DIY Projects To Upgrade Your Home on a Budget

Stencil Your Walls

Wallpaper can be spendy and hard to hang. Understatement of the year? Enter: this idea from Emma Courtney, a DIYer based in Toronto. She faked the luxe look of real paper using paint and a stencil from Etsy (stenciledup.etsy.com). According to Courtney—and the crew who prepped the set for our cover shoot—the key here is patience. “You also want a stencil with a registration mark,” Courtney says. These marks are small design elements cut into the edge of the stencil that help you repeat the pattern evenly. Carve out a few hours per wall, gather your supplies, and follow these steps.

1. Clean and prep your walls as you normally would before painting, sanding down imperfections and making sure they’re free of grease, dust, and schmutz.
2. Position your stencil either in a corner or at a focal point (say, the middle of the wall over a fireplace) and start from there.
3. Use a level to confirm that the stencil is straight and secure it with painter’s tape around the edges.
4. Dip a foam roller or foam brush in paint and remove any excess. Roll or dab it over the stencil—gently! It’s better to use a light touch and apply multiple layers than to go super heavy on the first stab and risk bleeding. Add more coats as needed.
5. Once you’re finished with that spot, carefully remove the stencil and place it next to the section you just completed, lining it up evenly. Secure it with painter’s tape and repeat! Keep repeating until the entire wall has been stenciled.
6. Finish with touch-ups. Go in with a small paint-brush to clean up edges or fill in any spots.

Add Cookbook Storage to Your Kitchen Island

“I’d been looking for a place to store my cookbooks that wasn’t on my limited counter space,” says DIYer Danielle Guerrero of Corona, California. Eventually, she came up with the idea to add picture ledges to the side of her kitchen island—real estate that had been going to waste. Danielle made her own shelves, but you don’t have to! These ready-to-hang options should work great: Syler ModernMetal Wall Shelf; wayfair.com.

DIY a Headboard

Any guesses as to what this headboard is made out of? Hint: The answer rhymes with schmool boodles. That’s right—pool noodles! Margaret Wright, an interior photographer in Charleston, South Carolina, used them for this splashy design. “I wanted a large arch, and when I saw a different DIY involving stacked noodles, I realized it was a great solution. I could bend them to create what I wanted,” she says. First, she measured her space and mapped out the dimensions. Then she wrapped a bunch of pool noodles in fabric using hot glue, and glued some noodles together to make long-enough pieces. She attached the noodles to a foam-board backing, which she had cut out in an arch shape and covered with that same fabric. Row after row, she repeated until she had a nice border. She really used her noodle!

Replace Pantry Doors With Something Unique

Houston-based DIYer and designer Ryia Jose could have bought brand-new doors for her pantry but decided on a more original approach. She found banged-up European double doors on Facebook Marketplace for $500 and got to work. First she sanded down the rough spots and applied wax polish to help protect the wood. Then she gave the glass a major scrub with MeanGreen Degreaser to remove decades of dirt. She replaced missing panes with green stained glass from a wholesaler, using a bit of silicone sealant (a.k.a. glue). The final steps were adding brass hinges, a magnetic door closure, and vintage brass doorknobs from Etsy. “All in all, these doors were a project, but I’m stoked with how they turned out,” Jose says. “They make such a statement in my kitchen.” Adoorable!

Hide the TV

Amanda Walker came up with a cute and easy way to hide her big screen when it’s not in use. First, the Dallas blogger made a shelf a couple of inches wider than her TV, with a lip at the bottom deep enough to house a rolled-up shade. (If you buy a shelf, get one with an apron trim on the bottom.) Then she mounted the shelf above the TV. For the curtain, she sewed small elastic loops onto the top of a piece of fabric, which could hang from screws inside the shelf. She also sewed a dowel into a bottom pouch to add weight to the curtain—and make it easier to roll up for movie night.

