10 Home Improvement Ideas: How To Make The Most of What You Already Have!

Three years ago, we moved into our house, a 1970's fixer-upper. I'm sure people thought I was crazy to take on the renovation of an older home. I had a very limited budget, and I had never done any sort of home improvement or home remodeling in my life. 

I knew that the only way I was going to make our old house look the way I wanted it to was to learn to do things myself. Since our budget was basically nonexistent, I knew I would have to work with what I already had. 
And so that's what I've spent the past few years doing.
This post is a collection of my 10 favorite easy DIY ideas.

Based on the reader emails I get each month, I know there are tons of you in older homes just like me, trying to figure out ways to improve things. I know how it feels. 
Not awesome.

 I was in that daunting place just 3 short years ago.  The good news is that YOU can do what I've done. It just takes a little willingness to learn. And the ability to block out all of the people telling you not to paint something. 


So, here are my top 10 easy solutions to update things you might not like about your house, most of which involve paint
Because when you need low-cost, high-impact results, paint is your best friend.

#1. Paint Your Trim
We'll start off with the one thing that will give you the most bang for your buck. Painting your old wooden trim. I painted my trim, and it completely transformed my entire house. Nothing will make as big of an impact as painting your trim. All you need is paint and a decent amount of patience.

There are very few things that will transform an old house like painted trim will, as evidenced by the below picture of the upstairs.

Or this picture of the basement.

So, yes, I definitely think it's the cheapest way to make a big difference in the overall look and feel of your home.

The complete (and very easy) tutorial of how I paint my trim can be found here.

#2. Paint Your Tile
Did you know you can paint your tile? Well, yep. You can. I had the ugliest tile countertop in our kitchen when we first moved in and it drove me crazy until I finally broke down and painted it. I couldn't afford to knock it out and just get rid of it (which we eventually did during the renovation), so in the meantime this was the perfect solution. I found a special type of paint made just for sinks, tubs, and tile, and it totally lived up to the hype...super durable. My tile painting tutorial is just a few easy steps and can be found here. I think it cost me less than $50 to do this.

#3. Paint Your Old Furniture
After we moved into our house, I quickly realized that my fantasy of shopping for all brand new furniture was not going to be a reality just yet. I was forced to instead think outside of the box and find inexpensive ways to furnish our home. This totally spawned my thrift store shopping and furniture painting obsession.
 This french provincial dresser was one of my faves and only cost me $50.
The original tutorial can be found here. 

Another example is this thrift store dresser I painted blue.

It's my most viewed post of all time, and I still get readers emailing me pictures of their own versions of this dresser. Never in a million years did I expect that to happen.

You can see my top 10 furniture paint projects here.

#4. Spray Paint Your Doorknobs

If you have tons of outdated 1980's brass doorknobs like me, you can easily update them with spray paint. Using the right spray paint will give you a high-end, durable result. And it's much better than paying $20+ a piece for new knobs! 
(See more about what paint to use here.)

#5. Spray Paint Your Light Fixtures:
I love a great light fixture. And our house didn't have a single one. I mean, we had light fixtures, but they were hideous. So, instead, I had Jesse take all of them down and I found some (new to me) old thrift store chandeliers and spray painted them a color I liked.

For example, here's an old brass pendant I found for $5 at a local thrift store.

And here it is in our office after a few coats of silver spray paint. 

 #6. Paint Your Dirty Tile Grout
This one product has totally transformed our floors. I've used it on 3 rooms worth of tile, and it's held up great for a really long time now. It cost me about $10. 
Original tutorial can be found here.

#7. Paint outdated Bathroom Fixtures
Rather than spend hundreds of dollars on new bathroom fixtures, I just used this silver spray paint and this metallic paint pen (affiliate links) to completely update our outdated two-toned fixtures. It's still holding up over a year later.
You can see more details about that transformation here.

#8. Paint the insides of old cabinets
I used a quart of this chalkboard paint (affiliate link) to completely update the insides of my kitchen cabinets. They were really disgusting before, and it's made a bigger impact on our little kitchen than anything else we've done. 
See the full before and afters here.

#9. Create an Accent Wall:
Adding a fun accent wall is one of my favorite ways to take a room up a notch. For cheap.
I did in in our bathroom (seen here) and in our guest bedroom (seen here). 

#10. Paint your boring old walls! 

I painted our boring peachy colored walls throughout the entire house. I kept the color palette neutral, but varied the color from room to room. The overall effect is a calm, serene, cohesive looking house! 
See my favorite neutral paint colors here.

And my best paint advice on choosing a paint color here.

#11. BONUS!! Update your fireplace!
We were blessed with a 1970's gem of a fireplace in our living room, so to make the most of it, we built our own diy mantel for less than $30! It totally upgraded the fireplace and ended up being a super easy project! You can check out the full story here.

or you can also paint your fireplace like we did to our fireplace downstairs. 
See more about that here.

So, that's it! Those are my top 10 ways of making the most of what you already have. Thanks for being here.
You guys know I appreciate it.

'Til next time,

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