Hellobee Boards

I was going to say painting the trim. So time consuming but makes a huge visual difference.

Artwork on the walls can make rooms feel nicer. It doesn't have to be expensive just something that matters to you. Light fixtures can also really date a home, while they can be expensive it is also possible to find some great deals.

Changing out doorknobs was a huge one! I have two left to do. Also, painting rooms, trim, and cabinets.

whitewashing our fireplace brick made a HUGE difference in making the room feel bright and airy. it only took about 2 hours and 1 small can of paint to do.

We recently installed an outlet in a hall closet so I could charge things like a dustbuster in there, hidden away. That's a little thing that makes a big difference!

@looch: Ours needs this too but I am dreading it because of all the other stuff in there that needs to be done/fixed (like a major de-bugging and cleaning).

Some bigger stuff we need to do:
- Replace door between garage/house with a fire-safe one
- Replace carpeting

Bigger stuff we have hired out
- Bathroom remodel (new tile, sink, toilet), but there was an actual hole in the ground from a previous leak.

Small stuff we will hire out
- Replacing lights/fans (our house has aluminum wiring, so I want to have those that we replace COPALUM'd to make it safer)

We have a few small projects coming up after the new year that I think will make a huge difference. I think I've *finally* convinced my husband that we should paint the trim (still trying to convince him to do the doors, too)--when we bought our house the seller touted "fresh paint!" but they did SUCH a crappy job...drips everywhere, missing patches, and everything (trim, walls, doors) are painted the same basic beige.

We have one small light in the entry that is ugly and I've seen much nicer looking fixtures at Home Depot for around $60. I'm advocating for that

We are also planning on putting up some beadboard in the powder room and replacing the mirror. The room is small so we'll only need 2 sheets or so. The mirror is leftover from my brother's bathroom remodel. And we'll replace the toilet roll holder. My mom gave me some leftover green paint (the color of the comment box, ha!), so the project should only take a day and about $70.

Bigger things that we would like to do, but need to save for are (1) re-tiling the kitchen and dining area. They are next to each other and have two different tiles, are ugly, and basically impossible to keep clean (white tile in the kitchen with grooves that trap dirt, blue slate tile in the dining room with a weird greasy coating since the time we moved in, grout that ranges from light grey to black--so gross!). (2) Adding can lights to the living room, which has no overhead lighting. Why did people build houses that way?! (3) Replacing window coverings with plantation shutters (at least in the living room and master bedroom). Or maybe all of them--our downtown townhouse only has 6 windows that would need them.

We just did a ton of projects this summer which have helped a bit. We love our home but needed to do a few things to make us more comfortable:

- Installed recessed lighting in the living room. This has helped a lot because our house can get very dark.
- New chandelier in dining room.
- New paint in dining room and accents in kitchen.
- New light fixtures in kitchen.
- New paint and ceiling in 1/2 bathroom (this room sustained damage recently but it looks better now)-- still need to update the flooring and fixtures in there.
- New attic door-- the old one was warped and we lost a lot of energy through there.
- All new paint, carpet and baseboards in LO's new room-- again, this room was damaged after an incident last year so did not need to be done, but it looks really nice.
- All new flooring and baseboards in upstairs landing area.

Next up is replacing our upstairs windows. I'm bracing myself but it needs to be done sooner rather than later. We have a lot of little projects and eventually would like to update our kitchen, but not quite yet.