Originally Posted by elkhornne

Just to add to Mia on the buying of building materials.

If you buy the materials from Lowes you can go to the Contractor Desk and submit all the items you'll need for the project. Lowes will submit the list to their corporate office and within 24 hours they will come back with a discount. Usually 15% to 20%off your total. Each item submitted has a different discount. As an example I received 22% off decking materials and 14% off a refrigerator, 16% off of flooring. It's all different discounts, but worth submitting to see what you can get. Anyone can do this and most aren't even aware Lowes offers this to customers. You can then decide if you want to purchase the items or not. I've done this numerous times and get points on my Am Ex card. Good luck.