Bettsie Stapleton and Josh Norton make the perfect couple — for the first in a new series of Home & Garden articles called "I Did It Myself" in which H&G will explore a project accomplished by homeowners with little more than imagination, determination and elbow grease. We hope these stories will inspire and help others do the same sorts of things to improve their homes as they learn new skills.

Photos by Becky Stein / Special (ENLARGE)

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Bettsie and Josh (above) bought their starter home for $86,000 and have spent the past several months renovating it. One of the first things they did was take dozens of pine trees out of the yard. Landscaping is next on the agenda.

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Josh fell through the floor of the hall bathroom when he first stepped into it. With newfound tiling skills, he and Bettsie transformed it into a sleek modern guest bath -- after reinforcing the floor.

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Before photo of master bath

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After finding the materials on Craig's List, Josh Norton transformed the master bathroom with a custom shower and floor using the same tiles for both. He had to saw the old tub enclosure in quarters to get it through the door.

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Before photo of kitchen

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The old kitchen had dark wood cabinets and a worn-out vinyl floor. Bettsie and Josh replaced the floor with tile and the cabinets with new maple ones bought during a closeout sale at a Home Depot. The countertops are granite, and the sink is stainless steel. 'I love my new countertops and sink,' said Bettsie. 'It's the touches like that that make a home.'

When Bettsie Stapleton and Josh Norton went to their minister for premarital counseling, he asked them all the usual questions. But when he found out they had just renovated an entire house together, he said, "Oh, well, then you really know each other," Bettsie recalled.

Indeed they do.

When they marry in December, Bettsie will know Josh is the one who can execute a plan, create a spreadsheet, make a timeline, keep to a budget and find the best deals in town on everything from bathroom tiles to kitchen sinks. Josh knows Bettsie can work right beside him painting a room and laying tile. She can create designs, pick the best color combinations and run quality control on the whole project, and plan a wedding, all at the same time.

And the two of them know they can do just about anything together, including finishing degrees — he a bachelor's in polymer textile and fiber engineering and she a master's in public policy and economic development, both at Georgia Tech — at the same time they were renovating their home and starting new jobs last spring.

Read on to find out how Bettsie and Josh did it:

FIRST STEPS

The young couple bought a starter home near Marietta for $86,000 with an eye toward sweat equity. It was a wreck, both said. Leaky roof. Nasty stained carpet. Holes in the walls. Josh fell through the bathroom floor the first time he stepped on it. But they saw the potential.

"First we walked through the house and looked at every room and talked about how we wanted it to look," said Josh, whose prior experience in home renovation includes helping his brother build his house from scratch. "That way, we had a plan, so when I came across a good deal on something I knew we would need, I could pick it up and know we would use it."

Plan, plan, plan, says Josh. He created a spreadsheet of materials needed, where they were bought and how much they cost and a calendar with a timeline for each task marked on it. He color-coded them both so that entries were one color if planned, another if the materials were bought and a third if they were accomplished.

Plan in hand, he was able to pick up materials at great prices. He estimates he saved at least $15,000 by buying tiles and appliances off Craig's List, more than $5,000 worth of building materials at the Buckhead Home Depot closeout sale and all the home's new doorknobs at the Habitat for Humanity outlet store.

THE BUDGET

Josh has cataloged "every dime we spent" in hundreds of trips to Home Depot and other suppliers. He estimated the job would cost about $23,450. It looks like the whole project will come in right at $25,000, he said, pulling out the laptop computer with the spreadsheet and a pile of receipts. "It would have been $40,000 if I hadn't been able to get deals on the materials."

WHEN TO CALL THE PROS

Knowing when to call in the professionals is an important part of any do-it-yourself job. Josh recommends doing it when it would take so much time to learn the new skill you can't meet your deadline. Other considerations would be special tools needed for the job, or safety. He decided three things could be done by the pros: the new roof, the heating and air conditioning system and laying the carpet. Even so, he acted as his own contractor on the roof, finding all the materials at good prices and hiring a roofing crew. He did the same thing with the carpet, just hiring an expert to lay down the flooring. He said he saved $2,600 on the roof and several hundred on the carpet by making the arrangements himself.

BECOMING AN EXPERT

But there were things on which Josh was willing to go deep. After getting estimates from professional tile installers for his home's two bathrooms — and suffering sticker shock — he bought a how-to book and set out to do the baths himself.

"Start with a good foundation," is his first piece of advice, arrived at after he fell through the floor of the hall bath when he first walked in. He had to remove everything from the room, put in a new reinforced floor and install "green board" where the tile would go. Green board is a water-resistant hardboard made of cement. It can be installed much like wallboard or Sheetrock. He also used Red Guard (a paint-on waterproofing membrane) behind the tile before he put on the adhesive.

Because he was doing two bathrooms, one of which would use larger, thicker tiles, Josh bought a tile saw (they also can be rented). A much less expensive tile cutter will work fine on 4-inch ceramic wall tiles but won't on larger, thicker pieces like the ones Josh used in the master bath.

He got the tiles for the hall bath at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore (www.atlanta

-habitat.org/restore.asp), where he also got all the doorknobs for the house. The 12-by-12-inch tiles for the master bath were bought from a tile installer advertising on Craig's List.

In the master bath, Josh said he had to use his Sawzall to cut the one-piece fiberglass tub unit into quarters to get it out the door before he could start on the custom shower he's now installed there.

WHAT NOW?

Here and there, there's a piece of molding missing, a little painting left to do. And the yard is still a mess, even after the couple took out more than 60 pine trees to open up some sunshine. (Of course, Josh already has fencing material and is just waiting for a chance to install it.)

But the house is close to ready for Josh and Bettsie's new life.

Bettsie says she's ready to put the finishing touches on plans for the wedding Dec. 30 in Baton Rouge, La., where she's from.

So which is easier, planning a wedding or renovating a house?

"Give me a wedding to plan any day," she said, laughing. "It's much easier to decide which version of 'Ave Maria' to play than to figure out how to redo the kitchen. I much prefer the wedding because most of the work, I can contract out."

JOSH'S TIPS

Do your homework and make a plan. Don't get in a rush to do it all now. If you take a little more time to think it through, you will save a lot of money and headaches later.

Talk to people who really know what they are doing. Josh and Bettsie's across-the-street neighbor is a manager at a Home Depot store, and he helped them almost daily, not only with labor but with good advice and tips on how to get good deals on supplies.

Remember that the cheapest way is not always the best way. People say, "I want to get the best price," but sometimes paying a little more upfront to get something that lasts or to get something done right works better.

Put a value on your own time and decide what you want to spend your time on. It's not all about upfront costs. Call in the pros to do things it would take you too long to learn to do. Josh called in professional roofers because he had a time frame to meet and couldn't get skilled enough in the time he had to install his own roof. Same with heating and air conditioning.

Make the time to do the work. Josh and his dad often spent the night on cots in the torn-up house so they could work until late in the evening and get up and start again in the morning. That was the only way they could get the work done between when Josh finished school and the moving-in date.