For many of us, our home is our most valuable asset in terms of our financial security. In addition to being the place where we spend the majority of our time. Having a home that is well maintained and attractive can increase our financial stability, as well as our psychological peace of mind.
Think about putting a fresh coat of paint on your porch area. Use exterior paint that is good quality. Make sure you use the same paint type as the existing paint. Be careful with oil based paint on surfaces that have foot traffic because it become slippery when wet. However, oil based paint is fine on house trim.
Don’t overlook the addition of storage space to your new or existing home. Most homes are substantially lacking in storage space. Add built in bookshelves to the living room or dining room. Turn a broom closet near the kitchen into a food pantry. Small changes and additions will really add up.
When removing cabinets as part of a kitchen remodel, make sure you don’t just unscrew and yank them off the wall. You will more than likely end up taking some or all of the drywall off with you. Take time and care to remove each and every screw, and use a utility knife around the edges to break the caulking that was most likely used to seal between the cabinet and the wall.
In any given room if you have hate the feeling of a cramped space, install some long floor-length mirrors. Mirrors make a room appear wider and taller giving your space more definition. Another added benefit is that mirrors create a feeling of more light in a room, as well as, help you select the right outfit to wear!
Rearranging your furniture can be fun, but oftentimes you need visual aides to determine where to put everything. A great way to arrange furniture with visual aiding is by taking a piece of graph paper and cutting out square shapes in a scaled format to represent your different pieces of furniture. You can easily toss your graph paper pieces around and decide how everything can fit together. It definitely saves you the trouble of pushing your furniture around first.
Recycle your plastic bottles to use as cord keepers! Smaller bottles like pill bottles work well to keep small appliance cords from tangling and bigger bottles like those vehicle oil come in work great for big shop extension cords. Just clean the bottles thoroughly, cut off the top and bottom, and use the resulting sleeve for your cords.
In addition to insulating your attic, there are other things in your home that you can insulate, one of which being your pipes. Insulating your pipes prevents heat loss as water travels through them from your water heater. This can quickly lead to less expensive energy bills as you will use less to heat your water.
The bathroom is a very important part of a home that’s being sold. It is easy for buyers to make living rooms and bedrooms their own, but it is important to have bathrooms in good shape. Be sure your sink, shower or tub are working. If they’re not, be sure to replace them. Remove cheap flooring with something more luxurious, like tile.
Refurbishing an unfinished basement floor can bring the space together while increasing the functionality of the basement. Family members and friends will want to go down there more than they did before and one can create a new area to entertain guests. Putting down a wood, carpet, or synthetic floor will really improve ones basement.
You can see now that there are very simple steps that you can take right away to increase the overall worth and appearance of your home, even if you are operating on a shoestring budget! Put some of these suggestions into practice for a more attractive and manicured home.