[Caged Great]

I agree, if you have the ability to do things yourself, do it.

For example when we renovated our backyard, we had quotes of up to $250 000 to do the landscaping, and that was without plants. The entire job only cost about $35 000 with us doing it instead.

The current project we're doing in finishing our basement. To go from completely bare walls to properly framed rooms, drywall, painting and all the other fun stuff has cost about $20 000, but our basement is larger than the one in the OP.

With tools, the ones where you only need them for say one small thing, just rent them. For example, when we were digging the fence post holes, we rented an auger for two afternoons, dug all the post holes and it only cost about $150 vs the actual cost of the auger which was a couple thousand.