After Two Years In My First Home, These Are The Small Upgrades I've Done That Have Made The Biggest Impact On My Day-To-Day
If I had to distill my first two years of homeownership into one sentence, it'd be something close to "the projects never end." In 2021, my partner and I bought our first house: a kinda dinky-looking, 500-square-foot cottage in upstate New York. Though it's certainly flawed and often frustrating, I wouldn't change a thing...that is, except for all the literal changes and upgrades we've been steadily working at ever since closing day.
Yes, having a never-ending slate of home projects at any given time can sometimes feel overwhelming, but I can assure you there's no better feeling than checking a weekend project off your list after you finally get around to doing it.
While many of the necessary projects we've done around the house haven't been the most enjoyable or cost-effective (I'm lookin' at you, entire HVAC replacement), most of the upgrades we've implemented have actually fallen square in the middle of the Venn diagram that is "worth every penny" vs. "life-changing."
These are the straightforward home improvement projects that I'd highly recommend to all homeowners, from cheapest to most expensive. And if you're a renter, rest assured that several of these will work for you, too.
1.Replacing older light switches with specialty or more modern ones helped a ton with both style and function. And for anyone who's worried about dealing with electricity, I promise it's a lot easier than you'd think.
Whenever I scroll through Reddit for budget-friendly home upgrade ideas, there's one that I see over and over again: using a timer switch for an instant bathroom exhaust fan upgrade. With $20 and about 15 minutes, I decided to give it a try in my own home, and as small as it is, using it has honestly become one of my favorite simple pleasures in my routine. Our teeny-tiny bathroom steams up almost instantly if you forget to run the fan while showering, so now I just select a time before I shower and I don't have to worry about manually turning the fan off afterward. The best part: It replaces a standard switch without any special steps for installation. If you've never replaced a light switch before, you'll be surprised by just how easy it is.
If you don't have any need for a timer switch, even a simple dimmer can offer an aesthetic boost to any room for a very small upfront investment — usually $30 or so for a dimmer that won't flicker. And if you're still not feeling like dealing with electricity but want to give your light switches a bit of a facelift, doing something as simple as replacing the wall plates with more modern ones (or more decorative, as shown above) takes a matter of minutes and is legitimately foolproof.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $20 for a timer switch
⏰ TIME NEEDED: 15–20 minutes
💡 PRO TIP: After you've completed the wiring but before you tuck the entire switch back into the wall, carefully turn the circuit back on to test that everything is working properly before you seal everything up. Importantly, be very careful to avoid any exposed wires.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: For dimmer switches that won't flicker, I've learned the hard way that quality is really important. Some bulbs can be finicky with certain dimmers, so make sure everything is compatible ahead of time...and pay the extra $10 or so for a switch that'll work as you intend it to.
And while we're talking about bathroom fans (or exhaust fans, in general): If yours burns out, find the manufacturer's site and see if you can order just the fan assembly instead of replacing and re-installing the entire housing. You'll save yourself hundreds of dollars and a big ol' electrician bill on top of that.
2.Bad lighting can totally ruin a space. Luckily, I realized early on that replacing questionable ceiling lights with ones you'll actually like looking at isn't very hard. It can make a huge difference in aesthetics, and your literal mood, for very little money.
The first time I laid my eyes on the aggressively bright, horrific fluorescent light that made my already questionable kitchen feel like a scene out of a Saw film, I knew I had to get it down ASAP. But before calling an electrician, I decided to watch some YouTube videos to figure out if I could do it on my own, and it ended up being a lot more foolproof than I thought it would be. In my case, all it took was removing the old fixture, patching up a few holes, slapping on a fresh coat of ceiling paint, and installing the new fixture in its place. It sounds like a lot, but it only required about 1–2 hours of actual work; you'll spend most of your time waiting for spackle or paint to dry in between steps.
Warning: Once you replace one ceiling light, you'll feel an intense, primal urge to update all of your lights. And that's great! Shortly after, we swapped our brighter-than-the-sun bathroom can lights for some recessed LEDs that have a built-in nightlight mode, and they've changed the whole feel of our bathroom for the better.
More than just making these two rooms feel cozier and softer, I actually feel like both sets of light were instant mood improvers when it came time to cook or even brush my teeth first thing in the morning. Having warm, comforting light as an option is something I didn't realize I needed until I had it, and now I'll never go back.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $30 for a new ceiling light fixture, plus the cost of paint and supplies, if needed
⏰ TIME NEEDED: 30 minutes for a standard swap, up to one hour if you're swapping the type of fixture (i.e. fluorescent to standard, or ceiling can lights to recessed LEDs), plus time for patching, sanding, and painting as needed
💡 PRO TIP: If you're removing a fluorescent light, check with your town or garbage removal service to make sure you're disposing of those bulbs safely and legally. Most states have pretty serious regulations surrounding the disposal of fluorescent bulbs, so you're better safe than sorry.
