The Home Improvement Advice That You Can Trust

Whether you are trying to spend a few hundred dollars or a few thousand, taking on any home improvement project can be very exciting. These home improvement tips can help inspire your next project.

Oil Paint

You may need to repaint a porch. If so, make sure the paint you use is good quality. It’s important that you select paint that has the same base. For example, you want to use oil paint over oil-based paint or latex paint (water) over paint with a water base. Trim is usually well served by oil-based paint because it lasts longer; however, oil paint is not good for exterior floors or decks since it can be slippery in rain and snow.

Think twice about improving with a personal touch. The more individualized you make your renovation, the less likely it is that someone else will want to buy it for enough to cover the cost of the work.

Increase your home’s energy efficiency by adding weather stripping to your doors and windows. With the materials available at most hardware stores, this is a very easy and inexpensive change you can make to your home that will have a lasting impact on both your cooling and heating bills. It can even reduce those drafts that always seem to appear on chilly nights.

If you want your ceiling to look like it is higher, you can use these two very easy tricks. Add a funky lamp to your room or paint your walls in more than one color. Additions like these mean optical illusions that people’s eyes can trace upward. Your eyes can remain focused on going up the lines, and that can make the ceilings look higher than they are.

You should be paying most attention to visible improvements in your home. If you plan to sell the home, the buyers won’t care that you added fancy lights if the paint is peeling. While some home improvements are not visible to the eye, it is imperative you focus on projects that are clearly obvious and visual.

If you have the available funds you should choose real hard wood floors rather than laminate. Although laminate looks like the real thing, you can refinish it. Years from now, you or the new owner are going to need to replace the entire floor, not just refinish it.

Apply these tips and do more research on home improvement so you can start working on the projects you care about. No matter how big or small your project may be, the advice you’ve just read should definitely make the project smooth and easy.