (quantity and quality) are acceptable.In the 1970s, a framing method using less wood was developed (originally called “best value engineering”, later changed to “premium framing” by some sane marketers), allowing a 24″ center frame for load- Load-bearing walls and other walls use smaller boards, according to the USDA Forest Products Laboratory.You can use a similar approach (for example, using 2×3 instead of 2×4) to reduce the cost of many projects.
It’s not just about wood.For example, Lowe’s sells iron pipe as a trim material (it’s basically a replacement for furniture), but a 10-foot pipe costs $45.92, and for projects that don’t rely on much, you might consider painted PVC or wire pipe strength.
If anyone knows the power of substitution, it’s the DIY community.Here is an example.Back in the original .com boom, whiteboards were a must to cover company walls.You never know when a big plan that requires a 200-square-foot diagram will come along.Small businesses quickly found that the expense was unreasonable on their paltry $200 million market cap, so some geniuses discovered that shower panels could make ostensibly similar and much cheaper whiteboards, as long as you didn’t worry about things like “durability.” ” and “Erase”.Of course, this still works today, even if you don’t paint every square inch with them, as Fairy Dust Teaching shows.
Other ideas include painting a wall instead of investing in a projector screen (via Projector Central), or making a DIY green screen so you can show your family vacationing on the moon.Sometimes a substitute is perfect, such as using 100% silicone caulk in place of a recipe specifically for making molds (via Instructables).
Depending on which particular backwaters of Pinterest you accidentally dabble in, you can easily find an entire industry obsessed with saving money by making things yourself, often bought from big box home improvement stores.According to Chalk & Apples and Fstoppers, photographers, videographers and teachers are known for DIY savings in cultures that don’t properly value education or make Minecraft videos for YouTube, so there are plenty of possibilities out there.For example, check out this very thorough discussion that concludes that PTFE thread sealing tape is an excellent (and cheap!) white balance reference for photographers (via FastRawViewer).Or try this backdrop, which creatively uses the very humble toilet plunger (via DIY photography).
When it comes to majors, musicians are often broke, sometimes just “professional” because they’ll spend money on just about anything, and they also have a healthy, alternative-rich DIY culture, like some Lowe’s.If your vocal talent is tired of being dragged into the closet like your 10th-grade boyfriend when mom gets home early, macProVideo suggests some other alternatives to expensive vocal isolation rooms, like wrapping them in packing blankets.You can soundproof an entire room with rock wool insulation.
Meanwhile, artists can get the supplies they need while staying away from the litter box with tips from magazines like Artspace Magazine, such as how to make cheap painter’s canvas from canvas.
DIY alternatives peaked in tool rental practice and are now available at many Lowe’s locations.Tool rental is the process by which you start an unfamiliar project and rent rather than buy some of the expensive tools it needs.Plan carefully.Renting common tools can be difficult, so you need to schedule your projects when you can rent the tools you need.You’ll also want to make sure that any tool you’re renting works, and if you haven’t used it before, you’ll need to learn how to use it safely.Still, expect savings of up to 2% compared to buying the tool outright.
According to O’Reilly Auto Parts, for some tools, you can also consider your local auto parts store, which often has free tool borrowers (with a large deposit).Most of these tools are specific to automatic repairs, but some (such as vacuum pumps) are also suitable for home improvement situations.
For fans who go to Lowe’s with no idea what price they’re going to pay, the store offers an almost imaginary price-matching program that ostensibly gives you the lowest price you’ll find among the competition.Most price matching requires matching product numbers, which can be the problem.Large retailers sometimes require different models of the same product to avoid price-match commitments, Cheapism said.By the time all of the listed exclusions are checked, it’s nearly impossible to meet a price match requirement, so you’ll often have to rely on the goodwill of the cashier or customer service staff, who usually have the authority to make these decisions.Here are some ways to find the best price matches, and how to make them work.
Cheapism recommends that you bring proof of price matching, such as a sales flyer or a webpage on your phone.You can also use services like PriceCase to track individual product prices from your competitors and receive alerts when significant changes occur.BrickSeek will find all local prices for a specific product and show you the lowest current price in stores that may qualify for Lowe’s Price Match.
If you have a green thumb and can’t kill your plants yourself, Lowe’s is happy to do it for you and will give you a 50-90% discount to start!LowesEmployees.com says clearing plants is often just a lack of watering, and anyone with even a medium green thumb should be able to get them back to health.Of course, don’t buy anything that looks dead.Clearance plant stands are available between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Clearance plants are usually non-refundable, so if you’re eager for a full refund, you’ll have to kill the plants yourself.The good news, according to Lowe’s, is that Lowe’s offers a 12-month return policy for trees, shrubs and other perennials.If you kill it within a year, they’ll take it back without asking any questions.Other plant purchases include a 90-day return policy.The company emphasizes that you must bring your receipt.
Payback is a big deal, and not just in garden centers, so while this tip won’t completely save you money, it will leave you with more money in your pocket at the end of the project.The secret?Just shop at Lowe’s.One of the appeals of big box stores compared to stores like electricians and plumber suppliers is that the latter often don’t, or at least happily, return returns without charging a restocking fee.For example, among major trade suppliers, Ferguson charges a restocking fee for returns.Quality Plumbing Supply will accept returns within 30 days, but you must have a Return Material Authorization (RMA); 15% restocking fee after 15 days, 25% restocking fee if you don’t have an RMA, and the site lists some major exclusions.With a receipt or proper payment method in hand, Lowe’s will accept returns without any hassle.
Bonus: If you feel you need to be watched more closely at Lowe’s itself, consider trying to get their markdown report from one of the employees.This legendary, possibly mythical document lists all the items for sale in the store, and even knowing it could cause the man in the blue vest to immediately start radioing the manager.But if you’re successful, the markdown report should be an invaluable time saver (via LowesEmployees).