If you have been living in your home for a while now, it’s just natural to wish to renovate or remodel your home. However, upgrading is expensive. Installing new kitchen cabinets will cost you thousands of dollars. Having a renovated bath with new tiles and vanity will cost you thousands more. The good news is, you can still update the look of your home even if you’re not willing to spend that much. Here are some budget-friendly ideas to remodel your home:
1. Repaint your walls or change your wallpaper
Just by giving a fresh coat of paint in a new color, or wallpaper with a new pattern, you can give your house a simple yet dramatic upgrade. If your walls are already dirty, drab or washed-out, repainting with a new color or covering with a new style of wallpaper can rearrange your reality. It’s a home improvement upgrade that’s cheap, yet it creates the most impact.
2. Install crown moldings and baseboard trim
Adding moldings to frame your doors and windows (and even your bathroom mirror), can easily make your home look more upscale. Upgrade your wood trim with a new one, or simply paint over your white trim to add a small yet striking splash of color. For kitchen cabinets, add a crown molding where the upper cabinets meet the ceiling for a regal touch. Update your baseboards by simply adding a slim piece of trim a few inches above it, and then paint in between to make it look like one thick baseboard. Add a single piece of molding on the top of your windows to transform its look, and also to hide the hardware from your blinds as well.
3. Lay a cheap yet stylish runner for your stairs
Stairs are often the first thing visitors see when they enter your house, so why not change its looks by adding a stylish runner? Especially if your stairs are slick and slippery, try using a DIY runner instead of getting a new carpet with underlay and grippers (plus the fitting cost), which will cost you almost a thousand dollars. Simply buy woven runners, felt underlayment laminate flooring as padding, and double-sided carpet tape. Cut the padding into rectangles slightly narrower than the width of the runner and the steps of the stairs. Stick the padding to the treads of the stairs using the double-sided carpet tape, then affix the runner with more carpet tape. Secure it with staples along the top and bottom edges of the tread and in the corners. Make sure the runner is smoothened and centered along the stairs.
4. Bring in natural light without installing a new window
Do you have a room that’s too dim, that you can only rely on the overhead light for it to be usable? Perhaps you have considered installing a new window for that area. However, smashing a hole in a side of your house then rearranging the framing to fit a window is invasive and expensive. You can brighten it up by simply installing a light tube that slips between your roof rafters and funnels sunlight down to your space.
5. Lay a layer of insulation on the floor
Insulating under your floorboards can be really expensive. To give your foot some warmth during cold winter seasons, cushion your floors with cork – since area rugs, even the expansive ones, may not suffice. Cork is a cheaper alternative, and it’s even easier to install than traditional wood flooring. There are engineered cork panels that you can snap together without using nails or glue and can sit well even on existing flooring.
6. Update your front door
Your front door may look tired, so paint the outside and the inside with a fun color of choice to add character. This works especially if you have light paint or neutral paint color on the surrounding walls. Plus, it makes your door trim pop and receives attention. However, if your front door had its day, you can just buy a new one or design your own door to make a good first impression.
7. Install alcove shelving
For an alcove that has served for a long time as a space for furniture, like a bookshelf or a drawer, it may be time to let go of that furniture and install floating shelves on your alcove instead. Open, floating shelves are on the roll nowadays, so update your alcove space with levels of floating shelves to create your own, efficient library system.
8. Install interior shutters
Interior shutters can make a statement in any room. Besides that, it blocks annoying sunlight that streams through your windows and gives you privacy against prying neighbors. Shades, curtains, and draperies are useful and effective, but wood shutters are simply beautiful. Plus, shutters were the original window treatments, and it adds a nice architectural detail to your home. These shutters are easy to install since you only need to attach it to a thin frame that either sits inside the window opening or around the outside of the casing.
9. Lay inexpensive flooring using vinyl tiles
Transform your worn and boring laundry room and mudroom by updating its flooring using inexpensive vinyl tiles. Vinyl floor tiles were originally created as an alternative to linoleum, and it was an upgrade because it was colorful, crack-resistant and easy to clean. These characteristics of vinyl can help you update your flooring in a professional-looking, yet not the budget-breaking way.
10. Refinish your kitchen cabinets
If you’re tired of your kitchen cabinets, don’t just replace them. As long as the frames and doors are still structurally intact, you can transform them to look like they’re new by refinishing it. Simply gather a strong cleaner, sandpaper, paintbrush, paint primer and the paint color of your choice. Within a weekend, you can seem like an owner of a new kitchen, when you simply changed the color of your cabinets.