DIY Home Improvement Tips

If you are about to sell your home, this thought has probably crossed your mind: How can I add value to this place without blowing up the wall and hanging a Picasso?

Well, you’re in luck! Below you will find a detailed list of eight things you can do in one weekend to easily increase the value of your home by $10,000.

These “homemade hacks” range from $0 to $60, can be made with common hand tools, and some of them are even fun.

Paint your walls with magical erasers

It doesn’t take long for the walls of your home to get covered in little scratches and black lines. Heck, even the innocent hanging of photos often leaves small marks where the corners meet.

Luckily, you don’t need paint or even patience to remove them.

I was skeptical about “magic erasers” when I first heard about them. It sounded like garbage made for TV. But slap me stupid, they really work! Here are some of my recent needleworks:

Before…

…and after

And my approximate reaction:

In short, you can easily add value to your home by spending half an hour on a box of $15 magic erasers and your interior paint will look like new again.

Install a smart thermostat

Another easy way to instantly add value to your home is to install smart home technology to make it look more modern and comfortable.

I actually wrote an entire guide on how to set up your smart home on a budget, but if your only mission is to add value to your home with the least amount of money/effort, I would install a $60 smart thermostat. .

This is because your thermostat is the “face” of your entire HVAC system. A crappy plastic thermostat with a dim 1981 digital readout – or worse, a dial – makes your system look outdated and may need to be repaired or replaced. Conversely, a sleek new thermostat keeps your system fresh and ready for the August heat.

Needless to say, improving the “face” of your HVAC will instantly increase the value of your home.

Update your faucets

Looking around your home, potential buyers will see everything, but they can only touch two things: the doorknob and the faucet.

So you need to make sure your doorknob and faucet are working properly. You don’t want your prospective buyers to post on r/mildlyinfuriating:

Now, upgrading your front door handle and faucet can add value to your home, but faucets cost half the price and are much easier to install.

They also get noticed more. Tall beautiful kitchen faucet can make the whole room fresh, modern and more valuable.

Best of all, a decent kitchen faucet doesn’t have to cost $300. You can get a decent non-brand kitchen faucet for about $60 on Amazon and install it yourself with basic hand tools in 15 minutes.

After you have done the kitchen, why not do the bathrooms too? After all, a complete bathroom remodel can cost $5,000 or more, and a do-it-yourself faucet installation can cost $50.

And a good faucet anywhere can instantly add to the perceived value of your home.

Install additional shelves – especially in cabinets

One of the most common phrases you’ll hear on home tours is, “Oh, there’s just not enough closet space around here.”

Indeed, a small closet can be an obstacle for some buyers. And unfortunately, you can’t just blow up walls to make them bigger.

However, you can install several additional shelves. If you then fill the shelves with linens, etc. while staging, you will make the space more practical.

From one craftsman to another, I strongly recommend that you drill rack mounts directly into the rack. The stud finders are $20 and it ensures your shelves don’t collapse under the weight and rip out a section of drywall with them.

In any case, it’s hard to say that the shelves will instantly add X dollars to the value of your home, but they will interest certain buyers and be more likely to make an offer.

Pressure wash outside

If you ask me, the most enjoyable way to DIY a house is with a pressure washer. It’s like a coloring book that increases the value of your home by $10,000 when you finish it.

Now you can count that your driveway is clean, but that’s only because mother nature adds minute a layer of dirt every day. After two years of mean, escalating nastiness, this is a brand new shade of brown.

And you’re going to blow it all until it’s whiter than John Hill’s teeth. The wolf of Wall Street. As a result, the driveway, patio and exterior trim will look brand new again.

As far as which pressure washer to use, a basic 1750 psi electric one will do. You can buy it for $100 from Harbor Freight or rent it from Home Depot for half that amount.

Have fun and don’t forget to post your results on the pressure washing subreddit!

Replace oven filter

If you haven’t changed your oven filter in the last 90 days, it’s time. You will breathe much easier.

Flue filters are the household equivalent of a cabin air filter. They prevent outside air particles from entering your home, so they need to be changed at least once every three months. Otherwise, they can restrict airflow, reducing the efficiency of your HVAC and increasing your electricity bill.

In addition, you can often smell bad filter before you see it. Even your realtor Light a scented candle during an open house, your potential buyers will notice the smell of an unloved air conditioner in at least one of the rooms.

Luckily, replacing a furnace filter is actually cheaper and easier than replacing a car’s cabin air filter. First, you need to find an existing filter to determine if it is reusable or disposable. In the first case, the filter can be washed with a hose, dried and immediately put back.

For the latter, grab your filter sizes and buy a new one from Amazon for around $20.

Paint the front door

Painting the entire front can cost $5,000 or more, but painting just the front door can cost as little as $100. Heck, you don’t even have to take it off its hinges.

But is it worth ruining the jumpsuit? How much value can a new front door color really add to a home?

It turns out a lot. Zillow analyzed the selling prices of 135,000 homes across the country and found that homes with black doors sold an average of $6,271 more than expected. And while you’re wearing dyed overalls, homes with blue bathrooms also sold for $2,786 more than expected.

You can read all of Zillow’s 2018 paint color analysis results here, but the moral of the story is that paint color and finish matter. And if black isn’t your color, put it on your do-it-yourself list before you sell your house!

Replace cabinet hardware

My last and possibly favorite home hack is replacing your closet hardware (handles, hinges, etc.).

Why only iron?

Because it drives me crazy when DIY home improvement articles like this say “swap cabinets” like it’s no big deal. A kitchen remodel can cost upwards of $10,000, and the DIY approach can even be dangerous.

But if you can only replace the pens – and touch up the scuffs with magic erasers – you won’t have to invest more than $30 in total.

As long as you have a screwdriver, you can also install soft-close hinges for about $3 a pair. In general, a cabinet hardware upgrade can make 10-year-old cabinets look like they were installed yesterday.

bottom line

The 8 home improvement hacks above will cost around $350-$400 if you decide to try them all, while the value they add to your home can be conservatively estimated at around $10,000 or more. Not bad ROI.

For more tips on maximizing the selling price, see How to sell your home “from the owner” – on your own, without a realtor.

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