Many of us don’t realize that our home is our most valuable possession. We tend to neglect our home and rarely spend money on upgrading it. Just as we take care of our car, we need to take care of and update our house to make sure it works well. When we polish our car and everything looks shiny, it makes us feel good. The same goes for our home, when we paint and update our home. A bright and sparkling home makes us feel good and makes us proud when guests come to visit us.
There are a number of things you can do to update your home. The two things that make the biggest improvement and the biggest return on investment are paint and carpet. This can be accomplished for approximately $7,000 to $10,000 depending on the size of your home. These two things will make your house look shiny and very attractive to a new buyer if your house is for sale. If you’re thinking of reselling, stay away from the flashy colors that some of the magazines and displays suggest. Red walls seem really rich and beautiful to you, but they are not for everyone and tend to darken the house. Neutral colors are the best way to get the best return on investment.
Kitchens tend to get outdated over time and usually require the most expense to update. There are some less expensive ways to update a kitchen without spending $40,000. You can paint the cabinets and put in new knobs. This will cost approximately $1,000 instead of $10,000 for new cabinets. Countertops can be redone into the granite squares for about $1000 instead of the $6500 price for the granite slab. The new sink and fixtures will add the finishing touch to the new kitchen. A new sink and plumbing fixture will cost about $400. So for $2400, you can have a kitchen that looks great for a lot less than $40,000.
Lighting is another way to enhance your home. Using brighter lights, changing some of the existing lighting, or bringing in more lamps helps brighten up the room. Most older kitchens in the area have a ceiling soffit in the kitchen with lenses that cover the neon lights. Removing these lenses and replacing the neon lights with canister lights updates the kitchen and adds depth to the ceiling.
The other important room in the house is the main bathroom. This can also cost $40,000 if you do a complete remodel. There are also some ways to cut costs in the bathroom. Did you know that you can paint tiles? There are companies that paint tiles and guarantee them for five years and they look like new tiles. Second, you need to change all the fixtures to give the bathroom that new look. The third thing you can do is replace your shower door and aluminum rails. This aluminum corrodes over the years and really looks bad. If it’s a shower door over the tub, you can buy it at the hardware store for $150 or less. The existing flooring in the bathroom may also need to be replaced… If the bathroom is carpeted, laying down some new tile is an easy fix. Even if the floor is tiled, picking it up and laying it down again is fairly easy. If the mirrors need to be replaced, make the move and replace them and it will make a world of difference. Here’s another room you can remodel for $3,500 instead of $40,000.
If you are out of ideas, visit your local hardware store and they will have displays that will give you ideas on what to do. They can even help you in your bathroom remodel.
Take a look at your old furniture and see if it would look better white than stained. The finish can give new life to an old piece of furniture. You can buy a dye called “renu” at antique or hardware stores, and it will make old wooden furniture look like new. Restores shine back to wood. Visit garage sales to pick up a piece of furniture that can be reupholstered or painted to spruce up your home. There are many thrift stores that have great furniture buys and sometimes you can pick up a real treasure. If you have a neighbor who is moving, they sometimes sell some of their furniture at greatly reduced prices.
Once you’re done with painting and upgrading, now it’s time to customize. If a lot of the old fixtures around your house don’t have a lot of keepsakes attached to them, put them in a box and put them away. Take a trip to the discount stores and shop for new accessories for your home. It will change the look and give your home a new updated look. Some of the discount stores sell very reasonably priced picture frames, which will allow you to reframe all your old photos and give them a new look. If you have some dried flower arrangements that look a bit old and have been around since Noah, it’s time to change them too. Make the new arrangements with the new colors you introduced in the rooms you decorated.
Making these changes will make you feel good about your home again and make it a fun place to live again. Since you spend so much time in your home, the money spent will be well worth it.
