Home Improvement Tips: Thinking Out-Of-The-Box

Home Imporvement Tips from Home Destinations: for homeowners to increase the livability of your home while saving money with budget improvements

9 Ways to Improve Your Home

These out of the box home imporvement tips increase the livability of your home while saving money over conventional methods. Working for home owners over the years, and being absorbed in the housing marketing, we have found a number of great unconventional home improvememnt tips that you may want to borrow to save money

* You invest in your home to improve livability first, not value. If you get more property value in the process, consider it a bonus, but these tips dont' have ROI as your prime directive. So that aside, what are some cost-effective ways to improve the livability of your house?

Walk-in pantry instead of kitchen cabinets

Kitchen cabinets are expensive. Half of them are up high on the wall where they’re hard to reach, and the wall space they take up could be better used for windows. A pantry takes up less space, stores a lot more, is much easier to use, and costs less to build. Or use your favorite cabinet front where it pleases the eye, and chose a less expensive cabinet interior surface.

Budget more time to plan ahead and spend less money building

No matter what size your bedroom is, you need wallspace for a headboard and a dresser at a minimun. Make sure you space your doors, closets and windows to leave room for them.

Chose a shower instead of big bathtub

Late 70s to early-80s neighborhoods are often loaded with huge tubs. We’re taking them all out, one at a time, and replacing them with averge-sized showers that families find they use every day. A shower takes up less space, uses less hot water, and is far more sanitary than a big tub.

Keep ceiling heights reasonable for the room size

You don't have to have high or 'volume" ceilings for better rooms. They just make taller rooms. They are also harder to decorate and more expensive to heat and cool. Instead, focus attention on a view, a large fireplace, or other eye level element. Use wall trim and multiple paint colors to break up the volume of the room and create the illusion of height.

Group windows together facing best views instead of scattering them around the house

Do you have a great view in an adjacent room? Ask a general remodeling contractor how to remove or open up walls and bring it into the house with lots of glass. Take excess windows and use them to connect the inside of the house with the to open up lighting in interior rooms.

Consider the simple elegance of the box form house

Proper proportion, scale, and details are what turn heads. The simple box house is a classic American form that’s survived 150 years of stylistic changes. Greek Revival, American Four-Square, Tidewater Georgian…all simple boxes. Great proportions, great details…in its simplicity. The box form is easier and cheaper to build, and because it encloses a larger volume in less perimeter, it’s less expensive to heat, cool, and maintain.

Consider sharing part of the master bath

This isn’t for everyone, but it really tightens up the budget and the floor plan. Make the toilet and a sink in the master bath accessible to the rest of the house, instead of building a separate half bath – it won’t be used much by you during the day, and rarely by guests at night.

Spend it when you have it, not before

How important are granite countertops to youu? Maybe your budget’s tight and granite is ten times the cost of laminate tops. So how about putting in nice laminate tops now, and replacing them with granite in five years when you have the cash? You can apply the same logic and save money with light fixtures, flooring, window treatments.

Compartmentalized bath – two baths in the space of one and a half

Offer your children the privacy they need. A compartmentalized bath puts two sinks in one room and the toilet and tub/shower in another. This way three children can use the bathroom at the same time and keep a happy household.