Home renovations can be costly, but the conventional wisdom is that you’ll recoup the costs when you sell. This isn’t always the case, as some renovations are more valuable than others. Of course, many renovations are largely to improve your quality of life within the home, either with a more modern kitchen or bath, there are other projects that can actually add more value while costing you less. These DIY tasks aren’t all as sexy as a fancy new kitchen, but can directly add to the value of your home.
- Attic Insulation: Remodeling Magazine puts loose attic fill insulation at 107% cost recuperation with the potential energy savings, plus it increases resale value. Its an easy DIY project you can knock out in a weekend!
- New Front Door: Depending on which door you choose, they can range from a couple hundred to $1,600 for a steel door with glass (some premium doors can be considerably more expensive). The interesting part is that a new door can add up to 90% of its cost to the value of your home, so you can improve the look and feel good about the value you’re adding at the same time!
- Simply painting a room: Whenever someone is looking to buy your home, first impressions are vital, and few things leave a worse impression than walls covered in marks and scrapes. Throwing on a fresh coat of paint is cheap, looks great, and makes the room look clean and new with the appearance the the home has been cared for. Its hard to put a specific value on this one, but most realtors recommend fresh paint when listing a home.
- Epoxy Garage Floor: Just like with painting a room, a fresh garage floor adds a clean appearance that gets buyers excited about the space. While you can pay thousands to have this done professionally, there are kits from Rustoleum which make this an easy weekend project. You do have to move everything out of your garage to apply the product, but you’ve probably been needing to clean it out anyways so go ahead and knock out two projects at once.
- New House Numbers: We know, this one sounds too simple, but it’s true! Nice, big, easy to see numbers make a great impression and can be done for just a few bucks! Check your local hardware store, and pick a set that matches your home and stand out!
- Bathroom Vanity and Mirror: If you don’t want to rip out your floors and do a major project, simply changing out your bathroom’s vanity and pairing it with a matching mirror can totally change its look and feel. Home Depot and Lowes sell packages of single-sink vanities and mirrors for as low as $450, and with some very basic plumbing skills this is a project you can probably do in a day!
Which projects have you done and would recommend?