5 Free Home Improvements
Take a walk down the aisles of a home improvement center, and you’re likely to
get the impression that sprucing up your home has to be a costly affair.
Fortunately, this just isn’t so. With a little creativity and work, you can make
improvements to your home without spending any money at all. Read on for five
free projects to get you started.
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Yank and trim.
A professionally landscaped yard looks great, but can be quite costly. If you
can’t afford the expense of professional help and new plantings, put your focus
on making the most of your existing plants. Often all it takes is a little
trimming and shaping to give your bushes and shrubs the neat, well-manicured
look of a professional job. You can even expand upon your existing landscaping
by swapping plants with your neighbors. Negotiate a trade of your unwanted
plants, or dig up divisions of your favorites.
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Wash away a redo.
Are your walls covered with ugly scuffs and smudges? Before you invest time and
money repainting them, give a quick scrub a try. To get started, just fill up a
bucket with warm sudsy water, and go over the dirty areas with a sponge.
Semi-gloss walls will clean up best, but even flat-painted walls will respond to
a little scrubbing. To give your home that fresh “just painted” look be sure to
scrub around light switches, behind your kitchen and bathroom sinks, along-side
the dishwasher and around door knobs and handles—these areas typically show the
most signs of use and abuse.
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Use your leftovers.
It’s fairly common to end up with leftover paint after a paint job, and while it
may seem like a good idea to save this paint for touch-ups, this probably isn’t
the best use for your left-overs. Just like food, paint has a limited shelf
life. Check the can, and you may even find an expiration date. (Bear in mind
that this date is for unopened cans.) Once a can has been opened, and the paint
has been exposed to air it will break down at a faster rate. Mold and rust are
just two contaminants that can compromise the quality of your paint supply.
To make the best use of your paint and the money you’ve spent on it, look for
other ways to use the paint around your house. For example, a small quantity of
paint might be used to redo a piece of furniture, while a larger quantity of
paint might be used to brighten up the trim throughout the house or to paint a
second room.
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Freshen up a fan.
If you’ve got your eye on one of the new designer ceiling fans on display at
your local home improvement center, but don’t have enough cash to justify an
upgrade, why not give your current fan a make-over? It’s simpler than you might
think, and doesn’t have to cost a dime.
Tired of the color of your fan blades? That’s easy enough to fix. Just unscrew
the blades from the fan, and flip them over. Often ceiling fans feature a
different color on each side of the blades to give consumers a little
flexibility in their decorating. So, if you’ve spent years staring at white fan
blades, just flip them over to the wood-stained side (or vice versa); and enjoy
a new look.
If you’ve got leftover paint, this is also a great place to use it. Just apply a
coat of paint to the fan blades, and you have a custom-colored fan. This is
especially nice if you have leftover paint in the color of the room where the
ceiling fan hangs.
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Give your doors a do-over.
Do you crave the look of open storage in your kitchen, but lack the funs for a
total cabinet re-do? Then, you may be happy to learn that obtaining this look
doesn’t have to cost anything. Just remove the cabinet doors from your cabinets,
and fill in the screw holes with a little wood putty. (You can use some of your
leftover paint to jazz up your cabinets if you’d like.)
Finish by placing some storage baskets inside your cabinets, and you’ll the
perfect, high-style kitchen without the high-style price.
Spend more time thinking and less time spending, and you’re sure to come up with
lots of other ways to improve your home for free.
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