Performing your own home improvements doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but people experienced with remodeling, repairing, and improving their homes know that a few simple tips and tricks can make a huge difference. If you’re thinking of embarking on some new home improvements, bear the following tips in mind to make sure everything goes right and nothing goes wrong.
Paint stripes on your old walls before installing paneling! Regardless of the care you take when installing paneling, the old wall can sometimes be seen showing through the paneling. To reduce the visual impact, take some measurements to learn where the wall panels will join. Paint strips on the wall using paint color which better matches the paneling color.
Patch the holes in your walls with toothpaste! Yes, this is definitely a temporary cover up but it works to hide an ugly hole until you can come up with the materials for a more permanent fix. Use white toothpaste and trowel it into the hole with a butter knife.
When painting your walls, always make sure to properly spread tarps or newspaper over your flooring. You can even go as far as cutting open trash bags and laying them on the floor. Painting is messy and hard/impossible to remove from carpeting and wooden flooring. Take safety measures before you start painting so you don’t have to worry about the after effects.
To see a return on your home improvement project, consider converting existing space into a new living environment for your family. Making an attic into a bedroom or finishing off your basement will earn you extra money when reselling your home because you are utilizing something that is already available to create a desirable feature.
Before you begin your next home improvement project, think about how long you would like to stay in your home. If you are planning to move this year, you may have a different budget for improvements than if you were staying for awhile. You would also want to focus on areas in the home, like the kitchen and bathrooms, that buyers think are most important.
To prevent air from escaping through your doors, buy draft excluders and sealant strips. Draft excluders go under the door and keep air from going out or coming in. Sealant strips fit around door frames and do the same function. Sealant strips can be purchased at most hardware stores.
Install ceiling fans to disperse heat and cooling better throughout your home. During the mild seasons, ceiling fans can provide all the cooling you need. Throughout the colder winter months, your ceiling fans can spread out the warm air from your heating system faster, cutting down on expensive heating costs.
Decals are a great facelift for boring furniture and appliances; getting them off is a different story. If you’re out of ideas on how to remove old decals from surfaces the following tip is sure to help. Spray the decals you wish to remove with WD-40 spray. Try to lift the edges to get the liquid underneath. Let it sit in the solution for a minute or two and then gently scrape the decal with an old credit card or a plastic knife.
The saying “Good fences make good neighbors” isn’t highly repeated for no reason. A great home improvement project is to build a fence around your property. Not only will this increase your property value but it will also give you an additional sense of security and some additional privacy, not to mention they tend to help with neighborly relations.
These simple tips should have helped you see some new perspectives on home improvement, which will get you thinking creatively about what will work and won’t work in your own home. Learning to think cleverly about how you make improvements will be a valuable skill as you gain experience and tackle more complex home improvement jobs.
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