It seems that many people like to put off projects around the house for as long as possible. Oftentimes, once summer comes, though, you need to finally attack those projects. That’s because summer days last longer and people tend to have more time during the summer than they do during other times of the year. Still, those larger and more expensive projects can be difficult and overwhelming to take on.
For many first-time homeowners, the experience of getting projects done around the home is a new experience. It’s also a time when accounting for your finances is vital. This is an expensive time that often includes surprise expenses. In other words, you’re not going to be dealing with a tenant attorney anymore, but a whole new world of financing.
Smaller projects are a lot more manageable, instead. But, what are the best projects that you should take on during the summer, which won’t become all-consuming? The type of projects that are worth doing but won’t break the bank. There are plenty to choose from, but here are a few of the best options that will either help to raise the value of your home or simply make your home more enjoyable to live in.
Do Your Spring Cleaning in the Summer
It’s easy to let your home become a cluttered mess. The reality is that most people don’t have the space to keep their homes free from clutter. When the holiday decorations go away, they get shoved in one closet or another, taking up excessive amounts of space. Most people also don’t have the time to clean once they’re home from work, or they’re too tired to do so. This means keeping the house mildly tidy is a struggle that is often pushed to the weekends. Of course, this then means that you’re losing time to relax and do what you want to do on the weekend.
That’s why putting in the effort to do a deep clean and reorganization of your home is one of the important and cheap projects to do around the house when you get the chance during the summer. After all, it will only cost the value of cleaning supplies, which should already be in the house, to get your home properly clean.
There are a few different places to start when it comes to cleaning your home. Kitchen cleaning is vital to making sure your home is clean, for instance. If your kitchen isn’t clean, then you will have a higher chance of bugs and rodents, as they’re attracted to leftover food and moisture that is often found in a kitchen. Meanwhile, closet organizing is a great way to make the best use of the space in your home and open it up to being more comfortable to live in.
Once you’re done cleaning out your home, you may find that you have a lot of things throughout the home that you don’t need anymore. It’s just taking up space and making your home more difficult for you to live in. These are things that you’re best off by getting rid of in one way or another. This makes a tag sale an excellent option. Instead of just throwing out all of these things, which may be perfectly fine, but you have no use for them, you can try to sell as many of those things as possible. This will help to actually make money on this project, rather than spending any money, and you’ll still have a much better feeling home once you’re done.
Put Together New Furniture
Getting new furniture for your home can be incredibly exciting. It’s a redesign for your entire home, gives a chance to become more comfortable, and it’s incredibly expensive. A great way to still get all of those benefits of new furniture, without having to spend tons of money, is by buying furniture that you have to assemble yourself. It’s much less expensive because it’s not assembled, as well as being easier to transport so that you don’t have to pay for delivery service.
Baby Bedroom Furniture is a great example of when furniture that requires assembly is a great idea. That’s because babies are expensive, and a lot of people need to shave off costs on their child wherever they can. This includes the furniture, like a dresser, in the baby’s nursery. So, invest in furniture that requires assembly, rather than more expensive and ornate furniture.
For you, the project is going to be assembling all of that furniture. Taking an afternoon during the summer, as you put together a nursery for your child, is a great way to spend time. It helps you to feel proud and close to the child, as you put together their room for them. It also will give you the confidence that everything was designed and functions properly. On top of all of that, it will save you money that you’re desperately going to need while you’re working to raise a child on a budget.
Try Your Hand at Making Alcohol at Home
Less of a project to improve the house you live in as a whole, and more of a project to make your time around the home more enjoyable than it is already. You can try to make your own alcohol at home. This is a fun project for anyone with a love of beer, whiskey, or any other kind of alcohol. It can also make drinking much less expensive, in particular if you get good at it quickly. This means that you can save a lot of money by aging whiskey at home.
As far as beer, which is where most people are going to start when it comes to making alcohol at home, the process isn’t all that difficult. Essentially, there are four basic steps, you’ll need to prepare by collecting ingredients and tools to make beer yourself. Luckily, most beer-making kits are relatively inexpensive. From there, you just have to brew, ferment, and finally bottle your homemade beer. Spirits like whiskey are going to take more effort to produce.
