With spring cleaning and DIY going hand-in-hand, now is a great opportunity to tackle some home improvements. However, it can be hard to know where to begin, especially if you are trying to stick to a budget.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to cut costs when giving your home a makeover and we’ve rounded up a few of the best. Here are our DIY tips for spring and summer 2023.
Sounds simple but putting up a new shelf adds depth to a room and enables you to display anything you want on it, with photos, prints and seasonal decorations all inexpensive and easy to switch whenever you fancy a change.
There are no end of shelving options available in hardware stores and online these days, with something for every budget. If you have any leftover pieces of wood from previous DIY projects, you could even have a go at making your own shelf to keep costs down further still!
By painting one wall in a room a different colour to the others, you’ll bring it to life, drawing attention to your feature wall and giving the whole room a vibrant refresh.
All you need to do is decide what colour you want your feature wall to be, then get painting! You might not even need to buy new paint – if you’ve amassed a collection of paint sample pots over the years, you could go bold and colour block your wall by using two or three different colours that work together.
If you’re not sure which colours work well together, look at a colour wheel and either choose colours that are close together – like orange, red and pink – or that are directly across from each other – like blue and yellow – for contrast.
As the heart of the home, everyone wants their kitchen to look its best. A simple way of giving it a quick face lift is to paint your cabinets and change their handles.
Immediately improve dated, gloss-finish cabinets by first painting over them with primer, then painting them any colour you choose. By then adding brass handles, you’ll instantly transform your kitchen, giving it a high-end and trend-proof look at an affordable price.
For the ultimate in budget renovations, nothing beats regrouting, so turn your attention to any cracked or discoloured bits of grout today!
Ideally, you should remove at least 3mm of the old grout – using a grout rake which can be picked up inexpensively from any hardware store – before regrouting, but if you’re really pushed for time, new grout can be applied on top of old grout.
In the time it takes the grout to dry, you’ll bring a bright outline to your tiles, highlighting their colour and instantly making the bathroom a more vibrant place to be.
With summer just around the corner, many of us are looking forward to spending some time in our gardens. If you fall into that category, you’ll want to check your garden furniture to make sure it still looks its best after six months in the shed!
Again, a simple lick of paint is all that’s required to get your tired garden furniture ready for summer. And because most sets aren’t especially big, you might have enough paint lying around your garage or shed to paint everything you need to without buying any new tins. You could even ask a neighbour if they have any pots of leftover paint you could take off their hands.
Although the aim of this advice is to help homeowners keep costs down, we know that sometimes you might need to undertake a bigger project – or several little ones all at the same time – that makes sticking to a budget impossible.
If you need a helping hand affording some home improvements this summer, we offer loans from as little as £250, all the way up to £25,000, and you can find out more about them here.