Note: This blog post is a sponsored conversation written by Lynn Smythe, the Founder and Chief Blogger for The Creative Cottage lifestyle blog. The opinions, thoughts, ideas and text are all mine.
If you’re a homeowner, and aren’t living in a brand new house, you’ve probably got a couple of home improvement ideas for making changes and upgrades. What is your dream/ideal home improvement project? How about a new patio, an updated kitchen, or adding a mud and laundry room by the garage?
My roommate and I have been doing quite a few projects around his house. The number one thing we’ve been working on for the past year is getting rid of all the old wall-to-wall carpet. It’s not a huge house, but at 1,500 square feet we didn’t have the budget to do it all at once. So, we’ve been working our way through the house, going room-by-room, to tear up the old dusty, dirty, dingy carpet and padding and replacing it with laminate wood flooring.
My roommate (the homeowner, I just rent a room from him) would have liked to use solid hardwood flooring, but that was a bit out of the budget at the moment. But it’s made a huge difference – he has allergies and I have asthma and now we no longer have to worry about the dust collector carpeting aggravating our breathing issues.
Conservatories, Sunrooms and Greenhouses
Changing out and upgrading conservatories, windows and doors always results in a good return on investment (ROI) for home owners. A conservatory, with their glass walls, makes a great addition to a home and can be put into use as a sunroom or greenhouse. A conservatory makes a wonderful home improvement project and gives you an entirely new space for relaxing and entertaining. I can just imagine curling up with a cup of hot (or iced) tea, with a good book or my latest craft magazine and enjoying the warm sunlight – or taking a nice nap – who am I kidding!?!
The next project we’d like to tackle is replacing some, or all of the windows throughout the house. There is a huge set of old French Doors going from the dining room/kitchen area to the back patio. They really let in a lot of heat (we’re in hot and humid south Florida) so I think we’d save quite a bit on our FPL energy bill if we made an investment in a new set of French doors or even an energy efficient sliding glass door.
Energy Efficient Exterior Doors
Then, once we’ve tackled the French door problem, we need to get a new front door. We don’t know if it was his former roommate, or his adult son when he was still living here, but the front door is completely dinged up. It’s a metal exterior door and it actually has a lot of dents in it. A new coat of paint definitely won’t fix that problem so we’ve been doing a bit of research on double glazed front entrance doors. We’d like to stay away from wood because termites and rot can be an issue in Florida. But we’ve seen some nice composite energy efficient doors that have a wood-like texture and can be ordered in a variety of colors.
And the final project on our interior home improvement projects is the kitchen. We only recently started updating that area of the house. We’re not ready to rip out the cabinets just yet but so far, we’ve replaced the kitchen sink and faucet and found gently used stainless steel dishwasher, stove and microwave appliances via Craigslist. We scored big when one of the tenants where he works (he does maintenance at an upscale condo building) got rid of their old stainless steel refrigerator. Our cost for what looked like a new appliance – $0, so for $300 USD total we got all new appliances.
Our final home improvement project is to update the kitchen counter tops. Right now, we are researching marble, granite and quartzite trying to figure out which will be the most cost effective, yet stylish, upgrade. What are your favorite home improvement ideas?
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