So many articles on the web talk about renovating your home or hiring an interior designer to remodel your home. What about the talented crafters and do-it-yourselfers (DIYers) who have the skills to make some changes? Here’s the article on DIY jobs for you!
Each of these projects takes one day or less to accomplish and some require only an afternoon. Every project results in a major change to your home without a huge investment of time or money. Devote a day to one room of your home and watch the massive transformation that one small project makes.
1. Regrout Tiling
Perhaps the tiles in your bathroom or kitchen look a little less than perfect. They didn’t crack or break, they simply appeared dingy. Scrub them clean with a non-abrasive cleanser, then clean the grout, bleaching it back to white. If that doesn’t work to restore the grout’s gleam or if pieces of the grout break off or already broke off, you need to re-grout your tiles.
As far as DIY jobs go, this could take a few hours or an entire day. Your skill set with grout and the size of the bathroom decide how long it takes. If you only have one bathroom in your home, purchase quick-drying grout, so you can use your bathroom the same day. If your home has more than one toilet, do one bathroom at a time.
Here’s an interior decorating secret that the pros don’t want you to know. If your tiles remain in great shape, you can revamp the look of the whole bathroom just by re-grouting. While grout once only came in white or gray, today, it comes in a multitude of colors. Use gold, silver, blue, or a jaunty red grout, whatever matches your bathroom colors, to add vibrancy to your bathroom.
2. Upgrade Flooring
When you update the floors in your home, you transform the home’s appearance quickly. If you can measure, use scissors, and lay down two pieces of tile next to one another in a straight line, you can handle your flooring installation of vinyl or laminate flooring. Ceramic tile and natural rock like marble flooring or quartz floors and hardwood floors require a professional.
Use vinyl flooring materials, whether tiles or rolls of sheet flooring, to quickly cover a floor in style. Because manufacturers can print designs onto vinyl, you can lay what looks like real terrazzo flooring in minutes. One of the easiest DIY jobs, this one revamps any room in a flash. Start with a level floor though or the tiles won’t adhere properly.
3. Buy New Room Rugs
What if you do want to hide flooring damage until you can have a flooring professional replace damaged sub-flooring or have your home’s foundation lifted? Rugs offer a fun and quick way to make the floors look fabulous until you can find a home improvement pro to fix the big problem. Shopping for them offers a fun day for most people, and you can unroll and place them in only a few minutes!
Measure the area you want to cover. Rugs come in standard sizes, such as 4′ x 6′ or 5′ x 7′. This covers a lot of warped subfloor or broken ceramic tiles.
Before you cover the area, you may need to place a small piece of plywood over the worst of the damage or some other hard, tough material that you can walk over. This provides the semblance of an even floor and makes it more comfortable to walk on the rug. Try to choose a rug with a thick pile and a built-in rug pad.
4. Invest in Painting
One of the oldest and most popular DIY jobs, painting a room in the home, offers a new look quickly. Shop local paint stores within major retailer home improvement stores to find an array of colors. If you don’t see the shade you want, have them mix custom paint for you, such as Behr custom paints in Home Depot stores.
You will need to purchase painting equipment along with the base coat or primer, paint, and top coat. Ignore the paint cans that advertise that you won’t need all three products because you will. Expect painting a room to require one day, if you only change the main wall color. Set aside two days for a room if you also want to paint the trim.
You may read articles or see ads about interior electrostatic painting, but that’s for professional painters, so don’t worry about it. Professional painters use these spray paint devices to evenly cover oddly shaped items like chairs, tables, spiral staircases and railings, door and window frames, and file cabinets. They take quite a while to learn to use properly, so skip it and stick with brushes and rollers.
5. Upgrade Plumbing Fixtures
Leave replacing your current pipes with PVC to a professional plumber, but do the DIY jobs of replacing fixtures like faucets and drain stoppers. For major plumbing repair, you need a licensed professional, but it’s perfectly legal among most building codes for homeowners to switch out faucets themselves. Shop your local plumbing supply store or home improvement store to find your new faucet handles and water tap/faucet. Most faucet replacements only take a few hours.
Along with updating faucets, also add new towel racks in the bathroom. Consider heated racks to keep your towels toasty in winter. In the kitchen, consider adding a hanging pot and pan organizer that matches the faucet fixtures.
6. Replace Doors and Windows
Of all the DIY jobs in this article, replacing the doors and windows requires the most DIY skill. You should only attempt this alone if you have significant door-framing skills. The carpentry required in this task requires knowledge, and you can void the warranty on your window replacement if you do it wrong.
