Nine Free Ways to Renovate Your Home
As soon as some people close on a house, they begin renovating or renovating it, planning to destroy all evidence of the previous owners’ taste and change the reality to their liking. Other people know that major renovations (and even modest remodeling projects) can take a long time , create a huge mess, cause a ton of stress, and cost a lot more than you expect.
Much of this stress, clutter, and expense comes from the demolition work—removing all the old material so new material can be put in. While swinging a sledgehammer may look fun, you don’t always have to show everything in sight and start with a clean slate for a renovation or remodel to make an impression. You can leave most of everything in place and still completely change the look of your home by covering up the parts of your home that need updating. You’ll get rid of dust and feel more comfortable in your home while you work.
Here are nine ways to remodel or renovate your home without tearing it down.
Fresh paint everywhere
Everyone knows that painting is the cheapest renovation, but it always bears repeating: it’s amazing how much a new coat of paint can transform a space. Plus, you can paint almost anything if you prepare the surface correctly and use the right type of paint—so consider painting tiles, bathtubs , countertops , cabinets, faucets and taps , the refrigerator , and anything else that might need a shake-up . colors or a clean neutral canvas. No demo is required, and if you don’t like the results, you can simply draw again.
Install liners in the bathtub
If your bathroom has seen better days, you don’t have to strip it down to its studs and start all over again—a process that can be very stressful, especially if you only have one bathroom. Besides painting your bathtub or shower tiles, as noted above, you have another option that doesn’t require demolition: installing trim. A bathtub/shower liner, sometimes called a tub or shower insert, is custom measured and installed, made of plastic or acrylic, and fits directly over your existing tub and shower. It is glued and caulked, forming a waterproof layer on top of old things. You can hire companies to do this for you (often in as little as a day), but it’s also a DIY project if you’re relatively handy.
Add wall panels
Another alternative for a bathroom that needs a new look is waterproof wall panels. They can be glued directly to existing walls, including tiles (provided the existing tiles are in good shape). Once properly sealed, they will be waterproof, so you can give your shower area (or even your entire bathroom) a new look in just a few hours without tearing out a single tile.
Replace the lamps
Technically, you might consider removing the plumbing fixtures in your bathroom or kitchen (handles, faucets, drains, shelves, etc.) as a sort of demolition, but it’s generally not a messy process and it won’t interfere with your use of the space (if at least not longer than it takes to complete the exchange). Replacing these fixtures with shiny new ones (with new finishes) will make the entire space feel newer and more luxurious.
Cover damaged walls with quarter-inch drywall.
If you have walls that are structurally sound but in poor condition—dented, scratched, or with lots of holes—you can spend a lot of time and energy trying to fix them (while creating a mess), you can remove them. and replace them with fresh drywall (which will create an even bigger mess) – or you can cover them with quarter-inch drywall . This is the thinnest drywall you can buy. These sheets are usually used as a “removal” material to hide defective walls without removing them. While sanding drywall will create some mess, you won’t have to deal with an entire room’s walls being hauled to the curb.
(Alternatively, you can go old-fashioned and cover bad walls with beautiful wallpaper, just like our ancestors did. Just be sure to choose the right type of wallpaper for the job.)
Install countertop pads
If you hate your kitchen or bathroom countertops, you can rip them out (causing stress and clutter), you can paint them or cover them with contact paper (which doesn’t always stand up to wear and tear), or install caps. . These are thin slabs of countertop material that are installed directly onto existing countertops. Almost any countertop material you can think of can serve as an overlay, and once installed, they look and perform just like regular countertops.
Pack your closet
Painting your kitchen or bathroom cabinets is an easy way to spruce them up, but it’s also a fairly permanent project, as well as a messy and time-consuming project in its own right. Another option is to wrap your cabinets with vinyl . It’s cheap, relatively light, and easy to remove , so you don’t have to be tied to anything. Vinyl comes in a wide range of colors and finishes, so you can remake it to your liking without having to remove a single cabinet door.
Add floating floors
If you hate your floors but are afraid to tear them down, you may well be able to install a new floor directly on top of the existing one, as long as it’s in decent condition. Laying flooring over an existing floor is a fairly simple job, and the results can be dramatic without the need to rip out tiles or boards, search for carpet tacks or staples, or scrape off adhesives that look more like cement. You can also lay the tile over existing tile— even in the shower .
While you’ll need to account for the extra height of your floor once the job is complete (especially around doors), this is an easy way to get new flooring without having to remove your old flooring.
Grouting your kitchen and bathroom
If your bathroom or kitchen backsplash is fine, but the grout hasn’t aged well in terms of color and cleanliness, consider regrouting instead of ripping everything out and replacing it. You can’t pour grout on top of the grout, so you ‘ll have to remove the grout with a multi-tool or hand tool , so it’s an easier demolition process than without the demo. But once you remove the old grout, you can replace it with a new color that will dramatically change the look of your tiles.