Tips for re-doing your home and saving money

DIY Cost Cutting Home Makeover

1. Starting off

2. Furniture

3. Painting

4. Lighting

5. Accessories

6. Source List

Contents

Here are some great ideas quoted from Fresh Home on how to save money while planning to decorate your home. Save money by not hiring an interior designer and use these thrifty tips to start planning your DIY home makeover:

1) Use free sources around you: From magazines, the internet, to satellite home & garden programs the world is at your fingertips for décor ideas. Peruse through magazines, and home décor books to get a sense of what your taste is. Visit home improvement stores and collect paint and material samples to start making an “idea” folder of what inspires you. Determine what your personal style is. Is it: Vintage, Modern, Bohemian, French Country, choose your style and start planning!

2) Search online classifieds and garage sales for cheap finds: Online classifieds [like Gumtree] can be a great treasure chest for some. Also check college newspapers and apartment bulletin boards. Areas where there’s a high turnover of people moving in and out are great finds for furniture, décor, and small appliances.

3) Maximize your existing furniture: Consider re-upholstering furniture with updated coloured and styled materials. Slip covers offer a quick and easy solution for changing out furniture for different seasons and or occasions. Re-finish wood furniture or use a fresh coat of paint on headboards and mirror frames. Try using online planning tools to play around with different colours and options before you take the plunge!

-from freshome.com-

Starting off

There are lots of ways to save money while re-considering your old furniture as part of your DIY home make-over. Here are two:

1. Re-cover old chairs: you can do this with material you have left over from curtains or that you buy from material sales. You can do this yourself with a staple gun and some needles, thread and buttons.

2. Paint dated wood furniture: paint your old furniture before you consider tossing it away. You can try a shabby chic look or paint it in thick block colours to turn your old furniture into functional art

Furniture

Image by: AndyRobertsPhotos

Image by: garann

You can save a lot of money by simply re-painting rooms with a fresh colour or painting feature walls in dreary rooms, but paint is still quite pricey so you have to make it last longer to save money. Here are some ways to save money by making your paint last longer as quoted from ehow:

1. Use a roller or paintbrush as your application methods. The coverage of these tools is higher than that of a paint sprayer. Sprayers are more likely to overspray, due to either mechanical or user error; applying the paint by hand may be more easily controlled when you have limited amounts of paint with which to work.

2. Paint on a smooth surface to extend the coverage of your paint. Excess paint can gather in the grooves and nooks of a rough or porous surface, but will spread more evenly on a flat surface. If your walls are textured, you may not be able to avoid this problem. Ensure that surfaces that are supposed to be smooth really are so before you paint by sanding them.

3. Dilute your paint as a last resort. Thinning your paint with water or paint thinner is generally not recommended because the colour, coverage and drying time will be affected. In the end, you may need more paint because a first coat that has been diluted may not cover the primer well enough. In times of desperation, add a few tablespoons of water to your paint before you begin the project, so that the entire area to be painted will end up the same colour.

-from ehow.co.uk-

Painting

Don’t over look lighting when planning a home make over as it’s really easy to do yourself as well as save money by:

1. Painting or covering old lampshades for a fresh look

2. Using the opportunity to save money in the long term by reconsidering your energy plan as well as switching to energy efficient bulbs that match your new look

3. Using old bulbs to create great feature pieces like hanging terrariums

4. Creating light features by playing with cut outs and the way the light falls to create intricate shadow patterns when you switch your lights on

5. Using low voltage fairy lights to frame pictures, vases of branches or door ways

Lighting

Image by: alexliivet

Image by: TMAB2003

Saving money in your DIY home makeover only gets easier towards the end of the process when you’re looking at picking accessories as final touches to you newly re-done home. Here are a few ideas:

1. Travel mementos: choose your favourite travel mementos and divide them into groups that have something in common e.g. a group of collectables that have the colour yellow in common like sea shells and pottery and another that has a similar shapes like boxes and tins. You can then place them in collections in framed areas like shelves to bring them together and other positions to decorate your home with travel mementos.

2. Functional objects: recover or refurbish old objects in left over paint or wallpaper to match which ever room you can use them in. You can paint a chair the same colour as a feature wall and place it in the room to balance the colour or wall paper some old boxes for your books with some glue to match the wall paper in your newly decorated room

Accessories

Content

• Please click through to quoted sources by clicking their reference within text as they are hyperlinked to the original content found on the web

Images:

• Please click through to all ‘in text’ image captions as they are hyperlinked to the original Flickr sources which have been described as Creative Commons-licensed content for commercial use

Design:

• The design is created as an original

• Images found in the design of this presentation are taken from Flickr and can be found here:

– Image 1: by omnos

– Image 2: by Bulldog Pottery

– Image 3: by Le Petit Poulailler

– Image 4 by: maka

– Image 5 by: RambergMediaImages

– Image by: Futurilla

Source List