DIY Home Repairs that Your Wife is Sure to Love

Home repair needn’t be a complicated affair with contractors and massive amount of money involved. Depending on your level of expertise, there are several Do It Yourself projects that can spruce up your home and add to the level of enjoyment you get from it as well.

Paint

Painting your home is probably the easiest and cheapest fix you can do. It will make any room seem like a new room and will add years of enjoyment to your home. Simply by giving a bathroom a fresh coat of paint you can give it the feel of a brand new room.

Kitchen Appliances

Replacing your major kitchen appliances will keep your kitchen up to date and functional. Putting in a new quiet dishwasher to replace that old one that sounds like a freight train coming in will do wonders to increase the value of your kitchen. A new refrigerator not only will look great in your kitchen, but the energy savings you get may offset some of the expense of the purchase.

Kitchen Cabinets

While you’re in the kitchen, replacing those kitchen cabinets will complete the kitchen makeover. While not exactly the easiest thing to embark, and certainly it cannot be done inside of an hour, it falls well within the home repair category of things you can do to spruce up your own home. Be sure to measure each space at least twice before ordering or buying your cabinets. Nothing can sour a work experience like having too much or too little cabinet for your wall space.

Peephole in front door

This fix takes about ten minutes, once you get over the fact you’re going to have to actually cut a hole in your front door. Make sure you use the right size drill bit so that you don’t cut the hole too big. You can always widen the hole easier than you can fill in a mistake.

Garden Fencing and Garden Timbers

This spruce up takes about a half day to do, and will make your home’s outside look great. If you choose the lawn timbers, then plan on spending a little longer – maybe the entire day. Weed the garden first and then add the fence. If using timbers, you will have to dig a little bit to set the timbers. If you need to stack timbers, then overlap them a little for stability. Be sure to buy the proper size steak to fasten the timbers together and pre drill the holes before you take hammer to steak. Using a three pound sledge hammer will make the work go a little faster as well.

Backyard Decks

This may seem to be a little outside the realm of DIYer’s, but a one story deck is pretty easy to build. Make sure you lay it out properly with steaks and string, and have the proper foundation materials. Sand and gravel and good foundations for the deck to rest upon but make sure the posts are concreted in the ground. If you plan on a 2^nd story deck, get some help with that, and check to see if you need a building permit.

Shelving in Laundry Room

This project is a short afternoon one. IN fact, I found the longest time was emptying the current shelves and tearing them down without damaging the wall. Once that is done the other shelves will go up quickly.

New Closet Shelving

This also takes longer to prepare than the actual project. Putting all the stuff from your closet and replacing it will probably take longer than actually putting up the shelves. When you’re buying the shelves, take a look at the cedar closet inserts. They take longer to put up, but the effect is worth it.

Handheld Massage Shower Head

This is a five minute fix and your wife will love it. You won’t hate it either! Simply unscrew the current shower head and attach the hose and massage shower head. They run from about $10 to $50, and you get what you pay for. I have had ten years of use with my massage shower head, and it works as good as new. Just keep it clean with a lime clearing cleaning fluid once in a while (once every six months is about right) and that shower head will give you years of service.

Picture Gallery of Family

If you haven’t already done this, a few hours with a level and some picture hanging tacks can make a world of difference to a wall. If you put it in a high traffic place make sure the pictures are secure to the wall via the top and bottom. A simple screw in the bottom of the picture frame will keep it from falling down when the errant shoulder hits it.

These ten items, some simple and some a little harder, are things that almost any Do It Yourselfer can do.