Budget Friendly Renovation Ideas-The Power of Paint
Over the summer, my husband and I purchased a second house for our two sons that are going to college. We decided that instead of spending thousands of dollars on rent, we could put that money into another house. We found a house that was in our price range, had enough bedrooms and bathrooms to house our sons and a couple of their friends. We found a duplex that was built in 2006 and clearly has not had any work done it since then. It was definitely a fixer upper and in pretty bad shape when we bought it. The before pictures don’t make it look as bad as it was because the previous owners had a few cats that destroyed so much of the flooring and made the whole house have a funky smell. Plus, the whole house hadn’t been deep cleaned for a very long time. Luckily, my husband and I aren’t afraid of hard work and immediately got to work to make the house brighter and more livable.
Since we had just purchased the house this summer, we didn’t have a ton of money to put into the house. We had to come up with budget friendly renovation ideas that wouldn’t break the bank and gave us the biggest bang for our buck. Another issue that we had was that we live 14 hours away from this house, so we had to come up with ideas that we could do over a few weekends over the summer, so we couldn’t do any kind of major renovations. We had to just stick with the cosmetic renovations, which can have a huge impact. Another problem we had to figure out was picking out colors and materials from 14 hours away. I couldn’t just go to the store and then see how it would like in the house. I had to make decisions from 14 hours away, because the time we had at the house was limited and I had to have the supplies shipped to the house. So when we got there, we could put all of our time into doing the renovations. I happy to say that after a CRAZY summer and traveling thousands of miles and hours, we have gotten the house looking so much better. I will be doing the renovation posts in sections, but you would like to see the complete budget friendly renovations that we did, you can see the before and after post here.
When we bought the house, my biggest complaint about it was how dark it was. It was very dark and dingy. Because it is a duplex, there aren’t a lot of windows, especially on the left side of the house because that is where the other duplex is. The very first thing I wanted to do was paint the whole house. The walls were sooooo dirty. And that is not an exaggeration, there were dry boogers all over the walls. And that was not just in one room, all over the house. It was DISGUSTING! So the very first thing I did was painted the walls in the house. I took a long weekend and just had a big painting party. Before I got there, I decided on the paint color. This house is much different than our current house. We did a lot of gray and whites in our current house but with this one, I’m doing more warm tones because we don’t have the time to paint all the cabinets, doors and railings. So when I picked a paint color, I wanted to find a color that would look good with grays and browns. So I went with a paint color that I knew that I loved because it is the same one that I put in my house. I went with Worldly Gray.
Here are the before pictures of the house. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 and half bathrooms and is about 1600 square feet.
Living Room
Hallway
Dining Room
Kitchen
Half Bathroom
Upstairs Hallway
Master Bedroom
Master Bathroom
Second Bedroom
Third Bedroom
Upstairs Bathroom
As you can see from these pictures, it is so dark and bleh. What you can’t see is how dirty it all was too. Whenever I was in the house, I just felt dirty and gross. Everything I touched made me feel icky. As I started working on it, it made me feel a lot better and it eventually started to feel clean.
Here is the process of painting.
For the whole house, I used about 5 gallons of the Emerald Sherwin Williams Worldly Gray in a satin finish. I did two coats on the walls, even on the white walls because the white paint was a flat finish and absorbed the paint. Using painters tape, I taped all the trim and edges. Here are the paint rollers and brushes that I love to use for painting:
Slanted brush (this is awesome for cutting the edges)
Immediately after I painted over the navy wall, the room felt bigger and brighter!
Even though I didn’t mind the green walls, it made the space feel closed off and smaller. The Worldly Gray color makes it look so much better, it even made the ugly floors like better!
I wanted a fun pop of color for the front door, so I went into Sherwin Williams and looked at the trendy color section. I found a really nice green in that section called Gallery Green. I bought it in a sample size and then painted the door with a foam roller.
Ready for the after pictures? I was able to paint the whole house (minus the laundry room, we didn’t have time to move the washer and dryer) over the summer. It took me several weekends to do it, 5 gallons of paint and lots of rolls of painters tape. The total cost for painting the whole house was around $600, which was totally worth it! The house looks so much cleaner, brighter and updated. If you are wanting to do some kind of budget friendly renovations on your house, then painting the house is a great place to start. It is super easy, anyone can do it and it is very effective! It is amazing what a can of paint can do to a house. As you can see from these before and after pictures, it is a night and day difference.
Living Room
Dining Room
Kitchen
Downstairs Half Bathroom
Upstairs Hallway
Master Bedroom. From the second I saw the navy blue paint in this room, I wanted to paint it. It was sooooo dark in there.
Master Bathroom
Second Bedroom
Third Bedroom
Upstairs Bathroom
If you are thinking about painting your house, DO IT!! The power of paint is amazing. It really can change the feel of your house and update it. If you want to see more home improvement ideas, check out these posts!
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