While you never quite know how a little DIY project will impact the overall value of your home in Tacoma, Washington, many projects have a positive impact on buzz from buyers, translating to more offers and potentially more competitive ones. Particularly if you have a little time before you want to sell, taking on a few projects could really pay off and only cost you a little money and some elbow grease. The key is to pick the areas in your home that most could use a facelift, not just any part of the home, so that the update is the most dramatic benefit possible.
Replace Dated or Worn Flooring
For example, taking out all the flooring in your home and replacing it would be costly and time-consuming, unlikely to fully give you a return on your investment. However, if you look at the care, qualify, and style of all the flooring in your home, updating or replacing the worst-off parts of the floor can have a big impact. Getting rid of bathroom carpet, for instance, is very helpful to making your home feel a little less old. If your wood floors are mostly great but have one area that could use refinishing, doing that room’s refinishing won’t take so long and can bring the overall feel of the home up.
Interior Paint in Modern, Bright Whites
If your home’s walls are in colors that are known as 70s, 80s, or even 90s colors, redoing with a bright modern white paint can work wonders for the home. White emphasizes the natural light in the room, and it makes the home much more of a blank canvas for the potential buyer, allowing them to envision whatever they want to do with the house.
Update Weatherstripping and Caulk to Increase Efficiency
Drafty feelings in a home are never fun, and they usually indicate that your doing some heating and cooling of the outdoors due to air leaks, which is expensive and wasteful. Simply evaluating and fixing any faulty weatherstripping or caulk on windows, doors, and other seals can really go a long way to keeping your house snug and warm or a cool oasis in the summer.
Replace Your Most Old-Fashioned Lighting, Hardware, or Door Locks
Similar to the flooring, hardware makes a big difference in the look and feel of a room. Rather than a whole-house update, identify which room is most out-of-place or old-looking when it comes to light fixtures, cabinet handles, drawer pulls, or doorknobs. Find a modern, classy looking style and replace these features, or replace just one or two of them in order to make the whole look more harmonious. The idea is to do the least work and least update that will still make the space look better.
If you’re working carefully, many of these projects can be done in small steps or completed in a single weekend, and at the end, you have a home that is a little more uniform in its look and without major elements that date it to being an older house. The look you achieve could really wow the buyers when you sell your home!
