Six Simple Home Improvement Tips (Without Renovating )

Simple Home Improvement Tips To Keep In Mind

Your home is your castle and you want to ensure it looks as good as possible. Unfortunately, time leads to wear and tear that can leave your property looking a little drab. Times and trends change too. If you’re not keeping up, the house starts to look a little old.

Many people remedy this with renovations. Unfortunately, these don’t come cheap. You’ll usually spend tens of thousands of dollars to get our home looking like new again.

Many people just don’t have the budget.

The good news is that there’s still plenty that you can do to give your home a refresh without renovating. If you’re willing to put a little work in, there are plenty of improvements that you can make.

All that you need to know now is where to start. Here are six simple home improvements that help your home look amazing without breaking the bank.

Improvement #1 – A New Coat of Paint

It doesn’t matter what room of the house you’re working on. A new coat of paint will always breathe new life into the room.

There’s a good reason for this. As time goes on, paint starts to lose its lustre. Those once glorious colours dull and the room loses the sparkle that made it so attractive way back when. Paint also ages in other ways. It may start to peel in places, especially when exposed to water or the elements. Little chips and scrapes can also leave a room looking less than its best.

Happily, the simple solution is to go and buy yourself a few pots of paint and give the room a refresh. In exchange for an afternoon’s work, you get a room that has a new lease of life for less than $100.

There are a few things that you need to keep in mind to paint properly though. Slathering a ton of paint onto a wall isn’t going to do the job. Here are a couple of quick tips to help you along:

• Clear the room of all furniture. You don’t want a few errant drops of paint to stain your sofa.
• Protect the carpets. Spreading some newspaper can do the job. However, you’ll ideally have a drop sheet handy.
• Pay particular attention to corners and other tight spots. It helps to have paint brushes of various sizes for this.
• Always make sure you tap excess paint off your brush. You’re looking for a smooth finish but excess paint can leave unsightly lumps.
• Roll the wall after giving it a coat of paint. This involves taking an unloaded roller and gently rolling it down the wall immediately after painting it. This gets rid of those unsightly brush marks.

Keep those tips in mind and you’ll end up with a bright and fresh new feeling in the room.

One final tip. Go for light colours in rooms that let in a lot of natural light. This makes the room feel larger than it really is.

Improvement #2 – Spruce Up the Entryway

This is a particularly important improvement for those looking to sell their home. First impressions count and you want your home to look as good on the outside as it does inside. Of course, those who just want to make some improvements benefit too. A nice entryway gives you a lift both when you enter and leave the house.

The extent of the work that you can do here depends on the size of the entryway. However, here are a few things that can help.

• Paint comes to the rescue again as you can give the front door and window sills a fresh coat of paint.
• Install some lighting around the entranceway. A lantern hanging from an awning could work here. Or, you could install some lights along the pathway that leads up to your home’s entrance.
• Place a welcome mat in front of the door.
• Add a few potted plants around the entrance. The plants you choose depend on the colours at the front of the house.
• Consider adding some outdoor furniture to the area. You’ll need some space for this, so this is a good tip for those with a front patio. A rustic bench or some nice chairs can spruce things up.

You can easily buy most of the stuff you need for this for a few hundred dollars. The furniture will cost a little more, but it’s still far less than a renovation.

Improvement #3 – Replace the Taps and the Cupboard Doors

The kitchen and bathroom are usually the two target rooms for renovations. However, replacing either will cost an enormous amount of money. Plus, you may have to pay extra for reconfiguring the waterworks if you’re going for a full design change.

Thankfully, there are a couple of things that you can do to improve these spaces without spending a lot of money.

Your sink should be the first point of focus. Switching the tap heads for newer models can have a surprisingly powerful effect on the space. You also shouldn’t have to do anything with the waterworks. You may still need a plumber to help with installation, but it’s not a big job.

Then we come to the cupboards. The constant opening and closing of cupboard doors can lead to wear and tear. Thankfully, the hinges tend to be a little hardier than the doors themselves. Consider switching out your old cupboard doors for some new ones. You can instantly make the kitchen look more modern without having to renovate.

Alternatively, paint can come to the rescue again. A fresh coat of paint on the doors can make the kitchen seem brighter and more modern. If you have natural-looking cupboard doors, you may also consider using a sander to smooth out some rough edges.

Improvement #4 – Repurpose the Stuff That You Don’t Need Anymore

Clutter is the bane of every homeowner. It’s also something that seems to naturally build as time goes on. So many of us have the urge to keep things that we no longer use. Even if they’re just taking up space in a storage closet, you still can’t bring yourself to throw them away.

This improvement lets you take advantage of that clutter while also freeing up some space in the house.

First, gather everything that you’ve kept even though you don’t really have a use for any of them. Then, think of ways that you might be able to repurpose them.

Here are some examples:

• Use old silverware to create some custom wind chimes.
• Turn old wicker baskets into pots for your plants.
• Turn an old colander into a hanging plant basket.
• Make flower vases or candle holders out of old wine bottles.

There’s so much potential in the junk lying around your house. Best of all, you don’t have to spend money on anything because you already own the stuff.

Repurposing old items also adds a personal element to your home. You’ll enjoy the space so much more just because you know that it contains something that you made yourself.

Improvement #5 – Install a Bathroom Vent

A vent doesn’t sound like the most attractive home improvement in the world. However, it’s not the vent itself that’ll improve how the room looks. It’s the effect that it has on the room.

Moisture is a given in any bathroom. As soon as you take a shower, you leave behind a mist of moisture that finds its way onto everything.

The problem with this is that it creates the warm and wet conditions that mould absolutely adores. If you’re not doing enough to ventilate the room, it’s likely that mould will develop in little corners and crevices.

On top of that, you get the stale odours that seem to come from moist rooms.

A bathroom vent solves that problem. The vent gets rid of much of the moist air, which means it has less of an effect on the rest of the room. The corners and crevices look cleaner, which means that the bathroom looks nicer.

Consider this a useful maintenance tip as much as it’s a home improvement tip.

Improvement #6 – Redo the Flooring

There’s probably no part of the house that undergoes more wear and tear than the flooring. After all, you use it every day. And if you have kids or pets, you constantly have little feet and paws scraping away at the floor.

That can cause all sorts of problems. Carpet wears away and becomes threadbare. Hardwood floors end up with scrapes that you can’t get rid of. These signs of wear and tear can have a huge effect on how a room looks.

Replacing the flooring is an easy way to spruce up a room without blowing money on a renovation.

This could be as simple as laying a plump new carpet. Gone will be the threadbare old carpet and in its place something that looks fresh and new.

Alternatively, give the existing carpet a deep steam clean. You’ll lift all of the grime and muck that’s collected over the years. Much like with a new paint job on the walls, a steam clean can leave a carpet looking years younger. Do the same to all of the other thick fabrics in the room and you’ve made a huge improvement.

Hard floors present a bit more of a challenge and generally cost a little more to replace. You could consider using sheet vinyl to give the impression of a wooden or tiled floor without actually installing one. Of course, sheet vinyl isn’t as sturdy as tile or wood. However, it’s much cheaper and easier to replace. Plus, it’s improved in quality quite a lot since it was first introduced. You’ll find sheet vinyl with all sorts of patterns so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find something that suits your tastes.

The Final Word

As you can see, you don’t have to refinance to give your house a fresh look. Some ingenuity coupled with a bit of elbow grease is often more than enough to make the house look new again.

Most of these tips will only cost you a couple of hundred dollars. Some even let you use some of the bric-a-brac that’s lying around the house to create something new. All of them cost far less than a renovation and are pretty simple to put in place.