“Home sweet home.” Does that describe how you feel about the house or apartment in which you live? Or is your current housing situation simply a place you dwell out of necessity; a place to store your clothes, bathe, eat meals and lay your head at night? If the latter is the case, you may be surprised to know that a few simple home improvement techniques may change your feeling about your house and make it into a real “home.”
When you hear the words “home improvement” you probably have in mind the image of a large home improvement store down the street, or a professional interior decorating office you pass on your way to work. All of these, you may rightly assume translates into spending money which you may not have. Happily, home improvement projects need not be elaborate, nor must they be expensive. To improve the appearance of your living space, start with the basics, and you may find that you soon change how you feel about coming home.
The most basic home improvement without expense is cleaning and maintaining each section of your living space. To illustrate the importance of applying this most basic principle, consider the following example. Perhaps you have an acquaintance who suffered from low-self esteem. You often observed that he took no pride in his appearance or upkeep. But, suddenly one day you began to notice a difference. Your friend had decided to wear neatly pressed clothes.
Then, you noticed that after changing dieting and exercise habits, he or she began looking more fit. The hair style became more modern. With each improvement in his appearance, he held his head higher and stepped into the room more confidently and happily. Such can be the case with our living space, if we do not take pride in its upkeep and appearance, we likely don’t esteem it as anything more than our current housing situation. Therefore, the first step in basic home improvement is cleaning its appearance.
Once the space is clean, you may be surprised at how much more motivated you are to take further home improvement steps. A good place to begin is the walls. If you can afford paint, you may want to make a small investment and paint the walls a color that creates a nice homey ambience. Warm colors, such as yellows, oranges and reds create a welcoming environment to come home to. Cool colors, such as greens and blues will create a calm, soothing place to abide in.
The colors need not be intense to create a new and improved environment. And at any local home-improvement store you may take swatches home for free to try against your walls. If you lack the funds for a large amount of pain, you may choose one wall to paint an accent color. Another option to make your paint go further is a technique called color washing, which uses paint diluted with water to create a soft effect using minimal paint.
Once you have chosen a paint color you like, you may want to choose some curtains to compliment the effect. If you find window dressings are out of your price range, try buying an inexpensive but shower curtain and cutting it in half to use as windows curtains.
Home improvement need not be expensive or elaborate, but will make a huge difference in transforming your house into your “home sweet home.”