Sunday, March 18, 2012

Make Your Home Improvement Project Painless With These Great Tips

By Jake Lei


Why should you learn home improvement skills? Learning home improvement skills can be a boon to your wallet. The fact is that handymen are often expensive and you can perform many small jobs at home. Learning how to do small tasks can empower you as a home owner and leave you with more money.

Improving your home yourself in anyway can be a fun, rewarding experience, but this can also be a disaster. Before starting any projects, make sure you research what you're doing first. Getting halfway through any home improvement project only to find you're doing something wrong is a nightmare waiting to happen.

Protect surfaces with a covering during any home improvement projects. Floors should be covered with a tarp or painters plastic if you are painting. For other projects that involve hammering or tearing down walls or cabinets, cover all surfaces to protect them from scratches and damage, including the walls.

To increase energy efficiency and save significantly on your utility bills, consider replacing single pane windows with newer energy efficient ones. The investment you make in new windows now will easily pay for itself over time as your utility bills will be lower and, of course, your home will be more comfortable.

Extension cords and cables can easily get tangled. There is nothing more annoying than reaching for an extension cord and realizing that it is tangled. A great way to keep your extension cords from tangling, is by coiling them neatly into a bucket when not in use. This way, when you need them, you can just reach in and use.

If you live in a hot climate, replace your original glass windows with low-E glass, which can make it easier and more affordable to cool your house in the boiling summertime. Although the installation can be a bit pricey if you pay someone to do it, you will recoup your costs in energy savings by the end of the summer.

Pendant Lighting

Many newer homes feature an open space between the kitchen and adjacent room. While most people are content to simply leave the area untouched, you can easily modify it to resemble a Euro-style breakfast bar, complete with two or three bistro chairs, pendant lighting, and unique decorative napkin holders or accent pieces.

Use new light fixtures to brighten paling kitchens or bathrooms without spending a lot of money. Track lighting with dated canned lights can be swapped out for sharper, more appealing lights by an electrician for under a thousand dollars. Consider installing pendant lighting, which looks great in any modern kitchen.

These easy tips will help you become a master at improving your own home. That will help you create a home that suits your needs, looks amazing, and functions perfectly. It can only get better the more effort you put in, after all -- at least if you follow smart advice like this to make sure you do home improvements properly!




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