Things That Make Your House a Home Without Spending a Dollar

Budget Doesn’t Make A Home, Imagination Does

Imagination could turn a hole in a hill into Bilbo Baggins’ “Bag-End”. HIs “hobbit hole” was just a glorified bunker, when you think about it. But as you imagine that space now, can you think of anything more comfortable? Some certainly feel that way—check out these “hobbit holes” that were actually constructed in the real world.

Imagination can make a hole a home. Accordingly, such imagination is more important in making a house a home than budget. Here, we’ll explore a few imaginative ways you can make your property more comfortable, and perhaps even expand its overall value.

Furniture Considerations

You don’t necessarily have to spend money on furniture to fill each room in your house. You’ve just got to be savvy about finding it. Sometimes a garage sale will allow you to acquire a couch for free, you just have to transport it off the property. Sometimes people simply throw furniture away by the side of the road.

You may find free furniture at the end of a college semester on campus. You may find free furniture at Salvation Army locations throughout the country, or other stores giving used goods a final chance at finding a home before they’re transported to the dump. Check church bulletin boards, Craigslist, social media shopping communities, and even the app store.

Make posts online saying you’re looking for furniture anyone wants to get rid of. If you’re diligent about this for a month or two, you’ll have more furniture than you know what to do with, most of it couches.

From there, you simply choose what you like, augment what doesn’t quite pass muster, and then you might even be able to sell the rest at a garage sale. If you can’t sell it, do what its original owners did and simply throw the unwanted furniture items away.

Landscaping, Finishing DIY Projects, Heirlooms

Your front and back yards need to be maintained. If you’re careful to maintain them, whenever you leave the house, come home, or look out your window, you’ll be greeted by the fruits of your labor. This makes a house feel less like property and more like home.

There are plenty of cost-effective DIY projects you can do. Maybe you knock down a wall once you know it’s got no infrastructure of note in it, and suddenly you’ve got a wider room than before. Maybe do some exterior painting with leftover paints; or use that paint to cover little dents or scratches.

Putting heirlooms or other family items throughout the house in a strategic way can give it your personal “flavor”, and may change the character of a room. Do you have any big blankets with ornate designs on them? Hang them on the wall and Voila! You’ve got a tapestry.

What Have You Done With Your Kitchen Lately?

Also, you need not necessarily purchase an entirely new set of kitchen cabinets to revitalize your kitchen. You can use sites like Best Online Cabinets to draw inspiration from and augment existing cabinets using items lying around the house. Decoration, painting, and doors all represent augmentation options that may only cost you time.

For example, you might remove the doors from your kitchen cabinets as a means of changing the “feel” of the space. Alternatively, you could paint them all a new color. You might paint the doors one color, and the actual cabinets another—if you’ve got multiple hues already lying around the house, it won’t cost you a thing.

Decoration can make your house home free. Just put your child’s projects from school on cabinets rather than the fridge. Alternatively, why not design pictures or other crafts specifically for augmenting cabinetry? All you need is tape or putty to apply them. If you’ve got the glass, adhesive, and a glass cutter, you could make such artworks permanent.

A backsplash behind your sink can be very inviting, stylistic, and may even expand property value slightly. If you get more value than that which you spend in the renovation, then actually you haven’t spent money, because your direct cost losses are more than made up in asset value expansion.

Making Your Home More Livable

Remodeling the kitchen using available resources, or in a way that brings more value than your investment, can be a cost-effective way of making a house feel like a home. Heirlooms, tapestries, landscaping, and other DIY projects also help.

Free furniture and strategic arrangement also do much to make your home comfortable. Think outside the box, and you’ll have a home that’s comfortable and has greater value than before.