Aging houses are fueling a home improvement boom

Expand your storage space and learn the basics of home improvement woodworking by building and hanging custom shelving in your garage. Each garage is unique to the home, and storage needs are unique to each homeowner, so custom shelves make the most of your space. It’s better to be safe than sorry, which surely applies to your home security! If you want to add more safety features to your home but can’t seem to follow through, make it one of your top priorities in the new year. Participants of a Maytag survey prioritized upgrading their countertops to something more on-trend.

  • Not only will these projects make you feel more comfortable in a space, they could also lead to a bigger price tag when you’re ready to sell.
  • You can use the cash for home improvements or anything else you need – debt consolidation, tuition or even a newer car.
  • Some jumbo products may not be available to first time home buyers.

Popularized by famous chef Julia Child, use a pegboard with hooks to hang pots, pans, and other tools. Overhead racks start at $50 and need to be installed in the joists on your ceiling to make sure they can hold the weight of your pots and pans. If the wall you want to remove isn’t below one of these beams, it’s much less likely to be a load-bearing wall. Check out your home’s basement, and where there are I-beams or wooden support beams in the ceiling, that’s where the home’s weight rests and you can’t remove walls above it. A good optical illusion will get the best of most of us, so why not use tricks of the eye to your advantage?

Build a wooden planter box to add some color to the front of your home, plant some colorful flowering shrubs and add some bee-friendly plants to your yard. If your income is too high to qualify for LIHEAP but you need help paying for your energy bills, your localsocial services agency or a nonprofit organization may have funds to help. You can also contact your gas, oil, or electric company about budget billing programs or new payment options especially for customers with disabilities who are on Supplemental Security Income . To apply for a disabled facilities grant, you need to fill in a form which you can get from your local authority. They might ask for information and/or for tests to be carried out before you make a formal application.

How Often Can You Refinance Your Home?

Spruce up every room in your home with our collection of quick and easy do-it-yourself home improvement projects. Each one can be completed in just a weekend and increases the function—and style! Make a worn dining table or old countertops look luxurious by transforming them into chic marble focal pieces. This unique and crafty DIY combines leftover project paint, ultra high-gloss epoxy and basic craft supplies to recreate the veining lines and texture found in real marble.

Designer Tips

These loans are only available from some local authorities, so you should contact your local authority to check whether the scheme operates in your area. If you’re up for a little sweat equity, roll up your sleeves and remove anything dead yourself. Just follow the directions for planting, and keep it watered and mowed. “A good, sturdy garden rake can tidy up the borders, and instead of renting a lawn edger, a sharp, heavy-duty putty knife works just as well,” Matke says.

Therefore, the rate and payment results you see from this calculator may not reflect your actual situation. You may still qualify for a loan even in your situation doesn’t match our assumptions. To get more accurate and personalized results, please call to talk to one of our mortgage experts. You can use the cash for home improvements or anything else you need – debt consolidation, tuition or even a newer car. Let’s look at how cash-out refinancing works, and what you need to know about using cash from your home for repairs and renovations. According to him, years of underbuilding following the mid-2000s housing crash have pushed up the overall age of the housing stock, along with demand for updating homes.

If you’ve taken out a loan to make home improvements you might be able to get a government loan to help with interest payments. The only British show to make this list, “Grand Designs” is hosted by Kevin McCloud, who follows folks as they build their dream homes. Far from the average home, many of these new builds push architectural boundaries, feature ultra-modern design, or place emphasis on energy efficiency. Almost every episode of the series finishes with a tour of the new house, giving audiences the opportunity to peek inside some of the world’s craziest and most expensive designs.