If you live in a stand alone home or you’re planning to move into one, you need to know what’s in store for you. When you know, you can prepare well for the future and take it all in your stride when the time comes to put these ideas to work. Have a look below to see some of the best stand alone home ideas that your family can benefit from and use them to make your home the sanctuary that it should actually be.
Make Necessary Repairs
The first and most important thing for you to do to improve your stand alone home is to make any necessary repairs and home improvements. These should make the home more functional and comfortable to be in. You’ll find that you and your family immensely enjoy living in a home in which everything works the way it should. From the kitchen to the bathroom and the bedrooms, take time to perform an inspection and see if everything is working well. Replace missing and broken knobs and handles as soon as you find them to be missing.
You should also consider the bigger elements of your home, fixing things like broken windows and problematic doors. These can make you pay a lot of money for energy use as they’ll leave your home’s insulation wanting. Don’t forget to have your home’s roof inspected and make any repairs that need to be made. A local roofing repair service should be easy to find in your area. If there’s been a severe storm or your roof is simply old, then it’s a good idea for you to think about replacing it. When you do this, you’ll feel safer and more secure in your house and you’ll also increase the value of your home.
Remodel Your Kitchen
The kitchen is one of the home’s most frequently-used spaces and it therefore makes sense to remodel it. This is especially the case if a long time has passed since you remodeled it last and you currently have different needs. You may also want to remodel the kitchen in a stand alone home that you moved into recently and that doesn’t feel right to you. Some areas to think about remodeling in the kitchen are the countertop and the backsplash.
For the countertop, installing a granite one can make your kitchen feel more sophisticated and beautiful. For the backsplash, installing porcelain tile can help you protect sensitive walls and make it easier to keep the kitchen clean. You could also change the floor to make it less likely to slip on and easier to clean. Don’t forget about adjusting the lighting so that you have the right ambiance to either work on a meal or relax while in the kitchen.
Change the Paint and Stonework
Another amazing stand alone home idea is to change the paint and stonework in and around the home. If a long time has passed since you painted your home, you stand to benefit immensely from painting your home afresh. This is going to make it feel fresh and brand new, something your family will be happy about. If you’re handy enough and can spare the time, you could actually paint your home yourself. Find out if you can enlist the help of an able and willing friend or family member and get the necessary supplies. You may learn a few new things and will have an amazing time while at it. Alternatively, hire a local painter to do the job for you and you can revel in the outcome.
The stonework around your stand alone home is something else that you can work on. This could involve cleaning the stonework and refreshing the sealant or fixing broken and missing pieces. If there’s a lot of work to be done on your home’s stonework, it’s a good idea for you to call masonry contractors in your area. They can help you get your masonry in good shape and you’ll be glad to see that your entire home’s appeal gets a boost.
Upgrade Your HVAC System
It’s no secret that a good number of homes rely heavily on their HVAC to improve the comfort of their interior spaces. If the same case applies to your home, then you shouldn’t hesitate to fix or even upgrade your HVAC system if it needs an upgrade. Doing this is going to not only improve your home’s comfort, but it can also help you to keep your home’s energy bills low and manageable. That’s because a new HVAC system will function efficiently and leave a smaller carbon footprint while keeping your home’s air fresh and clean with lower energy consumption.
Remember that while your heating and air conditioning unit has an expiry date, it can be kept in relatively good shape by servicing it frequently. This is going to help you keep within the stipulations of your warranty and also help it to have a longer functional lifespan. You can do some light servicing yourself, such as clearing dirt and debris from the external unit and changing the filters when they get dirty. For more technical fixes, a local technician can go a long way in helping you to maintain your unit.
Remodel Your Bathroom
Just like the kitchen, the bathroom in your stand alone home is a space that can benefit immensely from a remodel. There are a number of possible remodels that you can do to your bathroom to make it more functional and comfortable for you and your family. These include changing or installing some tile backsplash on the walls and making the bathroom more accessible. When you make it more accessible by adding things like grab bars and low-rise toilets, you make your home a bit more welcoming to people who have mobility issues.
