Yearn to update your older home but have no more than $500 in your home-improvement coffer? Not to worry. We asked the experts–decorators, architects and real estate agents–how you can introduce your aged or middle-aged home to the ’90s without spending a bundle.
The experts’ No. 1 response: Lighten and brighten. Old homes tend to be too dark, often appearing smaller than they really are, they say. Bringing in the light–natural and reflected–makes an old house sparkle. It seems cleaner and more spacious.
The easiest way to brighten a dark home is with gallons of white paint, says Rita DeVito, owner/manager of RE/MAX Team 2000 in Orland Park.
“Eliminate colored backgrounds by painting the walls white and, if you can afford it, installing new, beige carpet. Get rid of anything orange, gold or green–especially that foil wallpaper. Then accessorize with colored towels, stencils, borders, valances and pillows,” she says.
Open up rooms by jettisoning clutter that, over the years, transformed your roomy, new home into a cramped, older home. If you can’t part with your treasures, rotate them, suggests decorator Carol Kahn, owner of Carol Goldstein Kahn in Buffalo Grove. She combs home-furnishings catalogs for storage tips such as stashing stuff in a stack of old leather suitcases in the corner.
Whether you’re trying to liberate your home from a ’70s time warp or revive a dilapidated diamond in the rough, here are some of the pros’ homeowner-friendly tips to help morph your home from old to new.
But before you begin, warns Geneva architectural consultant Trish MacLachlan, “study the house’s architectural history; even a Plain Jane ranch has a design philosophy. Don’t try to make a four-square into a colonial.”
“Sometimes updating a home simply means getting rid of faddish tack-ons that take away from its original integrity. Don’t replace a ’70s fad with a ’90s fad.”
– DeVito tells owners of dark, multicolored brick homes to paint the exterior wood trim the lightest of the brick colors to highlight it. Don’t forget the garage door and the wrought-iron railing.
“Watch this lighten up the whole outside of the house,” says DeVito.
– For as little as a few hundred dollars, you can replace your old front door with a more contemporary, energy-efficient model. It costs less to fit a new door in the existing doorjamb, but the jamb may not be square. Replacing the door and jamb costs more but ensures a tighter fit and cohesive look.
“This is especially significant in an older home that was `modernized’ with the addition of a flush door 20 or 30 years ago,” says architect James Collins, owner of Oak Park-based Criterium-Collins Architects & Engineers Inc. “Finding a new door true to the home’s style restores its character.”
If your old front door is still sturdy and snug, but lacks pizzazz, dress it up, says interior designer/architect Ellen Dickson, managing partner of Bailey Edward Design in Chicago.
“Paint it a deep, new color that won’t show the dirt, such as dark gray or burgundy. Add a fancy knocker for $50. Then install a new, brass hardware set with a large, decorative faceplate to cover worn areas,” says Dickson.
– Replace your tiny, tract-home house numbers with the newer, larger brass or painted-wood numbers. These not only add a new accent to the home, they help emergency-service drivers find it in the dark.
– “Rigorously prune or take out evergreens that are taking over your front entry,” says MacLachlan, who urges her clients to junk the notion that landscaping is sacred. “I’ve seen evergreens bury grand entrances.”
– Inside, your guests’ first impression of your home is your foyer, where a brown-and-gold linoleum floor screams ’60s. In this relatively small area, splurge on marble squares or faux-stone ceramic tile that would break the budget elsewhere in the house. (Ask your flooring retailer for discounted leftovers from larger jobs.)
Not for all-thumbs homeowners, this project requires some know-how. But the kids can help rip out the brown-and-gold.
– Another brighten-and-lighten tactic is ditching those heavy draperies and ’50s sheers that keep the sunshine out. Maintain privacy by installing mini-blinds, the little black dresses of today’s window fashions. For a cottage look, buy wide-slat blinds or plantation shutters. Then add punch or color with valances or unusual rods and funky finials from catalogs such as Spiegel (800-345-4500) or Pottery Barn (800-922-5507).
Kahn uses tree branches for rods, then casually drapes lengths of sheer fabric, garlands and ivies over them.
Oak Forest-based artist-designer Nancy Newton recycles the old white or off-white sheers. She uses stamps to paint gold stars or fleurs-de-lis on them, then tosses them over new rods to create free-form valances.
Speaking of windows, don’t ignore the obvious, says DeVito.
“I’m amazed at how many people keep their houses clean but never wash the windows,” she says.
– Upgrading a light fixture, especially a conspicuous one such as the hallway bug catcher or the wagon wheel contraption over the kitchen table, changes the appearance of the whole room.
Kahn suggests replacing your ’70s track light with a cable-system fixture with movable, suspended lights.
“Do this over the kitchen or dining room table, or over your bed, where you can suspend one light lower for reading,” she says.
Kahn also replaces bulky table lamps with sleeker, shadeless lamps in reading areas.
