Top Tips for Adding Luxury to Your Home on a Budget

DIY / Home Improvement

One of the few things that we tend to work for and invest a significant amount of time and money in is our homes. Whether it’s to improve the comfort of our humble abodes through functional upgrades or adding fixtures and furnishing to make it much more aesthetically pleasing for guests, changes and enhancements are commonplace in the lives of homeowners who have the resources for it.

While it certainly helps to have a lot of funds, you’ll be surprised that adding luxury to your home can be achieved with even the most modest of budgets. Here are a few top tips to keep in mind that are sure to minimise expenditure but maximise the results.

Give the bathroom areas reasonable upgrades

Bathrooms are arguably the most important areas in the house. In fact, most real estate agencies will tell you that the state of these rooms can oftentimes make or break the value of a property. To this end, there’s no better place to begin adding luxury to your home than by giving these areas some reasonable upgrades. For starters, the addition of walkin shower enclosures not only enhances the look and feel of a bathroom but also serves the functional purpose of keeping things nice and dry.

Illuminated mirrors and electric shower units can also make all the difference when it comes to use, with the former preventing clumsily fumbling for the light switch at night and the latter making the act of bathing far more convenient. Best of all, these additions won’t break the bank and should leave more room in the budget for other additions and improvements.

Use wallpaper instead of paint

Everything deteriorates with time, and this can make any interior look shabby and unloved. While you would rather have the walls replaced or repainted, the materials and labour costs can easily put a dent in if not break the budget completely. A cost-effective way of overcoming this obstacle is to use wallpaper instead. Not only is it relatively inexpensive, but its installation should take no more than a morning’s work and a few household items.

Refurbish and refinish old furniture

Despite all of the things that the modern world has brought us, many people still prefer the antiquated look of old items such as furniture. With prices on the rise with newer variants, an economical approach would be to have the old furniture refurbished or refinished instead of replacing it completely. The patina can oftentimes be much more eye-pleasing than more sleek and modern counterparts, and it can be good for the environment too.

There’s a common misconception that luxury is determined by high expenditure. However, it doesn’t necessarily require a huge budget to attain it. With no more than a small investment of time in research and labour, there’s no doubt that it can be attained by anyone determined to add luxury to their home.

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Choosing the Right Doors for Your Home

DIY / Home Improvement

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If you want your house to look perfect, attention to detail is important. Often, it is the little things that most people neglect that make the biggest difference.

Internal door styling really matters

Surprisingly, many people never replace their internal doors, which is a real shame because doing so can make huge difference to the overall look of your home. For example, old style panel or pine doors are all it takes to ruin the look of a room that is decorated in a minimalist style, which brings us to our first door-buying tip.

Style matters. The new doors you buy really must fit in with the way you decorate your home.

Quality is important

It is also important to buy good quality doors, after all the chances are you are going to be keeping them for at least a decade.

Buying cheap doors usually works out to be a false economy. They tend to fall apart, after just a couple of years use. Often this is because the layers of materials used to make them are held together by inferior glue, that starts to deteriorate when exposed to the changes in temperature that occur in every home.

Practical considerations

It is important to choose doors that are right for the job. For example, if you live in a noisy home it makes sense to invest a bit of extra money in buying heavy-duty doors that will keep most of the noise in the room.

For a bathroom, you will need a door that is made to cope with high levels of humidity and dampness. Using a lightweight door that is not made for the purpose, could lead to your having to change it after a couple of years because the moisture has got in, and warped it.

For a dark, and dingy, room you may want to look for a door that has a glass panel built in. Doing this will ensure that as much natural light as possible is let in. However, this type of door may not be a good idea in a house where there are young children, or elderly people who are not very steady on their feet. In those homes, the glass would represent a safety hazard.

Hanging them properly

However, buying the best doors for the job is only half of the story. Once your doors arrive, it is important to take the time to hang them properly.

Most people already own the necessary tools to do the job, but not everyone has the necessary skill to hang their own doors. This video shows you how easy it is to hand a door on an existing door jam. Our suggestion is that you watch it, and use it to work out whether you can handle hanging your own doors, or would be better off asking a professional to do it for you.

Our last tip is to make sure that you maintain your doors well. Wiping the handles every week and quickly going over the rest of the door, and frame, each month will keep them looking good for many years to come.

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