Get Playful With Your Cords

Blogger Krystle Perkins, who lives in Dallas, bought two bedside sconces with thick black cords. She didn’t want to pay an electrician to wire them, so she got creative. “I had an aha moment,” she says. “What if I viewed the cords as an extension of the fixture itself and had fun with it? ”She used heavy-duty double-sided tape to adhere the cords to the wall in squiggly lines, hot-gluing the switches right to the headboard so she could easily access them. Now the cords look intentional! Oh, and the whole project took less than 30 minutes.

Spice Up Your Grout

Grout is not the sexiest thing in your home. (That’d be you!) But people have been playing around with it lately, swapping out the typical white or gray stuff for colourful or sparkly grout. Allann Arnold, owner and principal designer at Hollace Homes (@hollacehomes) in Wimberley, Texas, went with bold magenta around the simple white tiles in this laundry room. While she had hers custom made to match the paint colour on an accent wall (Exuberant Pink 6840 by Sherwin-Williams), you can shop for ready-to-go options at hemway.com.

Paint an Outdoor Mural

Fact: Even if you’re not all that artistic, you’re still capable of painting a mural! Liz Rishel projected a design onto an exterior wall of her home in Orlando, Florida. Then she traced each section with chalk in colours similar to the paint colours she’d ultimately use—to remember which was going where. She suggests applying two coats of outdoor paint and grabbing a one-inch brush for crisp edges. A three- or four-inch brush is good for filling in the larger areas. Now go forth and release your inner Keith Haring!

Limewash Your Walls

For walls that give off old-money vibes, try a mineral paint limewash. Alexandra Gater used the technique to create a textured feature wall behind the bed in this Toronto home. “I love using limewash paint because you don’t need to be precise, which makes it super easy,” she says. Here’s what she thinks you need to know:

• Limewash can come ready-to-use or as a formula that needs water mixed in. Go for the latter. “Adding water will alter the colour of the limewash, but it gives it a beautiful watercolour look, and I like having control of the dilution,” Gater says. She chose a cool teal shade called Moonstone from the paint brand Pure & Original. Another suggestion: Portola Paints.
• Use a limewash block brush, which has denser bristles than a regular paintbrush. Because limewash is on the watery side, you need a brush that will hold a significant amount of it. The Limewash Block Brush ($25; bauwerkcolour.com) is a good one.
• Gater says that applying limewash is like painting a giant piece of freehand art. Use an X motion to create organic strokes. And don’t worry about making your strokes uniform, she adds. Limewash is meant to look imperfect.
• Two coats should do the trick—if you add more than that, you’ll lose the variation in shades, and the wall will look less textured.
• Don’t panic if your wet paint looks much darker than you were expecting. Limewash lightens as it dries!

Add Crown Molding

Though her 1890s New York City apartment had tons of character, Hattie Kolp felt it was sorely lacking in the crown molding department. So she ordered lightweight urethane trim with a leafy pattern (Palmetto 3 3/4″ Crown Moulding, from $49.50; ekenamillwork.com), rented a 12-inch miter saw and an 18-gauge brad nailer from The Home Depot, and brought in a helper from TaskRabbit to handle the tricky cuts (old buildings tend not to have straight walls). There were some tense moments, but Kolp remembered the mantra, “A little caulk and paint make it what it ain’t.” Once the final touches were done, everything blended in seamlessly. “The molding is the icing on the cake of my Parisian-inspired apartment,” she says.

Build Some Wine Storage

No wine cellar? No problem! Zoe Hunt turned an empty cabinet in her Durham, North Carolina, kitchen into a wine rack using oak plywood. She cut boards to fit her cabinet’s dimensions and ironed on edge banding (wood tape) to cover outer facing sides and make the pieces look like solid wood. Next, she used a jigsaw to cut grooves halfway through the boards, allowing her to slide them together like a 3D puzzle. After that, she nailed more boards to the back and sides of the gridded pieces to create a box. To finish her project, she coated the wood with Minwax Rustic Beige Stain ($13 for 1 qt.; lowes.com), placed the rack in the empty cabinet—and opened a bottle.

For more DIY ideas and tips see the full article HERE.

Source: Get It Done: 15 DIY Projects To Upgrade Your Home on a Budget (realsimple.com); By Erica Finamore and Hannah Baker | Published on April 16, 2024