10 EASY + INEXPENSIVE HOME IMPROVEMENTS 🔨

hey guys hilary here from old world home so as most of you know i am a home improvement enthusiast my husband and i love to fix up older homes and make them ours and learn new skills along the way and not pay someone else a lot of money to do something that we could do ourselves so today i'm actually teaming up with jen from how Jen does it to share with you guys some really easy inexpensive home improvement updates that you can do yourself yes you Jen and I have both renovated homes within the past few years so definitely when you're done checking out this video hop over to her channel and see what great home improvement ideas she has to share my first tip is to add trim to basic slab doors when we moved into this home pretty much all of the doors were just the solid panel slab doors and we added decorative trim to our girls room and to our master bedroom and we love how it elevated the space after adding trim and painting the doors they really do look like brand-new and they cost way less than having to just replace the door altogether and speaking of doors painting your front door is an incredibly easy and impactful DIY that anyone can do when we moved in ours was a faded green so I wiped it down really well and used the $3.00 paint sample in an eggshell finish to give it new life in my opinion you cannot go wrong with a classic black door especially when accented with brass hardware adding a door knocker to yours would also be another easy and inexpensive DIY a simple upgrade we made in the kitchen was to add an outlet to our pantry we have a very small pantry but we still managed to maximize the space by adding an outlet and being able to move our microwave into the pantry this is something you could do yourself but if you don't feel comfortable doing electric work you could definitely hire an electrician and it would not cost a lot of money at all my next tip is to paint a metal railing or small fence area we had a white wrought iron railing when we first moved in and I just used a tiny little rust-oleum medaled pain in a black finish and painted the railing it looked brand new we actually did this at our old house and painted a rusty railing right before we put it on the market and so many people commented that it looked like we had replaced it altogether I've also used spray paint to paint a metal fence that was in our old house it was like green and rusted metal and I painted the whole thing in a nice glossy black and again it looks like a brand-new fence that I had spent probably $6 on another electrical project that you could definitely do yourself my husband has done it in our own home but you could hire it out if you feel uncomfortable with electric work is to install a dimmer switch in one of the rooms in your home or multiple rooms dimmers are fantastic in nurseries because you don't want the light to be blinding when you need to go in there in the middle of the night we did that in our old house and we plan to do it here as well they're also great in a dining room or in your master bedroom where you don't necessarily want all or nothing you want to be able to adjust it differs switches are really inexpensive too and again if you do it yourself it's gonna cost you around $20 my next tip is definitely one of the most impactful ways to upgrade your home on your own and that is to paint cabinetry we painted all of our kitchen cabinets it cost me about 75 dollars for the chalk paint and the top coat this was a really big job but it is totally doable anybody can paint with chalk paint and it makes such a amazing difference especially going from really dated wood to bright white even if it's not your kitchen cabinets it could be a bathroom cabinet it could be a decorative piece of furniture in your living room we've done that as well I painted the console in our living room a deep charcoal color and seriously it makes such a difference and it's such a doable DIY for some reason curtain rods are so crazy expensive so we have actually used electrical conduit pipes to hang curtains in our master bedroom and in our living room all you need to do is buy the hanging hardware and any sort of finishing finials that you might want to use on the ends but the condo comes in just a nickel finish you could spray paint it black or brass like we did but such a cheaper alternative to typical curtain rods which again I don't understand why they're so expensive another super easy upgrade that we made when we moved into this house was to spray paint all of our air conditioning vent covers we took them all down and I cleaned them really well to remove any dust and then spray painted with high-gloss white spray paint and put them back up after the ceilings were painted white they looked brand-new and it saved us so much more money than just replacing them another upgrade that we recently did was to change our mailbox when we moved in the one that was here was so sad it was falling over we seriously thought we were just gonna lose it altogether one day in like a windstorm so we did actually for Christmas invest in a new mailbox post in a new mailbox itself it was around a hundred dollars for the post and a little bit more for the box but the prices really run the gamut you could spend as little as you want to some really fancy nice ones but it really makes such a difference especially since it's the exterior of your home it's that first impression people see but if you do have an existing mailbox that functions fine maybe the colors fading or the paint is chipping if you just give it a fresh coat of paint that makes such a difference we did this in our old house we had a brass mailbox and I spray painted it red and it looks so cute with our black and white house that was our old house and that was a really easy upgrade as well and lastly I cannot finish this video without sharing the tip to add board-and-batten to your home we absolutely love this decorative detail in our home the walls here were super plain just no character whatsoever you do need to know how to work a miter saw or a chop saw and do all that kind of angle cutting but really if you just watch some tutorials or look it up on a blog it's really easy to do if I can do it you guys really do it or if you know somebody that's handy that could help you with it that would also be awesome we get asked all the time if it's original to the home and for me that is such a compliment so I hope you guys enjoyed these tips I hope it encourages you to a try your hand at some DIYs and make these little upgrades that really add up to creating a home that you truly love again be sure to go and check out Jen and if you are new here coming over from Jen's channel welcome my name is Hilary you could subscribe I share all about home renovating and decorating organizing and living a beautiful life thanks so much for watching guys I'll be talking to you soon bye [Music]

Channel: Old World Home

Views: 454,881

Rating: 4.8158379 out of 5

Keywords: how jen does it, fixer upper, home improvements, diy, home improvement, diy projects, home renovation, home reno, home decor, interior design, home repair, house repair, home how to, house how to

Id: 7ZCeqcrftDk

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2018