If you’re on a budget, renovating is always a challenge. You never know what you should be spending your money on or what’s going to provide the highest return on investment.
Fortunately, we’ve done all of the hard work for you. We take a look at the room elements that are going to really protect your budget while also giving you an aesthetic bang for the buck that you never expected. Here’s what we recommend you do:
Add soft brass elements
The first thing you’ll want to do is have a look at some premium brass designs for your home. These look fantastic and create a “pop” whenever anybody walks into the room.
Once you add soft brass elements to your rooms, you’ll never look back. Brass door handles look fantastic and are such an enormous upgrade over conventional lever handles.
Polish and buff hardwood floors
You could also look into polishing and buffing your hardwood floors. Wooden floors dull over time, usually because the finish is wearing away, not because there is a problem with the raw wood underneath. It’s a nice idea to screen and re-coat, which means lightly scuffing the top layer and then applying a fresh clear coat at a fraction of the cost of replacing the floor itself.
Perform deep grout cleaning in the bathroom
There is nothing worse than walking into your bathroom and seeing black splotches all over your nice, smooth grouting. Unfortunately, trying to clean this with conventional methods doesn’t usually work. In-grained mold is difficult to dislodge, and you can’t always get rid of it.
The good news is that you can use a commercial grout steam cleaner. The idea here is to blast away years of grime so that you can return your grout to its original fresh white appearance without stripping it out and replacing it. Of course, if this doesn’t work, replacing the grouting is a relatively inexpensive job anyway. It’s something you can do on a weekend and can actually be a useful skill for the future.
Create visual volume
You’ll also want to create more visual volume where possible in your home. This hardly takes any time if you have the right light approach with your lighting.
- Start with semi-flush and architectural fixtures instead of a central ceiling light.
- Use drum lights or geometric fixtures.
- Always use a 2700K color temperature for your lights. If you go higher than that, it can make spaces feel harsh and unfinished.
- Add dimmers where possible as well. Dimmer switches allow you to create high-end ambient lighting.
Frame your views
Lastly, it can be a nice idea to frame your views, both of your walls inside your home and of what you see through your windows outside your property.
For your walls and ceilings, you could use crown molding and picture rails. These days, you can get pre-fabricated MDF crown moldings that stick onto your ceilings and walls.
When it comes to your curtains, make sure your curtain rods are high and wide. Hang curtain rods 6 to 6 in. above the window frame, and let them extend 8 in. on either side of the window frame.
