Clear the Clutter
To make your home feel more open and inviting, clear out all the extra furniture and household items—clutter is claustrophobic! Have a garage sale, give things to your friends and family, or donate it to charity. Then, if there's anything left, don't just transfer that clutter to your garage—send it to storage!
Focus on the Family
Displaying family photos helps make a house feel more like a home. Creating a sophisticated gallery effect is easy—start with some inexpensive, simple frames. Choose the pictures you want to display, and then up the elegance by converting them to black and white, either on your home computer or on a copy machine. All that's left is the hammer and nails!
Sweat the Small Stuff
Take care of small repairs as they come up, instead of waiting until there's a long list of things to fix. Tackling projects on a weekly or monthly basis is a lot more manageable than letting things slide until you absolutely have to take care of them—like when you're getting ready to sell your house.
Easy Updates
All it takes to give an outdated bathroom a quick facelift is a fresh coat of paint and new hardware. Brighten up dated cabinetry with crisp white paint and contemporary pulls. Then, add new towels and a few accessories, and you'll banish any signs of decades gone by!
Liberate Your Furniture
It's time to set your living room furniture free and move it away from the walls! It's easy to get stuck when it comes to furniture arrangement, so take a risk and mix things up. Bringing a couch and chairs to the center of a room creates a cozier feeling, as well as a better space for conversation. And the best part of this upgrade? It's absolutely free!
Quality Control
Add value to your home by updating old or unappealing features with high-quality, inexpensive materials. For instance, a ceramic tile fireplace can be covered with an affordable marble tile, and then you'll be able to boast about your natural stone surround. With a lesson from your local home store, you can even learn to do the work yourself.
The Power of Paint
White walls are cold and uninviting, and the starkness can sometimes make every crack and imperfection in the walls stand out. Warm up your space with a pleasing neutral color—it will create a better feeling in your home, and it might even make all your stuff look better, too!
Clean Up the Carpet
Unless you can professionally steam clean your carpeting to remove stains, it's best to replace it. Luckily, carpet is an easy and budget-friendly fix. Consider painting the baseboards, railings and banisters as well, to help the new carpet stand out.
Flower Power
Fresh flowers can go a long way in adding ambiance to your home, and you don't have to break the bank to get them. Pick up a few bunches from the grocery store or farmers market (shop for varieties that will last longer than a week) or head out to your own garden. Place colorful arrangements throughout your house for instant appeal.
Kitchen Cleanup
A complete kitchen renovation can be expensive, but some simple changes can take an outdated kitchen from ho-hum to wow for a lot less. Transform old cabinets from blah to beautiful with a coat of paint and new hardware. The real key to making an old kitchen look new is in the appliances—spring for stainless steel to complete the modernization!