Adding a storm door or a set of custom iron doors to the exterior of the home typically falls within the mid-range of DIY skills. If you want to do this project, but lack the skill set, hire a handyperson using a platform like Angi or Thumbtack, then ask to observe the work. Ask a carpentry-savvy friend or a friend who happens to be a master carpenter to do the work and allow you to participate, too. Be sure that you either trade them work or pay them.
7. Install a Backsplash
You know those fancy looking tile backsplashes in gourmet kitchens? That’s one of the DIY Jobs you can easily do. Purchase tiles you can cut with utility scissors, commonly called tile stickers. These tiles cost a little less than typical tiles, and they offer an easier-to-work-with material.
You won’t need to become an adhesives guru either. Many tiles now come with adhesive backing. You peel off its protective sheet and stick it in place. These types of tile come in an array of colors and prints to suit any decor.
You can make it look as if you hired a tiling professional by planning your installation design. Find an example of what you want to do in a magazine or online. Print the photo onto the graph paper. You now have a grid to work from.
Measure the area you want to cover with the backsplash. Find the tiles you want online and not their measurements. Divide the square footage of the planned backsplash by the tile’s measurement to determine how many boxes you will need.
Using a tape measure and a pencil, draw your grid onto the wall where you will install the backsplash. If you wait until you have the tiles, you can use one of them as a stencil, drawing its exact size onto the wall. If you mess up while drawing the grid, you can just erase the mistake. Once you draw your pattern, you simply cut the tiles to fit when needed and stick tiles into their pre-measured spots.
8. Install a Feature Wall
Modern wallpaper has made installing a feature wall one of the easiest DIY jobs around. Find and buy a wallpaper mural you love. Clean your wall and let it dry completely. Peel off the backing paper a little bit by a little bit, adhering the wallpaper to the wall at the top, then slowly adhering it a bit more, using a roller or rulers to eliminate air bubbles as you unroll the paper.
Explore Amazon, Temu, and Walmart to find unique and fun murals that installed in just a few hours. You will need sharp scissors, a tape measure, a ruler or roller, and a needle to install a mural. Use the needle to puncture any small air bubbles you miss with the roller.
9. Re-cover Furniture or Counters with Heavy-Duty Wallpaper
Paint can only do so much to dress up an old item. It usually provides a flat or matte color, but you might desire a pattern. Re-covering counters, shelves, bookcases, and tables proves one of the easiest DIY jobs.
Pick your pattern from wallpaper wood grains, marbles, Old World styles, or funky modern designs. Measure the item you want to cover, then divide its square footage by the square footage of the wallpaper roll. Order about an extra foot to a yard than you think you will need, in case something goes on wrong or a piece gets torn.
Today’s wallpaper designs include thick, heavy papers with self-adhesive backing that even provides waterproofing. This makes them ideal for covering old kitchen countertops or shelves to provide a quickly upgraded look that also offers functionality. Shop online, so you can read the reviews of other DIYers who purchased the same item and see photos and videos of what the product looks like in everyday use.
10. Add Crown Molding and Baseboards
If you want easy DIY jobs that will instantly add punch and wow to a room, install crown molding to the ceiling and upper walls where they meet the ceiling. Your seemingly unfinished room will go from meh to wow in minutes. Many self-adhesive moldings abound nowadays, but there’s a caveat to using them. The adhesive comes loose in very hot weather, so you will still need finishing nails or small furniture tack-style nails to install them.
While you update the upper walls, consider installing new trim at the floor level. Baseboards also finish out a room, but you may have two steps to do. In examining the lower area of your wallboards, you may find small broken pieces of drywall that you need to patch before you cover the wall area with baseboard. Use a pre-mixed drywall filler to do this quickly and without the need for netted wall tape.
Baseboards come in a vast array of materials now. You can use old-school wood or particle board designs. Engineered wood offers another option that offers a hard material, as does resin. DIYers with small children might want to use decorative PVC or foam baseboards though to provide something softer that kids won’t hurt themselves on if they kick it or run into while learning to walk and run.
11. Update Window Treatments
The windows in your home add to its decor as much as they provide sunlight and a view. Updating their look can transform a room. Add shades of vinyl or wood to the window to add privacy while keeping the curtains drawn.
Layer curtains, drapes, or sheers to create a décor theme and provide added insulation. Sheers hung in the windows offer privacy but allow warming sunlight. Curtains or drapes on a rod attached above the window add insulation to its edges to block even the tiniest drafts. When pinned back, they provide a view through the sheers, and when closed they offer added insulation.
Getting Started on Your Home’s DIY Makeover
Hopefully, this article provided a few ideas you could use in your own home to make it cozier, more festive, and more fun. If you want to see what other DIYers have done with a material you’re considering, read the reviews, which often include photos, videos, and instructional information. Temu and Rockler offer the best sources for DIY projects by other DIYers. Get started today turning your home into the castle you deserve.