If you have recently been feeling unsettled around your home and you wonder what you can do to improve it, or you’re thinking of moving and you want to get the very best price for your current home, making some changes can be the ideal solution. These changes might be significant ones that take a lot of time and money and cause plenty of disruption, or they could be much smaller ones that take just a few moments but make a big difference.
What you choose to do will depend on a variety of different factors, such as your budget and what the final goal is going to be, but if you’re unsure even where to start, don’t worry; here are some of the very best home improvement ideas that will make your property look and feel fantastic, whether you intend to stay there for years or you’re about to sell up.
1. Kitchen Renovation
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When you stop and think about it, the kitchen is the one room in the house where everyone spends some time. Whether you’re prepping and cooking meals, eating them, hanging out with friends, or even doing work – or homework – at the kitchen table, it’s a well-used room that is often considered to be the heart of the home. With this in mind, you can see why this is a room to focus on when you want to make some changes and carry out your home improvements. Even if the kitchen is the only room you do anything to, it will feel as though you’ve done a lot.
One option is to rip out the entire current kitchen and put in a new one. This is going to be the most expensive way to go about things, and it will be messy and disruptive, but if you want to completely change the style you have right now, it might be the best way to do it. If, however, you don’t want to go quite as far, changing the cabinet doors and putting in a new countertop and sink could be all you need to do.
2. Bathroom Renovation
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After the kitchen, the most popular room in the home to renovate is the bathroom. No one likes to spend time in a grubby, old-fashioned, unworkable bathroom, and it’s not very pleasant when guests come over either since you’ll feel embarrassed for them to use it, knowing that it is in a bad state. One idea for renovating your bathroom would be to replace the internal door with an interior white door from www.internaldoors.co.uk as white is usually a colour scheme that works with bathrooms.
Again, you can take everything out and start fresh, or you can make some more subtle changes. Unlike a kitchen, installing a new bathroom tends to be a much simpler task, and a cheaper one (unless you’re opting for marble surfaces and the like), so it is usually something that you can achieve relatively quickly once you decide to do it.
3. Basement Waterproofing
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Something that you might not have considered when you first began to think about home improvements is basement waterproofing, but it can actually be a great idea and allow you to use your basement in a different way.
It might be that you don’t have a lot of storage in your home, or you need some more space for a growing family. According to www.sedonawaterproofing.com, if you have a basement, you can utilize that space to your advantage, as long as you invest in basement waterproofing first. Once this is done, anything stored in the basement will be protected from leaks and water ingress, and you can turn the room into anything you want, from a playroom to a study to a teenager’s space.
4. Change the Flooring
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Something that will always make a vast improvement in your home is a change of flooring. Your carpet, laminate, tiles, and wooden floorboards go through a lot – heavy furniture sits on them, people walk around on them all day, they can get very dirty from the outside elements being brought inside, and so on. Over time, no matter how often you clean them and no matter what care you take of them, your floor coverings will need to be replaced, and once they are and you see the difference, you’ll be amazed.
The key to putting down new flooring is to think carefully about what you need. Don’t just automatically replace carpets with carpets and hardwood with hardwood. It might be better to use a different kind of flooring when you have the opportunity to change things up. Take the room’s usage into consideration as well as the family dynamic you have in your home – pets and children, for example, may mean you need a harder wearing floor, and in heavy traffic areas such as hallways and stairs, a robust flooring is essential if you want it to keep looking good for longer. You can protect your flooring even further by using rugs around your home. When you do that, you have the added advantage of being able to change the color and style of your floor whenever you want to for minimal cost and effort.
5. Upgrade the Insulation
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It’s good to make your home look great and feel comfortable because it fits more with your aesthetic or the modern styles you see around you, but it’s also good to make your home more energy-efficient. Doing this is, of course, great for the environment, but it’s also good for your budget since the more energy efficient your home is, the cheaper it will cost to run.
Your insulation will play a big part in this idea. If it is old or of poor quality, then you might be allowing too much heat to leave your home through the roof and walls in the winter, and too much heat to get trapped in the summer. Either way, your home won’t be comfortable, and you’ll be spending a lot more than you need to on heating and cooling.
By upgrading your insulation, you can ensure that you lower your bills and that you are doing your bit for the planet. If you can install solar panels as well, you can do even more, and although this will be a higher upfront cost, the installation should pay for itself over time.