Also, just buy a voltage tester for peace of mind. For less than $20, it's worth avoiding any justified fear around electrocution.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: If you're spending the money on a new fixture, make sure you're also investing in the right lightbulbs. We initially installed Edison-style bulbs in our kitchen fixture, which were too intense and shadowy even when dimmed. For any fixtures with bare bulbs, I'd highly recommend frosted bulbs so your space will feel soft and inviting.
(And before we move on, shoutout to BuzzFeed reader rebeccam4e04c2006 who kindly suggested I make that exact swap when I wrote about how much my Edison bulbs, pictured above, were bumming me out.)
3.Perhaps the quickest way we were able to elevate our interior was by swapping out older, cheap-feeling hardware on our doors and cabinets with ones we loved the look and feel of.
Beyond looking nicer than the shiny brass cabinet pulls and door handles that preceded them, upgrading all of our hardware genuinely made the experience of utilizing all of these tactile items a lot more pleasant. It's odd to admit, but I now love the sensation of opening and closing our bathroom door; the spring-loaded tension on our matte black door handles makes them wildly satisfying to use.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $31 per door handle, $20 for a pack of 10 cabinet pulls
⏰ TIME NEEDED: About 15 minutes per door or 1–2 minutes per cabinet pull
💡 PRO TIP: If you're going through the trouble of replacing door hardware, you might as well replace the hinges, too. An 18-pack of matching matte black door hinges only set me back about $25. As long as you make sure your hinges are an exact size match for the ones you're trying to replace, it's a relatively straightforward job for two people to complete.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: Before you pat yourself on the back and officially finish your hardware upgrades, triple-check that the new strike plate aligns with the existing hole in your doorframe so the door can fully and easily close. Our bedroom door still doesn't fully close for this reason, but with two people and a dog, it doesn't bother me that much. I'll fix it someday, but you should avoid my mistakes if you're able to.
4.Painting walls is fun and all, but painting doors is where it's at. Our flimsy, hollow-core interior doors suddenly felt more luxurious after we slapped a fresh coat of moody gray paint on them, and my only regret is that we didn't do it sooner.
You also don't have to totally change up the look of your space with a brand-new color if you don't want to; doors and trim are supposed to have a bit of a sheen to them, so if the previous owners of your home also used a flat paint instead of a semi-gloss (🙋), painting over with plain white in the proper sheen makes more of a difference than you could realize. We did this with all of our bi-fold closet doors on a rainy afternoon, and it was game-changing.
🤑 TOTAL COST: About $40 for a quart of paint, a quart of primer, and a brush or two
⏰ TIME NEEDED: 1–2 hours per door
💡 PRO TIP: Try to paint your doors all over with vertical brush strokes, or in the direction of the wood grain (or faux wood grain). Since you'll be using paint with a higher sheen, your brush strokes will be more visible than they would be on a wall, so it's important to keep everything as uniform as possible.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: Invest in the best paint primer you can find instead of just slapping on the paint. We neglected to realize just how often doors are touched and moved and kicked, and as a result, we've found that the paint is lightly chipping in select areas — specifically around the door handles. I'm of the mindset that priming walls before painting isn't 100% necessary, but if you're painting a door, it's crucial.
5.As a homeowner, I'm constantly thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong when I'm physically away from my house, but having smart Wi-Fi connected sensors and controls in select areas of my home has quelled most of my anxiety.
If you do one thing as a new homeowner, grab yourself a temperature and humidity sensor or two for the moments you'll be out of town — especially if there's any inclement weather in the forecast. Simply put, damage to a home as a result of burst or leaky pipes, or excess humidity causing mold, can be horrifyingly expensive to repair. That said, they're not entirely unavoidable. Since our house has a utility room separate from the main living space for a well and hot water tank, it's crucial that the ancillary heating in that space runs effectively in the winter so nothing freezes or bursts. Tossing a battery-operated temperature and humidity sensor in that room has proven worthwhile over and over again; any time things go awry, I get an instant notification to my phone and can deal with any problems before they become an expensive hassle, or call a neighbor or plumber to take a look if I'm traveling.
I loved our first temperature sensor so much that I even snagged one with a display for inside the house. Since we have mini-split units for both heating and cooling and no wall thermostats, it's the quickest way to confirm temperatures and humidity levels at a glance.
