DIY Renovations That Added the Most Value to Our Homes
We’ve put a lot of work into our homes over the years. Some of the projects were for our family’s specific needs, but others were with ROI in mine. While we don’t know for sure what helped our houses sell of course, here are the specific projects that (based on buyer, inspector and realtor feedback) made the biggest impact on our homes.
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Kitchen Remodel
The kitchen in our very first house was tiny, dark and non-functional. There was an entire wall that only had the fridge – no cabinets or storage of any kind – and the oven was enormous. It just wasn’t… functional. At all.
We lived with the culinary cave for almost four months before we started the renovation process. This wasn’t a DIY job at all – we ended up pretty much having the whole thing gutted – but we did design the whole room to be more functional and we learned a lot about how to analyze the way we use a space that will help with DIY in the future.
I feel VERY confident saying the kitchen was what helped sell this home.
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Mudroom and Home Office Makeover
We sold our first house in September 2020, so in the height of the COVID pandemic. Little did we know at the time that our mudroom rebuild – which included a built-in desk and storage – would be a huge selling point a year later when people were still working remotely. There was also a ton of added storage in here, and people love storage!
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Pantry and Laundry Room Renovation
This was the first big, big project of our second house. And really the first time we took on a room that had more than just cosmetic issues — like closing off a doorway and fixing some janky drywall.
Our pantry makeover took two months with us ripping out the old drywall and busted cabinets. We changed the footprint of the room by closing off a doorway to the living room, leaving the doorway to the kitchen, to allow for maximum cabinet space. Because this was pretty early in our DIY days, we didn’t replace the old linoleum floors and instead painted them.
This is the only time we’ve had people on the internet claiming we lied in before and after photos and that it wasn’t actually the same room, so I feel like that shows how good of a before and after it was! Plus, it allowed us to add a wall of built-ins on the newly closed off wall in the living room, which was a big hit.
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Outdoor Living
Living in a sunny region, outdoor living is a big deal. We put in a ton of work into our house’s backyard/patio, but also into our porch. In the backyard of this house, we stenciled our patio to make it look like tile which held up so well in the years we lived there. Definitely recommend!
Click here for our porch makeover and click here for the back patio transformation.
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Kitchen Renovation
No project has tested us more than the full kitchen renovation of our third house. We took this down to the studs and floorboards and put it back together. The biggest improvement was removing the wall between the kitchen and living room, which completely opened up the house. While we still live here and haven’t sold it yet, we’ve had countless contractors come over for different jobs and all talk about how much better this is than the before (comments we of course eat up every time lol).
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Murphy Bed
I think we can all agree that beyond being functional, building a DIY Murphy bed is just plain cool. For a medium-sized house, having an entire guest space is a HUGE plus, and I think it’ll be a really unique and functional point when we go to sell one day.
Click here to see more about the project.
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Master Bathroom Renovation
The scary bunker of a bathroom we started with became the modern/vintage bathroom of our dreams! This master bathroom renovation was a real test from the inch-thick concrete backing the shower tile to the bubbling paint on the drywall and the tiny footprint giving some layout challenges (it’s only a 5×7 room!). Bathrooms are always a big make-or-break point for buyers!
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Brick Painting
This was by far the most controversial project we’ve ever done. The internet was after us for painting over our old red brick, but spoiler alert our house hasn’t collapsed yet.
Painting over the old brick added sooooooooo much curb appeal, and we literally had neighbors stopping to tell us how great it looks and even former renters of this house which was really cool.
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