HGTV’s newest star couple, Erin and Ben Napier, of "Home Town" share their favorite cost-effective tips to spruce up your home.

Video Transcript

JEANIE AHN: It's the perfect time of year to spruce up your homes look and feel. To share some secrets on how to make the most of your budget we're joined by HGTVs newest star couple, Erin and Ben Napier of Hometown. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here today.

BEN NAPIER: Thanks for having us.

ERIN NAPIER: Yeah. Thank you.

JEANIE AHN: On your show you're all about restoration versus replacing. So talk to me budget wise, when it comes to something like flooring, when do you replace versus restore?

BEN NAPIER: We love to refinish hardwood floors, because usually they're better than what you can buy.

JEANIE AHN: Absolutely.

ERIN NAPIER: And it's a lot cheaper. It costs less to refinish floors, hardwoods than carpet.

BEN NAPIER: A lot of times you can save several thousand dollars on your budget just by refinishing the floors.

JEANIE AHN: So a professional can come in and just gauge it really quickly for you, to tell you it's time for new floors, versus it's OK to do another sand.

BEN NAPIER: Yeah. They can see you start getting into the nailheads--

ERIN NAPIER: Or where the--

BEN NAPIER: --or into the tongue and groove.

ERIN NAPIER: --the tongue and groove, where the grooves connect the floor boards. When you get down to that groove, and you have to shave it off then the floor doesn't hold itself together anymore. And that's the point where you can't sand it again.

JEANIE AHN: All right so what about cabinets? Can you resand cabinets instead of replacing them too?

ERIN NAPIER: We love to keep the cabinets any time it's possible. If the arrangement is at all workable where we could add on a section, if that's what we need to do, then we try to keep the bases of all of our cabinets, and just replace the doors. It only costs around $25 per door to have custom cabinet doors made to replace the ones you have. And then you can paint it or you can stain it.

BEN NAPIER: With fixtures, there's a lot of times people think that they need to replace them, especially in older homes.

ERIN NAPIER: Wherever you are there's going to be a porcelain restoration company nearby. Call those experts it takes them 30 minutes, it's a couple hundred dollars, and you have a brand new bathtub that was made in 1910. And how cool is that? When

JEANIE AHN: You're sprucing things up with cleaning, your go to magic secret is what, Erin?

ERIN NAPIER: OK, you know the dish wand scrubbies? I call them scrubbies. It's, I'm sure, a very technical marketing term.

BEN NAPIER: You know, it's like the wand.

JEANIE AHN: With the sponge.

BEN NAPIER: It's got a sponge, and you unscrew the top.

JEANIE AHN: Yes.

BEN NAPIER: Put the soap in, and it lives in the handle.

ERIN NAPIER: It lives there. If you, instead of using dish soap, fill that up with like a gel bathroom cleaner, you can clean your bathtub, your sinks, your fixtures, your toilet. Anything that's hard to clean, it makes it super easy and it's-- and you just leave it under the kitchen sink, always ready to go. Not for your dishes though.

JEANIE AHN: And for older homes, energy efficiency is always a challenge, is that right?

BEN NAPIER: The biggest problem you run into with efficiency in older homes are the windows. A lot of times just a good reglazing, and a reworking of them.

ERIN NAPIER: Yeah, replacing the ropes and the weights, and in old windows can help efficiency a lot so that they close completely.

JEANIE AHN: Besides the windows being the eyes of the home, how can you clean up the exterior?

BEN NAPIER: We're real big on pressure washing our house.

ERIN NAPIER: And it creeps up on you. You might not even notice that your house is dingy until you have it power washed. And we try to do it to our own house every couple of years.

BEN NAPIER: Usually once a year.

ERIN NAPIER: Once a year? Well we have white trim. So, if you have white trim it becomes obvious a little sooner. So, have a professional power wash your house with bleach, and it makes it look like it was freshly painted.

BEN NAPIER: And it makes our paint last a little bit longer.

ERIN NAPIER: It does.

JEANIE AHN: Or you can get your family members to power wash it for you.

BEN NAPIER: I was going to say, you can do it yourself.

ERIN NAPIER: You got to have one of those super duty sprayers, though.

BEN NAPIER: You just got to have the time to do it. That's the thing, is that when the times that I've done it on our house, it took the entire weekend.

ERIN NAPIER: And a desire to get on a ladder and clean the eaves of your house.

JEANIE AHN: OK, thank you so much for those tips saving thousands for people across the country. For more of their stunning restoration's check out Hometown, Tuesday nights at 10:00.