Mid 30s, bought first home. Tips for being frugal

This was the big year, I thought I did all my research, but there were plenty of gotchas.Here’s some quick tips for things that I ran into–Buy a water meter wrench for cutting the water on/off at the street before you need it. They are all standard and cost ~$15 at home depot. Be sure any adult living in the house knows how to go cut the water off at the street.Change your own locks instead of using a locksmith or your home warranty. If you get lucky and have modern Kwikset locks, they can be rekeyed for $10 and done in ~30 seconds, otherwise, buy new locks– it’s the same price or cheaper than having a locksmith rekeyChange garage door code. If the garage door is the old pin switches, replace the unit with an opener that does rolling codes (made mid-90s and later).Buy standard sizes blinds, as much as possible, and install them yourself. Online custom blinds are ridiculously expensive. Local company quoted me $2.8k for blinds + install. Got nicer blinds at home depot and installed them myself for ~$1kPay for movers and get them to move as much as possible (means days of prep packing). Worth every penny.If you have a gas furnace for heat, know where and how to use the on/off valve (or valves for multiple units).Attempt your own plumbing before using home warranty or calling a plumber. Old valves that are turned off/on very rarely might need the stop screw tightened if they leak (washer, water line for fridge). For other leaks take off the water lines or drain pipes and reseal the threads with plumbers tape.If a shower doesn’t get hot enough, youtube search “adjust shower mixing valve”– takes 5 minutes and you feel like a superstar handyman when you have piping hot water in your shower that use to barely get warm.​Post RIP inbox to include other stuff-Bought a 18v impact driver and a drill bit set that made the blinds install 10x easier. Christmas 50% off purchase.Fished HDMI / power and optic in the wall for most of the TVs. Fireplace TV is last one to do, and I’ll have to drill horizontally through 2 studs, and do a big drywall patching job, which makes me nervous.Installed the nest smoke alarms, smart garage door openers, ecobee thermo stats, august smart lock, and 20+ hue bulbs (mostly the $10/bulb white dimmable that were on Christmas sale). Setup homebridge on my local DNS server to bridge all accessories into homekit that were not home kit compatible. Shoutout to /r/homebridgeGot the home network closet wired on a big 900watt battery backup. Cut off the circuit at the breaker and servers, switches, modem, APs and all lasted ~50 minutes.​Reading a lot of amazing advice, thanks everyone! via /r/personalfinance http://bit.ly/2TaIc5e