Re-styling Your Older Home Without Remodeling

Are you one of those people who decided to spend a little less for an older home because you saw lots of promise and charm beneath the 80’s or 90’s decorating nightmare shell? This was us! We found ourselves a short sale in 2009 and even though the wallpaper made me want to vomit and the walls were a circus of different colors, we got the perfect house for us but it needed a little TLC. Maybe you’ve lived in your house for decades and you just know it’s time to make some updates, like the time you decided to take the shoulder pads out of your dresses and ditched the extra tease in you hair. Whatever you motivation to update- you can do it! Honestly, sometimes the simple fixes in your home can make a big difference. Those changes can be as a little as a $5 can of spray paint to as much as a $200 ceiling fan. This article is about how to re-style your older home without remodeling. These are all cheap DIY Home Improvement Ideas.

My neighborhood is comprised of homes build in the mid- 80’s. (So what you see throughout the post will be tips on how to update a house from the 1980’s but it can certainly be applied to other homes from other decades as well.) My neighborhood is also full of couples in their mid 20’s to mid 30’s. I was kind of surprised by this. I thought we were just old souls. Apparently with the market full of short sales and repo’s people buy older homes because they’re cheap!

In cases like mine where we got a decent deal on our home, we also got a home that hadn’t been updated since “Full House” came on TGIF. Therefore there are things I like about my house but also things that aren’t so fabulous. Sure I’d love to do a major remodel in the kitchen but I’m learning over time that it’s important to love the home your already living in.

The wall paper and borders came down immediately, but there were other areas that really needed improvement. Here are some ways we fixed things up without breaking the bank.

Man, what a fresh coat of paint can do for a room. It can really update an old house on budget! I recommend picking a relaxing color. One you can live with and love.

$5 Per Gallon Paint-

Paint gets expensive! So every time I go to Home Depot, Lowes, Ace or even Walmart, I immediately go to the, “Oops!” paint shelf. Everyone of these stores has one, you just have to ask a store associate where it’s located.
- The “Oops!” paint shelf is where stores house gallons of paint that people have returned or denied because there was an issue with the color. Meaning, it wasn’t exactly what they wanted or didn’t match.
- The store discounts these gallons to cost anywhere from $2.50 to $5.00. I look for light/neutral colors. Sometimes you luck out and there is more than one gallon.
Best uses of Oops Paints?
- Small Spaces- For my closets, small rooms or small bathrooms, the Oops! paints were perfect!!!
- Priming- These are also perfect for priming those rooms where you plan to paint over a darker color with a lighter color, thereby needing more coats than normal.

Restyle Older Home Without Remodeling Opps Paint

Paint w/ Primer- Lowes (Valspar Paint + Primer) and Home Depot (Behr Ultra) sell this kind of paint. It works better at getting a good coverage on the walls. I still have to do two coats but they are solid coats when I’m finished. I have only used Behr brand. I will never buy plain paint again.

Warning on Color Selection- For years we had rented. When renting, I never wanted to mess with painting because I didn’t want to have to paint it back when I moved out. So when we bought our first home, I couldn’t wait to paint my bedroom a deep red color. TERRIBLE IDEA!!!
First of all, it took 4 coats of paint/primer to get the walls covered. Then, I really disliked being in my room. My advice is to pick a calming color for the rooms you spend the most time in!

2. Counter-tops

Counter-tops are one of those expensive messy jobs. Ours were a dark forest green color. It was quit terrible. While at Home Depot I ran across this small container of paint made by Rust-Oleum that was supposed to be made for painting counter-tops. It’s called: Rust-Oleum 263206 Countertop Coating Premix, 32-Ounce Kit. I was really skeptical at first.

In fact I bought some and my husband was so skeptical he asked me to return it. But after we decided that replacing the counter tops was not in the budget, we just went for it! It was worth it!!! It does exactly what it said it would do and now I have really nice looking counter-tops in my bathroom for about $40 with no ripping out of anything. This is defiantly one of those weekend home improvement projects.