It’s best to photocopy them or take digital photos and put them away somewhere in the cloud. You should also check you have the right amount of cover through your home insurance when the work’s finished. This is particularly important with extensions and structural changes that can affect the rebuild cost of your home.
- Refinishing wood floors is maintenance, too, though installing new ones is an improvement that ought to count in your total.
- If a traditional entry closet or a built-in shelving system isn’t an option in your home, refashioned furniture can achieve a look that’s equally stylish and storage-savvy.
- There are a lot of objects around the Taylor home that scream Tim “The Toolman” Taylor but only a few touches that appear to be Jill’s.
- Spruce up every room in your home with our collection of quick and easy do-it-yourself home improvement projects.
Your foundation already has a big job to do holding up the house. The quantity of water in a small rainfall event is surprisingly massive. A common DIY home-improvement mistake, especially when finishing a basement, is making access to essential plumbing valves difficult. When you remodel, leave space or an access door to the main water valve, exterior spigot valves, water heater valves and any others your home may have. It’s probably less expensive and certainly more convenient to install a backyard shed or hire a handyperson to create access to hidden places in your house than renting space long-term. Home appliances and home mechanical systems are expensive enough.
Try replacing your showerhead with a newer model so you can achieve a spa-worthy bathing experience in the comfort of your home. Select the perfect self-adhesive wallpaper to create an accent that’s easy to apply, remove, and reuse. Like a giant sticker, peel the decorative paper off the backing and adhere it to a primed and painted wall. To create a curvy top edge, use your mirror to inspire the outline of your design.
Hosted by Bob Vila, Steve Thomas, and Kevin O’Connor, the series follows the remodel of a house — typically in the New England area — over the course of several episodes. The longer timeline allotted to each flip allows for an in-depth look at different aspects of the process and lends the show more of a how-to feel in comparison to many of its competitors. You’ll more than make your money back with a loft conversion, too, but it’s not quite as lucrative as other means of extending because of the costs involved. You’ll need to add some windows and a staircase, too, which can rob you of space elsewhere. Grab bars are one of the simplest ways to make an existing bathroom more accessible.
Home Improvement
Many homes in rural parts of the U.S. rely on well water rather than city water. But well water has pros and cons that city people may never have considered. You’re always on time and most of all you know what you’re doing. I tried a lot of other service companies and none hold a candle to House Doctor…
This mother-daughter duo has taken the world of home renovation by storm with their super popular HGTV show. Their ability to remodel rundown homes into jaw-dropping works of art is unmatched. Many of the series on this list are HGTV classics like Flip or Flop and Good Bones. But there are plenty of other shows out there making a name for themselves. Tidying Up with Marie Kondo took social media by storm when it first aired on Netflix in 2019.
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The set designers set out to make the home as normal as possible. It needed to be as middle of the road as possible to appear to be the house of a middle class family living in a suburb during that era. The Taylor house has a few personal details but it could easily be anyone’s home, a key part of making the series relatable to audiences. Find new homes for stuff during a reno.Donate luxury kitchen appliances, cabinetry, and bath fixtures to charity. Renovation Angel offers white-glove removal — plus you’ll get a nice tax deduction. Norm Abram, a regular fixture on “This Old House,” hosted his own home improvement series, “The New Yankee Workshop,” on PBS for two decades.
While you have the painting supplies out, brighten trim with a light-colored, high-gloss paint. If two tests give a high reading, consult a radon mitigation contractor . These contractors can professionally test the house and install a mitigation system for reducing radon to a harmless level. The most effective system is a vent pipe placed in the sump pit or a hole made under your concrete floor slab. The vent runs up through the house and out the roof, or out the side of the house and up to the eaves. A special in-line fan for radon is placed in the attic or outside the house to suck air through the vent.
From 2010 to 2019, homeowners largely relied on professional contractors, and remodeling activity was heavily concentrated in coastal metros. To quickly and easily rehabilitate your existing fireplace, a gas or wood-burning insert adds energy efficiency to your home without tearing apart your hearth and mantel. Equipping your fireplace with glass doors blocks heated and cooled air from escaping and amplifies the fire’s heat, which in turn reduces energy costs.
People borrow against their homes, spending the money and draining the equity. Then, when they sell and receive, say, $50,000 after repaying their mortgage and home equity loans, they think that’s their capital gain. But it isn’t, and sometimes their tax bill is actually much higher than that $50,000. I asked the number crunchers at the real estate website Zillow to take a look. Currently, they believe that 3.8 percent of the homes around the country are already in the tax zone for single people and that 1.2 percent have reached the threshold for married couples.