“By shopping home-improvement centers, you could replace every light in a 25-year-old, three-bedroom ranch for $300. Even if you call in an electrician for a few hours, you can keep the cost under $500,” says DeVito.
– Dickson suggests replacing worn light switches and outlets with clean, white ones–less than a dollar each at discount stores.
“If you have those dated beige receptacles, hire an electrician for a few hours to replace them with white ones,” she says.
– What to do with that dark, 1960s paneling? Most of our sources say remove it if it was installed with nails or screws. But if it’s glued on, removing it will damage the drywall, so simply paint it white. Or, do what Newton does.
“Paint the bottom half white to make it look like wainscoting. Attach a chair rail halfway up. Above the chair rail, glue felt liner (designed for this purpose) that makes the surface flush. Then wallpaper the top half,” she says.
– Embellish your old, unfinished basement by painting the walls a light color, then using masonry stain to color the floor. Newton creates faux-granite floor tiles by combining stains, then using enamel paint pens to draw a grid. (She also uses masonry stain to lighten up dark brick fireplaces.)
– Collins recommends giving your old kitchen floor a new life with vinyl, press-and-stick tiles.
“They cost anywhere from 50 cents to $7 a square foot and are a lot more durable than they were years ago. If you prepare the floor properly first, these will last,” he says.
Kahn dresses up sound but ho-hum kitchen floors by commissioning painted floorcloths to match the rooms’ wallpaper or fabric designs.
“For under $500, this will add a lot of zing to a dull kitchen floor,” she says.
– Your whole kitchen will look cleaner and newer with a new countertop. A 12-foot length of laminate countertop, custom-cut to fit around your sink, costs around $220 to $400 (plus about $150 labor). Multiply the cost of laminate by six to figure the cost of the popular, synthetic-types such as Corian.
– Do-it-yourselfers can update classic but plain kitchen and bathroom sinks and tubs with modern faucets. Fancy faucets that splash and gurgle run from $50 at home-improvement centers to as much as $1,000 at plumbing-supply showrooms. Popular, brand-name brass or white-enamel kitchen faucets retail for approximately $200.
– If your kitchen cupboards and countertop have stood the test of time because of classic color choices, yet look stale, add a contemporary touch by installing a ceramic-tile backsplash over the sink, stove or entire counter.
Dickson recommends using one hand-painted tile ($8-plus each) for every six plain-white tiles ($2 a square foot) when designing your pattern. Tile manufacturers have introduced hundreds of new patterns over the last few years, in styles ranging from haute to homespun. Many factory-made tiles mimic the Italian, hand-painted look at lower prices.
Add the cost of adhesive, grout, a plumb line and a tile-installation manual or video.
– That tin lizzie of the appliance world–your countertop microwave–not only tells visitors your kitchen hasn’t been remodeled since the Nixon administration, it hogs valuable space. Replace it with a microwave oven/hood fan/light combination that fits over your stove. If you cannot tie into your behind-the-stove exhaust duct, or, if you don’t have one, buy a combination unit that recirculates the hot air through a front vent, toward the kitchen ceiling.
– Although you’ll live with a dismantled kitchen for a few weeks, you can illuminate a gloomy kitchen by painting your wooden cabinets white or off-white. Reward your hard work by treating yourself to new knobs and hinges. Although this project is labor-intensive, “sand between coats” being your mantra, the materials will cost you little more than the carry-out food you buy while your stove is buried beneath cereal boxes.
Ken and Adrea Cox of Chicago updated their 1950s steel-front cupboards with swirls created with a coarse sandpaper circle attached to their power drill. Then they replaced old, plastic handles with sleeker, chrome models.
– Rid your kitchen or bathroom of avocados and harvest golds by reglazing or refinishing your appliances, tubs and sinks. Call in the pros for this job.
– If you know your plumbing basics, you can replace your dated bathroom vanity/sink with a more elegant pedestal sink. You’ll sacrifice the under-the-vanity storage, but open up a tiny room. Caveat: Although you can buy a vitreous china pedestal sink for as little as $159.99 (plus faucet) through the JC Penney catalog, this project may cost you more in the long run because of the domino effect; it may lead to new wallpaper or floor.
– If the folks who built your home had the foresight to use white or neutral-colored ceramic tile, eschewing the hot-pink fad, you can update your tiled bathroom by simply regrouting. Scrub out cracked and loosened grout with a stiff brush and dry the gaps with a hair dryer. Trowel on new grout and remove the excess with damp rags before the grout dries. “Before” is the key word here; it’s almost impossible to wipe off the grout if you wait too long.
Note this trick of the trade: Replace 20 percent of the water recommended for the grout mix with your children’s Elmer’s Glue. The clear-drying, white glue acts as an extra sealant.
If your bathroom still dons the hot-pink variety, you can paint these tiles with white enamel paint designed for this purpose.
