My Five Favorites: Best “Bang for the Buck” Home Projects!

Swapping Out Closet Doors for Curtains

The closet in our master bedroom isn’t the big, luxurious walk-in closet that I wish it was – it’s a pretty standard double bifold door closet that my husband and I have to cram our clothes into. Since it’s not a ton of space, we use every square inch of it and it always drove me crazy that the middle of the closet and the right end of it were so dark and difficult to get to because of the center partition and the bifold doors taking up so much space when folded back: 

I had thought about replacing the doors with curtains for a while but honestly hadn’t seen very many decent looking curtained closets out there so was pretty leery about the end result. But when I did a complete makeover of our bedroom (you can see that {here}), I decided it was time to take the plunge and get those they-drive-me-so-crazy bifold doors outta there. We removed the doors, our contractor removed the center partition and patched the floor, I repainted the trim & stained & sealed the patched floor, and then I installed the new drapes and hardware. And I LOVE it! It is so, so much more functional (it’s now a breeze to access every inch of the closet) and while I was worried about it looking awkward, I think the end result is a lot better looking that what we started with:

Of course the new acrylic rods and wallpapering the back of the closet helped a bit too 🙂 You can check out my entire tutorial and source list for replacing my closet door with curtains {here}.  

Painting Laminate Cabinets & Shelving

We have a tiny little craft room upstairs that my girls love and when I did a makeover of it last year, I wanted to do something about the gross yellowy beige laminate cabinets and shelving that were in there but definitely wasn’t going to spend the money to replace them. 

I ended up painting all of the cabinetry and shelving along with filling the holes of the previous drawer pulls and drilling new center holes to accommodate some fun new knobs. It (along with the new wallpaper) totally brightened up the whole space and changed its look from dated to fresh! 

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It was as simple as sanding everything down, using {this great primer} that sticks to most surfaces including laminate, and then painting them white. I actually had both the primer and the paint so this little upgrade didn’t cost me a penny! I’ll be sharing a full step by step tutorial soon but in the meantime if you missed this little makeover and want to see more, you can find my bonus and craft room makeover {here}. 

Creating a Gallery Wall with Homemade Art

I love gallery walls but the cost can add up when you’re talking about buying 10+ pieces of art plus the frames. A great budget solution is to either create your own art or use art from the budding artists in your family such as your kids, grandkids, nieces, or nephews. For the gallery wall over the daybed in our bonus room, I used art that my girls created throughout the years and also saved money by reusing several frames that we already had so that the only costs for the entire gallery wall were a few new frames!

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And here’s a little tip that might help you knock this project out – a lot of the art that my girls did when they were younger was too large to easily frame but I didn’t want to destroy it by cutting or bending it to fit a smaller frame. So for these pieces, I made color photocopies of the portion of the original artwork that I wanted to frame and in some cases I even used the copier settings to reduce the printed size down to the exact size I needed. The colorful little house on the bottom right of our bonus room gallery wall is one of the pieces I did this with:

Another tip is to consider using a ceramic piece of art too if you have it! I incorporated a ceramic flower that one of my daughters had painted into the mix by using a box frame and hot glue gunning it to the back which keeps it on securely but (I think) will come off without harming the ceramic art piece if I ever decide to remove it. This art wall is my favorite one in our house because it’s filled with meaningful pieces that make me smile each time I look at it! If you want to see more pics of our bonus room and a complete source list for this space, you can find that {here} and if you want to see the other gallery walls in our home you can check out our home office gallery wall {here} and our family room gallery wall {here}. 

Painting Our Tile Floors

My favorite DIY of 2017 is also one of my favorite “best bang for the buck” projects – painting the tile floors in our hall bathroom. It’s not only a super inexpensive project but a pretty easy DIY too! I was super nervous about how this project would turn out but since we had plans to remove the tub and retile the floor in 1-2 years, I figured the worst that could happen is that I’d have to live with a peeling, scraped mess of a floor for a little while. That’s not much worse than this glaring red I had already been living with for several years already so I decided to give it a shot!

Not only do I love the look of the painted tile floors (I wasn’t sure whether painting the grout along with the tile would look ridiculous!), but it has held up amazingly well!

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You can check out all the details of my tile painting project {here}, including a step by step tutorial. And you can read more about stenciling my bathroom walls {here}. 

DIY Shiplap Walls

When we first moved into our house, our master bedroom was one super sorry looking space! From the light blue faux finish walls to the overhead dome light to the mishmash of furniture and bedding, a serious makeover was in order. 

Since I love the look of planked walls (and also because I wanted to avoid the skim coating and sanding that would need to be done if I was going to just paint the walls), I decided to go for shiplap! True shiplap involves using thick planks and would involve removing and replacing ALL of the trimwork in my room. Since THAT wasn’t going to happen, I went the DIY route with faux shiplap. It made our small little master bedroom feel so much bigger and brighter and I love the added interest of the planked walls! 

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You can click {here} to see the full DIY shiplap tutorial along with a complete source list for our master bedroom.