And I loved that second purchase so much that I even splurged on a smart AC remote for our mini-split, which allows us to adjust heating and cooling temperatures from anywhere in the world, reminds us to change filters, and can even automatically raise or lower temperatures on a set schedule to save on utility bills, just like a wired smart thermostat would.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $50 for a battery-powered, Wi-Fi-connected temperature and humidity sensor
⏰ TIME NEEDED: 5–10 minutes to install and connect
💡 PRO TIP: As someone who now owns three different sensors, the first thing you should do is automatically set up push alerts if your temperature or humidity levels go above or below certain levels. I set mine up to send push alerts if temperatures dip below 50ºF in the winter or if relative humidity levels surpass 65% at any time.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: Would've bought one of these before closing day, TBH.
6.If you're not 100% in love with your shower head, changing it is ridiculously quick, easy, and cheap. The same goes for faucets (or even adding a bidet), though they require a little more time and patience to install.
With a small corner shower stall, one thing that wasn't going to work for me was the standard shower head that came with the house. Without the ability to use a handheld wand to adjust the spray direction, I found that my showers were becoming intricately choreographed routines to be able to occasionally step out of the water stream. To remedy that issue, I ordered a handheld shower head and installed it in less than five minutes...and all my shower woes were remedied for less than $50.
Other projects involving plumbing can be more complex, but changing a shower head is as easy as twisting off the old one, wrapping some Teflon tape around the threads, and then attaching the new one — which means it's also renter-friendly, too.
For slightly more advanced DIYers, changing your faucets can also have a massive impact on your daily routines. The vintage farmhouse double sink we inherited with the house is still one of our favorite things about our home...but the leaky, sputtering faucet that came attached to it was something we could've done without. Enter: the new faucet (with a pull-down sprayer!) that made washing dishes in a dishwasher-less home a lot more manageable.
Depending on the type of sink and water lines you're working with, installing a faucet can definitely be a more complicated operation than merely switching out a shower head, but if I can do it, I think just about anyone can. Just be sure the water lines that feed into your faucet are off, folks.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $50 for a handheld shower head, $160 for a new kitchen faucet
⏰ TIME NEEDED: 5 minutes or less to change a shower head, 20–30 minutes to switch out a kitchen faucet
💡 PRO TIP: Even if things seem to be nicely attached, be vigilant about checking for leaks in the first few days of using your new fixtures. Shower head leaks are pretty harmless, but faucet leaks can actually prove pretty catastrophic if they're not remedied ASAP, and sometimes, leaks don't make themselves known for a little while.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: If you have a double sink, make sure your faucet is long enough so it's close enough to the center of each basin when swiveled to both sides. In hindsight, I wish our faucet was an inch or two longer so I didn't have to wash all our dishes in the corner, but the upgrade was still worth every penny IMO, and I'll never make that measuring mistake again.
7.Whether you're a homeowner or a renter, I'd highly recommend investing in a solid set of smart lights for both the interior and exterior of your home. You may not think you need them, but once you've made the switch, you'll never go back.
You won't find me converting my house into a 100% smart house (I've seen the 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie of the same name, and I'm good, thanks), but having even a couple of smart lightbulbs in highly-utilized spaces with a dependable control system feels highly luxurious. It's practical, too, since you can add ambiance with the touch of a button or by using your voice. Asking Siri to dim the living room lights to 15% to watch a movie on the couch is a top-tier experience.
Our extra smart lights on the exterior of our home are programmed to turn on and off at sunset and sunrise, respectively. The time even shifts with the seasons when days get shorter or longer. Heck, you can even go the extra mile and program them to turn brighter when you arrive home for extra visibility.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $79 for two interior light bulbs and a required hub
⏰ TIME NEEDED: Seconds to plug in, maybe 10 minutes to connect via a smartphone app and/or smart home system
💡 PRO TIP: As cheap and easy as the Bluetooth smart lights that hook up to an Alexa device seem, I promise they are not worth the initial investment. Unless you experience a miracle, they'll likely be laggy and inconsistent. In the case of smart lights, opt for a system with a Wi-Fi hub to control them; the Philips Hue system has been the most dependable brand I've used, FWIW.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: Not a thing.
8.To refresh your kitchen on a budget, it's as simple as slapping on a fresh coat of paint...but just be sure to take your time and prep like your life depends on it.
While I wouldn't necessarily describe this project as a quick one, it's certainly the most cost-effective way to give your kitchen a new look without doing an entire kitchen refresh. Our small, very outdated kitchen has been a bit of a nightmare from day one, but this weekend project at least made the experience of being in the kitchen a lot more aesthetically pleasing. In just one afternoon of very hard work, our kitchen went from low-key unusable and ugly to low-key unusable but prettier. And that's what counts, right?
