Seven Home Improvement Projects You Can Get Done in One Day

Renovating your house has serious upsides in terms of your enjoyment of the property and the return on your investment—but there’s a price to be paid in time and discomfort. Renovation projects can take weeks or months to complete, and during that time your home will mostly likely be filled with dust, debris, and workers. It’s little wonder people choose to move out of their homes and live in a rental while the work is being done.

Not everyone can do that, of course—and not everyone can spend the next few months living in a construction zone. If you’ve got limited time (and limited tolerance for the mess and disruption), you might choose to put off home improvement projects until you have more of each. Or you could re-calibrate your expectations, because there are several one-day renovation projects (including clean up) that will have a big impact but have you relaxing on the couch by dinner time.

Refresh a bathroom

A complete bathroom remodel can take weeks or months to complete, which is seriously inconvenient—especially if you only have one bathroom in the house. But you can accomplish a pretty dramatic refresh of your bathroom in one day if you keep your focus narrow:

• Re-caulking the shower should take just a few hours. This not only gets rid of unsightly stained, discolored caulk—it will also help prevent future leaks resulting from failing old caulk.

• A new showerhead can be installed in less than an hour. Alternatively, clean the one you have: Remove the existing showerhead and soak it in white, distilled vinegar for about an hour, then rinse, scrub, and re-install.

• Similarly, a new faucet on the vanity can be installed within an hour, unless accessing the supply lines and drain is difficult.

Boom! A day’s work and your bathroom can be dramatically improved. You could also consider intalling a bath liner, instantly transforming your shower or bath in (theoretically) just a day.

Paint

Paint is the easiest and cheapest remodel of them all, and you can get a lot done with one day and a gallon of good-quality paint:

• Paint a room—you can absolutely paint an entire room in one day. You’ll need to budget in a few hours between coats, so get an early start and have a plan.

• Paint furniture: Any piece of furniture in your house that’s looking a little drab can be upscaled with a coat of paint—including upholstered pieces.

• You can also paint floors that have seen better days; additionally, lampshades, fireplaces, radiators, and kitchen appliances can all be successfully painted in just a few hours.

Update your kitchen's details

Just like your bathroom, a full-scale kitchen remodel can take a long time, and have your house filled with dust for ages. But you can transform your kitchen in one day by targeting a few relatively easy but visually powerful spots:

• New pulls. Swap out the old, tarnished, probably outdated pulls on your drawers and cabinets for shiny new ones.

• New faucet. Swapping out the old faucet for a new one shouldn’t take more than a few hours.

• Lighting. Adding adhesive lights under your cabinets will a) make the space brighter, which in turn will make it look cleaner and fresher, and b) add a touch of glamour to the space.

• Cover the backsplash with peel-and-stick tiles for a whole new look.

Install vinyl plank flooring

If your current floors are a little sad and worn out, you might think that installing a whole new floor will take at least several days, if not a week. But you can install brand-new vinyl plank flooring in a day, as you can see here (and this guy tore out and replaced his subfloor, then installed vinyl plank, all in one day).

Granted, your mileage will vary on how comfortable you are measuring and cutting the planks, but this kind of flooring is one of the easiest to install—and it looks great and wears well.

Replace bathroom vanity

If you’re thinking about replacing the faucet in your bathroom as noted above, why not take it one step further and upgrade the entire vanity? Disconnecting the plumbing, removing the old vanity and faucet, and installing new ones requires just some basic plumbing knowledge and the use of a power drill, and should only take you a few hours from beginning to end—even if you include going out to buy the new vanity.

Add new light fixtures and switches

If you’re not afraid to do a little basic wiring, you can change the light fixtures in your house, the plates over the outlets and switches, and even the outlets and switches themselves all in one day. Once you’ve turned off the power so there’s no chance of killing yourself, changing out existing light fixtures can take just a few minutes for each one, so unless you’ve got a football field of lights in your house it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two to tackle them all (or however many you want to change).

Similarly, swapping out outlet and switch plates takes just a few minutes each (and requires just a screwdriver). And upgrading your light switches to dimmer switches is a similarly quick and relatively easy project that you can do all over the house in one day, easily.

Stick decals on your tile floors

If you’ve got tile floors that need a little upgrade but you don’t want to install a floor over them or tear them out entirely, you can cover them up with peel-and-stick tile tiles or decals very quickly. While you shouldn’t rush, because the end result depends heavily on how accurately and neatly you cut your pieces to fit your space, you can definitely complete an average-sized room within a day, and you can probably do multiple rooms in one day if you’re focused once you get the hang of it.

View the full article