If you’re under the impression that you have to spend big to renovate your home, then think again. While spending a lot of money and going into debt is the done thing today if you want to upgrade your interiors, it’s not necessary. Many things that you think are costly are actually must less expensive than you imagine. Even repairing your appliances and getting them in good working order is cheaper than you think.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the ways that you can renovate your home without having to spend a lot of money. In reality, there’s no reason why you need to shell out huge wads of cash on your house. It is often the cheapest and easiest renovations that offer the biggest bang for your buck.
Let Your Budget Dictate Your Plans
Renovating a home is always fun. But being a slave to a fixed budget is even more enjoyable. It’s actually a lot of fun to see how much of your home you can renovate for, say, £500. It forces you to search far and wide for discounts, looking for any opportunity you can to save money.
You can usually lift an entire room with some basic upcycling. Often, you don’t need to pay for the furniture at all – the only cost is the paint and fresh upholstery which costs next to nothing.
You can also find bargains all over the place, including charity shops, second-hand stores, and on online platforms, like Gumtree.
Sand And Repaint Tired Surfaces
Unless your window frames and wooden doors are rotten through, a fresh lick of paint can help them look brand new again. You’ll be amazed at how much of a difference a simple re-coat can make, especially if your eyes have become used to dull, dreary colours in your home.
Start by sanding down the windows. This action should help to remove the old paint, especially if it is flaking, and provide a tacky surface, ready to receive a new layer of paint. If you’re starting with bare wood, make sure that you put down a base layer first – this will provide an adhesion surface for the gloss.
You can paint all kinds of areas around your home to make them appear more attractive. Stair rails, skirting boards, and even drywall all find themselves in need of a fresh lick of paint over time. So why not indulge them?
Reface Your Kitchen Cabinets
Buying new kitchen cabinets and starting again from scratch is notoriously expensive. It costs a lot of money not just to provide the wooden superstructure, but also install them too. Refacing your kitchen cabinets, however, is an entirely different matter. Here you’re just replacing the front facade of the drawers and cupboard doors, not the entire unit – an approach that radically lowers costs while offering a massive upgrade at the same time.
Refacing your kitchen cabinets is something that you can do yourself. You don’t need a professional. You can either remove the doors and drawer facings yourself and repaint them or can buy compatible facias from an online supplier. Once they arrive in the post, it’s just a matter of unhinging the existing doors and replacing them with new ones.
Replacing is more complicated than repainting, so be careful if you decide to go down this route. You need to ensure that the fascias that you choose are the right size for the job. If you don’t, you’ll wind up with a bunch of doors that don’t fit.
Service Your White Goods
There’s no denying that white goods – washing machines, dishwashers and microwaves – are expensive to replace, but that, unfortunately, is what a lot of homeowners end up doing the moment that they break down. They treat their appliances like their electronic devices, believing that any failure whatsoever requires wholesale replacement.
Many companies across the white goods industry, however, manufacture spares en masse, allowing owners to replace the defunct component with a new one. Fisher and Paykel washing machine parts, for instance, replace the elements that are at a high risk of wearing out, returning the machine to its regular function.
The bottom line is this – you don’t have to spend hundreds of pounds renovating your kitchen and utility space with brand new equipment. Usually, all you need is a quick service and replacement of certain parts, and your machine will function as good as new. Remember, the components in your washing machine or dishwasher don’t wear out evenly. These appliances are only as strong as their weakest link. When you replace the most vulnerable part with a brand new component, you avoid wasteful spending on replacing the rest of the machine that is still in working order.
Use Faux-Flooring
Faux-flooring has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. Today, you can get all manner of synthetic floors designed to emulate all your favourite “genuine” flooring options.
If you’re sticking to a budget, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to put down Venetian tiles, marble, or genuine hardwood in your home. These options are expensive.
There is, however, a good chance that you can afford their synthetic alternatives. Vinyl used to be a big no-no for anyone renovating a home, but the industry has managed to get its act together. Today it manufactures some of the most realistic and convincing “premium” flooring options, all made of mixtures of nylon and plastic. But the result is something that looks surprisingly similar to the real thing, all at a fraction of the price.
Faux flooring is also easier to maintain too if you have a busy family. You don’t have to worry so much about kids dragging mud in from the garden or taking off their shoes. Because it is plastic, it is easy to clean and dry with a mop.
Granted, when you get up close, you can see that faux flooring is not the real thing. It’s a substitute. But it doesn’t matter. The benefits massively outweigh the costs if you operate a busy family.
Install Roller Blinds
Roller blinds are another cheap yet effective way to transform the interior of your home completely. Not only are the shades minimalist and attractive, but they also help you to control the amount of light entering your rooms at different times of the day.
During the morning, you want bright sunlight streaming in to help you feel alert and ready for the day ahead. In the afternoons or evenings, though, you might want to unwind or even take a nap. Roller blinds give you the option of blocking out as much sunlight as you like. Many people who live in areas with light pollution choose to put blackout blinds in the bedroom to reduce the glare of street lamps and car headlights.
Put Mirrors In All Your Small Rooms
The average cost of an extension in the UK is around £30,000 – a lot of money for most people. For that reason, there’s a massive incentive to find other ways to make your house feel bigger, even if you don’t add any extra square footage.
The cheapest and best way to do this is to add mirrors across the walls in your home, especially enclosed spaces.
One of the best ways to do this without it looking artificial is to use mirrored doors on the built-in wardrobe in your bedroom that run from floor to ceiling. These instantly make it feel as if you have double space by tricking your brain into thinking that the room extends further than it does.
Placing flat mirrors on the walls in small bathrooms can also make an enormous difference to the impression of space that you get. Bathrooms appear to go on and on.
Make Your Doors 50 Percent Lighter Than The Rest Of The Room
When it comes to interior spaces, doors make the biggest impression, according to interior designer Amy Lau. For this reason, she says that she paints the doors, ceiling and trim 50 per cent lighter than any of the other parts of the room, just for an added wow factor. Her view is that too much of a single shade can overpower the senses on entry to a room. Colours must be broken up for a space to make sense.
She also recommends that people look for ways to optimise the lighting in their homes. Having a brighter door, ceiling and trim is great, but only if there’s adequate lighting coming from artificial sources or through the window. The whole room can look dark and dingy otherwise – which is not what you want.
Wrapping Up
So what have we learned here? Essentially, we’ve discovered that you don’t need to spend big to make your home look great. Even small renovations can make a massive difference in how your home feels. Furthermore, these are often the changes that have the most impact on your interiors. The odd lick of paint here or part replaced there can make a world of difference.
