Some waste management companies do not permit you to put construction waste in the regular trash (check with them if you have small amounts that you think will fit), but you may be able to rely on a bulk trash day or some junk removal company, if you’d like. Another thing most people don’t even think about is when you buy new stuff. Buying those shiny new things come with packaging, which may include Styrofoam, cardboard, shipping peanuts, plastic, wood and nails that will also need to be discarded. The boxes that your tiles or wood planks come in, the boxes for furniture, cabinetry and even the pallets of the material you order – it all adds up and has to go somewhere and unless you have ample space in your yard to store it till you’re ready to take it to the dump, you’ll need to figure out how to get rid of it. When my husband and I did our second kitchen remodel, we didn’t fill up just one30-yard dumpster, but we filled up two and at a cost of over $500 each rental, it was NOT cheap. We lived in a neighborhood HOA, which did not permit junk to be stored anywhere within sight, and the dumpster could not be in our yard longer than a couple of weeks without fine. What did we remove during that project to fill up two 30-yard dumpsters? We replaced all of the tile flooring with hardwood, removed all of the kitchen cabinets and countertops, and we widened the opening of the entrance to the kitchen, thus removing studs, drywall, baseboards and some insulation. Thinking about it I didn’t think we’d need but one, but that filled quickly and we found our budget was off by 100% for the demo, so bank on it being more than you anticipate. My rule of thumb, if you guess you’ll need one dumpster plan on two. You can always recoup the budget, but it’s harder to come up with budget you didn’t anticipate.