This type of project is a great way to show off to friends when you have them over for a party of some kind. Not only will you save money on beer, but you’re going to have a ton of fun by doing this project that could easily become a hobby for you.
Repair the Stucco on Your Home
Stucco is a material often used on the outside of the home for decorative purposes. It’s a type of binder that goes on wet and will dry hard. Unfortunately, and particularly when it’s used on the outside of your home, stucco can fairly easily become damaged. This makes stucco repairs incredibly important to do for your home, in particular, if you want to maintain the exterior beauty of your home.
Repairs can be done by a handyman. However, this is also something that you can do for yourself. This will help to keep the cost down so that making the exterior of your home beautiful isn’t an overly expensive project. The best part about doing this is that exterior beautification projects for a home are incredibly important to the value of your home. In other words, the money that you put into this project you’ll get back on the other side as the value of your property will become exponentially more valuable when it comes to a resale.
The most common thing that can lead to damage on stucco is that it becomes wet, or there are temperature changes, which causes it to crack. This means that, typically, stucco repairs are more like filling cracks. Small cracks may be fixed simply by adding another layer of stucco, which is similar to caulking holes in a plaster wall. In larger cracks, you may need to actually widen the crack and clear debris before refilling the patch.
Consider Drilling a Well in Your Backyard
One great project that you can consider is drilling a well in your backyard. Well drilling has several key benefits. First, it’s an aesthetic choice for your yard, which makes it more beautiful, can tie a theme together, and help to raise the value of your home. A well also helps with drainage in your yard.
A yard with drainage problems can have several major issues. For one, it will become a muddy mess that is difficult to use. Any flowers or plants that you bring in to beautify the yard, will be washed away whenever there is heavy rainfall. Furthermore, in homes where there is a basement, a backyard with poor drainage will flood that basement. There are a variety of issues that comes with that. For instance, a flooded basement is unusable. This means part of your home isn’t going to be functional. It can ruin a finished basement, or make an unfinished basement space you need to always avoid. It can also lead to dangerous mold and fungus growth in your home.
In other words, installing a well is going to help prevent these other issues, which will lower the value of your home and cost you exorbitant amounts of money when they do arise. So, by installing a well, which is relatively cheap in comparison to the damages from flooding, you can raise the value of your home and make it much better to live in, with lower costs in the future.
Consider Installing an Accent Wall
An accent wall is a great way to change the entire color and feel of a room, without actually taking the time to paint the entire room. In other words, this is a much quicker and cheaper way to give a room a brand new feeling. Essentially, it’s one wall out of the four in a room that is painted or wallpapered differently than the other three. Typically, this is done with a pattern.
This is a cheap alternative to a complete paint job that shows off your personality in a much more subtle way than many people choose to go within their homes. It’s cheaper because you’re going to save money on paint, and this is a project you can probably take care of by yourself in about a day, rather than needing to hire someone.
Add Mood Lighting to Your Home
A lot of people think that the only way to add mood lighting to a room is by installing dimmer switches. However, there are plenty of cheaper options that won’t require you to hire an electrician to come into your home.
Instead, you can go with the much cheaper option of installing string lighting of some kind or another. This will allow you to choose what size lights you want, how bright they’re going to be, and where you want to hang them with relativity to your outlets. Depending on what string lights you get, they can be used both indoors and outdoors, controlled remotely, and even change colors. In other words, they offer you the flexibility control the lighting both in and around your home. This is great for making your home feel more comfortable and like a home, rather than a place to live in, and without it costing too much money either.
After you finish your projects around the house, you get to look back on your home and celebrate. Maybe this is by having a pizza with your family or sitting down with your kids to play with them by making jewelry or something similar. This sense of satisfaction is going to make all that effort worthwhile, but you’re also going to get a better home to live in out of it. The best part is these projects, however, is that they’re inexpensive and often quick to take on.
