Can you increase your home’s value on the cheap?
By Christa TerryA great feature recently up at Telegraph.co.uk brings together experts like award-winning landscape designer Bunny Guinness and interior-designer-slash-author Paula Robinson to compile a list of fifty ways to spruce up your house, inside and out.
For the most part, the improvements they suggest will cost you. Replace all your radiators with an underfloor heating system? Knock out tatty tiles and replace them with slabs of marble? Um, right. I’ll be sure to do that when the economy bounces back, but for now I’m married…and not willingly…to the DIY ideology.
That being the case, I pulled five of the less expensive tips out of the piece. If you’re in the same boat as me, they may help you freshen up your home without spending a bundle.
1. First impressions count, so update your front door with paint:
Glossy black looks great on grand, stucco buildings, but rather forbidding next to red-brick or on a smaller house or cottage where soft greys work well. Blue was voted most appealing in a survey of buyers, but whatever the colour, a trick used by high-end decorators to achieve the best finish is to use several coats of paint thinned with white spirit.
2. Give your kitchen a mini-facelift with new knobs:
Standard sized, plain round knobs emphasise the mass-produced look of cupboards. Replacing them with unusual handles will add interest and character. Aim for texture, and avoid bright lacquered brass; it looks tacky and wears badly.
3. Enjoy regular seasonal refreshment without breaking the bank:
Replace cosy throws on sofas with light-coloured linen or ticking (for a classic New England beach house look, you might even invest in fitted linen-mix loose covers that are put on just for the summer and can be thrown in the washing machine when dirty). Even cushion covers can change: find pretty faded linen floral ones or make your own.
4. Learn to use that old sewing machine collecting dust in your basement:
With a little imagination, you can transform antique linens into unusual curtains, blinds, sofa and armchair slipcovers, cushion covers, upholstered seats or linen bags. Vintage white and cream linen is perfect for spring and summer soft furnishings.
5. Check your gutters…seriously, yucky gutters make a house look bad:
Most gutter problems are not caused by leaves, however, but by leaking joints. Plastic guttering has a high coefficient of thermal movement, and this constant expansion and contraction can push adjacent sections apart. Maneuver them back into place, and check that the supporting brackets are lined up correctly so that it doesn’t happen again.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:27 am
OK, my top three tips that are super cheap and easy to do if you are at all able to do it yourself.
1. Paint, and not in only neutral colors! Paint is one of the cheapest ways to make a room seem new again and color=custom. It doesn’t have to be loud, but use some color in at least some of your rooms!
2. DIY landscaping (professional costs a fortune). If you don’t know what to plant, you can go online or buy any one of the great landscaping books out there and just follow the plans in them.
3. Clean and de-clutter. The more stuff you have, the more likely that your house will look dated and fussy. Better a single great piece on a mantel or table than a bunch of little busy things.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I’m learning all about the DIY landscaping right now, Eilish. We bought a mess of bulbs, and we have a bunch of garden areas that need definition.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:11 am
On the landscaping side – if you have one of those houses like I do, with neglected evergreens in the front and side (you know the ones – haven’t been pruned in years..too tall..blocking the livingroom windows, etc. etc.), pull them out. Nothing makes a house look more neglected than that. If you don’t want to pay a professional to pull them out, find a friend with a truck to help you – you’ll need to dig down around the roots and loosen them up. Also, do not forget to call your local utility to make sure of where the pipes and wires come in, but really – pull those things out. You will probably find that behind them, the trim(maybe even the house too)will need to be powerwashed or even painted, but the results are amazing. Also, this goes double if you have overgrown pine trees in front of your house – what starts out as little four foot Christmas trees can turn very quickly into 25 foot behemoths which obscure the entire front of the house. We had neighbors down the road who had that problem and when they were done, amazingly enough, they had this really cute house with a wonderful front entry – but no one could ever see the entire front of the house because of the pine trees.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:42 am
That’s wonderful advice, Toby Wollin. I love pine trees, but you have to stay on top of them lest they become needly monsters obscuring everything in sight! My grandparents planted their Christmas trees every year and one grew up to be taller than their extremely tall house! Luckily, it was scaled well with that house and the large back yard, but they always said they never expected it to ever get that tall.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:34 am
Great tips, NtB. I rent, but luckily I signed my lease “as is,” which allows me to make cosmetic changes and not have to change them back. When I first moved in in 2004, we painted the whole apartment (12′ walls in the living room and master bedroom screamed to not be painted landlord white). Now I’ve set my sights on the kitchen.
I can’t afford to reface the cabinets, nor replace the appliances. The rental company put in new flooring because the old flooring was scratched, but if it’s not broken, they won’t fix it. I’ve been thinking of painting the cabinets – I’ve seen some really pretty examples- and putting new hardware on. I’m gonna stick with the advice and look for interesting looking pieces, not “stock” hardware. If I spend a lot of money, then I’ll just put the old crappy ones back on when I move out of the apartment. 🙂
April 1st, 2008 at 2:57 pm
This tip on that list was awesome… I’m installing new picture windows in my kitchen with the express interest in doing this:
“17 – Hang crystals on fishing wire at the windows to catch the sunshine and send it dancing in rainbows round the room. Inexpensive, but so effective.”
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
One word of caution on landscaping to add to all the great advice here: if you have an established or overgrown yard, take stock before you rip anything out. Sometimes things are beyond salvaging, but often one day with a GOOD tree trimmer or landscaper can change the look of the yard and give you the beauty of an established yard that you can just spruce up.
We had an ancient olive tree on our property that had been topped more than once. (I know, I’ve done all the screaming already. It’s OK now.) I really thought we were going to have to cut it down because the branch structure had been compromised and it was really overgrown. Luckily, we have a great tree trimmer that was able to give it a make-over and it has become a beautiful feature in our yard.
Tree trimmers can be expensive, but it is one of the investments you can make that makes a big and immediate impact.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The new knobs suggestions really works, and you can get some killer deals on vintage knobs on eBay. My boyfrined and I changed the drawer pulls and things in our kitchen and it made such a difference without costing us very much.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:33 am
I am deeply in love with every single piece of information you post here. Will be back often to read more updates!
April 12th, 2009 at 12:58 am
I second the new hardware idea. Even if you can’t redo your cabinets you can breathe new life into a kitchen or bathroom. Watch out, though because draw pulls can get expensive. I’d look on ebay or similar sites for bargain hardware, esp. vintage.