We're planning a proper kitchen renovation for down the line when we can actually afford to do it the right way, but for now, painting the cabinets is a nice temporary Band-Aid.
🤑 TOTAL COST: Less than $100 for paint, brushes, paint rollers, and sandpaper
⏰ TIME NEEDED: Around 4–6 hours for our tiny kitchen, but up to a day or weekend if your kitchen isn't toddler-sized
💡 PRO TIP: Primer is NOT optional here, and if your cabinets haven't already been painted, make sure you're sanding down the surface enough to rough them up a bit before you prime. I mean, think about how many times people open and shut cabinets on a daily basis and how aggressively they do it. You need to do everything you can to help the fresh paint adhere as tightly as possible, so sand and prime generously.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: Even if you have 100% coverage, go ahead and slap an extra coat of paint on the front of each cabinet. Otherwise, you'll be left with flaky or scratched paint around the hardware, like we are. (That said, this is definitely one of those things that no visitors would ever notice...just me.)
9.Adding in some sort of hardscaping (in our case, budget-friendly gravel) helped the unruly outdoor space we were left with feel a little more purposeful.
When we moved in, most of our lot was either dirt, brambles, dying grass, or a grotesque combination of all three. To help with soil erosion, which was a major problem during our first summer, we seeded low-mow fine fescue grass over the entire "lawn." This mostly worked, but there were a handful of areas that were too shady to support well-established grass. After doing some research, we realized that the most cost-effective and low-maintenance way to tidy up these outdoor spaces would be to put down a layer of gravel — #2 crushed stone, specifically.
Working with a local stone yard instead of trying our luck with the Home Depot down the road saved us hundreds of dollars. Getting two tons of gravel delivered cost us just over $100 all in, while we priced out the same project at Home Depot for, prepare yourself, $1,100. This decision saved us $1,000, and I'd happily do it again.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $100 for two tons of gravel
⏰ TIME NEEDED: 4–6 hours to cover approximately 250 square feet
💡 PRO TIP: Using a rock that's naturally occurring in your region (bluestone, in our case) made the end results feel a lot more natural, and it saved lots of money compared to what it would've cost to use other decorative stone. And while pea gravel looks stunning from afar, it's a nightmare to deal with; we're so happy that we chose a large stone since they lock together nicely and don't wash away, and as a result, we're not left with pea-sized rocks all over our property.
If you're installing gravel on any sort of slope, as we did, consider investing in a geogrid or two to keep the stones from slipping out of place or settling over time. For less than $100 upfront, it's made our sloped, highly-trafficked gravel totally stable.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: Every DIY tutorial online will tell you to order more gravel than you need, but I'm telling you to order more gravel than you think you'll need...and then toss in some extra. There's nothing more annoying than coming up slightly short (trust me!), and if you have extra gravel once your project is completed, I guarantee you'll find a way to utilize it.
10.And finally: I researched smart locks for weeks leading up to move-in day. Installing this one was one of the first little projects we completed, and it still brings me joy every time I use it.
I could go on and on about why this smart lock has become a vital part of my homeownership experience, but I'll leave you with two key points instead: peace of mind and convenience. Not having to carry around keys to enter and exit is glorious, and when I drive to the grocery store and realize, "Oh no, I definitely didn't lock the door" — a daily occurrence, if I'm being honest — I open an app on my phone and hit "lock." Even better, it's allowed us to easily share our home with friends. When people want to visit and we wouldn't otherwise be able to pass off keys, we just give them our code or create a unique temporary one for them.
It's come in handy in dire circumstances, too. When the power went out this past winter on a -20ºF night and I was out of town, kicking myself when we realized I forgot to turn off the water before leaving, we sent our entry code to a trusty neighbor who was able to turn things off just before the pipes burst, saving us several thousands of dollars in costly repairs.
🤑 TOTAL COST: $279 for a Google Next x Yale smart lock
⏰ TIME NEEDED: 30 minutes; less if you've ever changed out a doorknob and lock before
💡 PRO TIP: Depending on a variety of factors, you might find that pre-existing holes for the doorknob and lock, or the latch in the doorframe itself, aren't totally aligned and don't fit neatly. Never fear! A corded Dremel kit (specifically the sander attachment, which is magic) fixed the problem areas for me in mere seconds, and I use this tool all the time for a variety of projects. It's an investment I highly recommend for most new homeowners.
🤔 WHAT WE'D DO DIFFERENTLY: Absolutely nothing.