If your bathroom has issues, you should call a residential plumbing service, to have a look and fix the problems. This will make the bathroom more functional and potentially less wasteful if leaks are found and fixed. While working on the bathroom, and depending on the number of bathrooms you have in your stand alone home, you may want to get a temporary solution. This may involve talking to a portable restroom rental company to find out if they have any solutions they can offer you. Renting one for a while will help your family avoid experiencing inconveniences during the project.
Make Your Home More Accessible
As mentioned elsewhere, making your stand alone home more accessible is a great step to take. Outside of the bathroom, you can improve accessibility by, for instance, adding ramps to your home’s access points. These will grant people in wheelchairs easier access into your home. In case a family member experiences an injury that affects their mobility, you’ll be glad that you put this measure in place. You can also improve your home’s accessibility by adjusting the lighting. Adding lighting along corridors and ensuring that the switches are easy to find and turn on and off will also go a long way in making your home more accessible.
Change your doorknobs to make them easier for people who may have trouble grabbing and turning round ones. This will help people with issues such as arthritis to be considerably more independent while they’re in your home. These small, collective changes may not cost you a lot of money to implement, but they’ll make a big difference to someone who’s abled differently. You’ll make your home more welcoming and comfortable for different people and this is an amazing outcome of a home improvement.
Design a Beautiful Yard
You shouldn’t forget the outdoor space of your stand alone home while making home improvements. This is because the exterior space of your home plays a major role in your home’s curb appeal. You want your home to look beautiful right from the street and throughout the rest of the house. To this end, you need to design a gorgeous yard that complements your home’s architecture. Landscaping companies in your area should make it easy for you to come up with a beautiful design for your landscape that looks great.
If you want to make your yard unique and more sustainable, you should think about doing away with a manicured lawn and planting native plants. These will need less care and attention since they’re indigenous to your home’s climate. As a result, you’ll save water and also have an easier time maintaining your yard yourself if you prefer to do so. You’ll have room to get as creative as you like with your yard full of indigenous plants. The fact that you’ll also need to rely on chemical fertilizers less is a definite plus.
Improve the Garage and Driveway
You should remember to also improve the garage and driveway of your stand alone home. If your garage door has been having issues, you can improve both the safety and efficiency of your home by upgrading it. A local garage door installation service should help you to get a better garage door, so find one and talk to them about what you need. They should save you a considerable amount of hassle by helping you find the perfect garage door for your home’s specific needs.
The driveway should complement the garage door and the rest of your house. This is why you need to call a local paving contractor to fix yours if it’s in bad shape. Follow their advice so that you can get a good driveway that will withstand the test of time. Remember that you need to have it sealed every few years, whether it’s concrete or asphalt. Doing this is going to help it stay in great shape for a long time to come and it may not be adversely affected by the weather as the seasons change.
Add More Storage
The final home improvement you should consider making to your stand alone home is adding more storage. Storage is one of the things whose need evolves as a family grows. That said, you should find out how much more storage you need in your home to make it easier to keep organized. Different rooms such as the kitchen, bathroom, and even garage stand to benefit immensely from additional storage if your family has grown since you moved into the house you live in. Check online to find creative storage solutions that will improve your home’s appearance while improving the function as well.
Get creative by looking for inspiration for your storage needs online. From shelves and cabinets to overhead storage racks, there are different solutions that you could put to use in different rooms around your home. Make sure that the options you pick for a specific space are safe and easy to work with. This is going to enable every member of your family to use the storage solutions the right way and keep your home in an amazing state. If you have ample storage but don’t like the way it looks, you can find ways to make it more appealing. This may include painting shelves and cabinet faces and changing the knobs of your cabinets and other storage solutions.
These stand alone home ideas should help you keep your family home in amazing shape. Do some research to find the best ways to put these ideas to work and you’ll also find out their possible costs. This is going to help you set a workable budget that you can use to get the improvements and upgrades done. When you have a beautiful and functional home, you can expect to enjoy spending time in it a lot more. This may allow your family ample time to bond and develop in the best ways possible!
