Home decoration has always been a popular industry, as society is inseparable from families, and where there are families, there is home decoration. Particularly in today’s society, home decoration comes in various levels with diverse prices, each with its own merits, but behind every home decoration project lies an expense. Abroad, most families choose to reduce home decoration costs through DIY methods.
So, how do they lower these expenses? Below are six home improvement projects suitable for DIY:01 Installing Ceiling Beams
Mikel Welch, an interior designer in New York City and an instructor at the online learning platform Skillshare, imitated the design and installation of old-fashioned teak wood doors for ceiling and beam designs, with headboards featuring rough-sawn artificial wooden beams. Utilizing Dap Alex Plus paintable latex caulk and with the help of a partner, they successfully completed the edge sealing of the 10-pound beams. Each beam required about 20 minutes to wait for the adhesive to dry, and installing beams in a medium-sized room project may take about half a day. Welch claims that using artificial beams for these projects is more cost-effective than using wooden beams, with costs only a tenth of the original.
02 Utilizing Doorway Space
The space next to the door is a precious resource. Libby Laws, the owner and chief designer of Sharp + Gray Interiors in Philadelphia, helped a family renovate a side door. She believes that the unreasonable use of space can greatly impact lifestyles, especially the space around doorways. She suggests that utilizing every inch of space for thoughtful storage can provide many storage options for small spaces. Undoubtedly, home decoration for doorway spaces will be a considerable expense. If we choose to DIY the renovation, we first need a complete plan. It is necessary to decide how this space will function and what components need to be placed, such as panels, cabinets, shelves, benches, etc. Measure the space before determining the configuration. In this home decoration process, following Laws’ advice, the family only spent $2000 to complete the renovation of the doorway space, saving half the funds compared to hiring a professional contractor.
03 Painting the Exterior of the House
Chantelle Clark, the Creative Director of Clarke and Co. Global Design in Melbourne, Australia, spent four weeks painting the originally mismatched wall bricks of her house, ultimately making its bricks, eaves, windows, gutters, panels, and downspouts form a cohesive whole, with no longer any jarring or discordant elements. According to Clark, the cost of this work was less than $900, including paint, scaffolding rental, and painting equipment, which is a tenth of the professional painter’s quote!
04 Installing Floor
Laying flooring may seem like a daunting task, but for Dallas-based Jiang Curtis, it is a simple matter.
With the help of her husband, she laid handcrafted maple wood flooring for her son in two rooms. Curtis applied the custom-cut planks directly to the plywood subfloor using a nail gun. (She noted that if using a concrete base, wood glue must be used.) Each room took two to three days to complete. DIY flooring offers significant savings: for Curtis, who cut the reclaimed maple planks into 4-inch by 8-foot planks, the professional price ranged from $10,000 to $15,000. Instead, she spent approximately $900 to complete both children’s rooms.
Setting up paneled walls, ‘Paneling completely transforms the look of any room and can be customized to achieve various styles and colors,’ says paneling expert Hayley Hamill, who has completed over 60 projects in Cheltenham, England, for her account. More importantly, each project costs less than $100! Hamill advises beginners to ensure accurate measurements and to be patient and persistent when undertaking this work to complete it successfully. Cabinet shelf upgrade, DIY enthusiast Meghan Duncan renovated her laundry room and added a shelf in the laundry room. When designing the laundry room, she mainly considered two things: storage for supplies and space for drying clothes. She purchased unfinished oak cabinets for $90 each and installed them herself. Later, she installed pine boards to hang clothes in conjunction with the depth of the washing machine and dryer. The entire process took only four hours and cost just over $100.