With the housing sales market the way it’s been these past few years in many places, staying where you are and upgrading the home you have has become a popular option. Magazines, newspapers, and TV all regularly feature ways to improve your home so check them out for what’s current and, particularly what’s hot in your neighborhood.
Looking through all the advice, you’ll soon realize great home improvement ideas can range from the relatively inexpensive, like repainting your rooms, to the really expensive, like re-modeling your kitchen. The changes you make depend on you, your house, and your budget.
I’ve prepared a list of improvement ideas here to cover everything from quick and simple projects you can do yourself to a major project that generally needs a contractor.
Starting with the simplest of improvements, look at re-painting the walls. Just freshening up with modern colors is often enough to brighten your every day. And speaking of brightening your life, another easy to do improvement is updating your lighting fixtures with more modern or just different ones. Choosing wisely can shed light in a dark corner or create a romantic mood in a previously bland area.
When people decide they need a new house, it’s often because their present one has become dull to them and so the previous ideas were aimed at brightening your house. Another large reason why people want to move is clutter. You, your family, and your possessions may have just outgrown the existing space. We tackled the lighting and now we’re going to do the same for space. Adding corner shelving, for instance, is a great way to gain extra space from areas previously unused; these work particularly well in kitchen areas. In living rooms and bedrooms, sectional wall cupboards and shelves can be added to increase storage. One place to look at is under the stairs.
Brightening and de-cluttering the inside of your home will lift your spirits. Other people to consider are your visitors. What might they find cheering? One easy to do improvement that is good for you and your visitors is to add a landscaped walkway up to your front door. I’m not talking about landscaping the garden though that’s good too, just colorful and interesting flowers and shrubs in beds alongside the path.
Two home improvements that can add value to your home as well as brighten your life are adding a new bathroom or re-modeling your old one and also re-modeling the kitchen.
An extra bathroom is generally a good investment but will likely need some assistance from qualified tradespeople, such as plumbers and electricians. Re-modeling an existing one, however, is doable without assistance from anyone other than friends or family. New tubs, showers, floor and wall tiles can also be simply replaced, providing you’re not moving them!
Professionals on the other hand should do kitchen re-modeling because the plumbing and electrical improvements alone need qualified help. The newer countertops, cupboards, and breakfast islands too need superior cabinetry skills to look good when they’re finished. Don’t skimp on a kitchen remodeling; it will only add value to the house and satisfaction to you if ‘WOW’ is what everyone thinks when they see it.
