When most people think of home renovation projects, they imagine having to spend a significant portion of their savings in order to make the updates and improvements that they desire. For those Americans who are on tighter budgets, this often just does not seem worth it. There are so many other things that require spending money, from ever-increasing gas and electric bills to maintaining the family car, that making aesthetic improvements to the house does not seem to fall at the top of the priority list.

But with a little bit of effort and motivation, there are actually a number of ways in which you can spruce up your home without having to dip into your 401K or the kids´ college fund. If you are willing to put forth a little effort and learn a few new skills, you can do a lot of the home renovation you desire yourself. One of the easiest places to get started on a DIY kick is by taking on a painting project. This is the kind of home improvement that any able-bodied person can do, even those who barely managed to squeak by with Cs in their high school art classes. If you follow these simple instructions, you will be painting up a storm in no time. People will come to your house and wonder what exactly you did to make it look so fresh and stylish. Little will they know that all you did was spend some loose change on a couple of cans of paint and some brushes!

The first thing you need to do, naturally, is choose the room that you are going to re-paint. Just a hint: for first-time painters, rooms like the kitchen can be more difficult, because they have a lot of cabinets, counters, and appliances to paint around. This creates more room for error, and also makes it harder for you to cover all the surfaces to protect them from dripping paint. So for your first project, you probably want to choose a room like the dining room or a bedroom, which has less furniture against the wall, and that can be rearranged in order to make painting simpler. Once the room is chosen, measure the area of its walls by multiplying the width and height of each wall and adding the areas of the four individual walls (or however many your room has) together. This will be used to buy the correct amount of paint (more on this below).

Now choose a color. If you are overwhelmed, you can spend some time online reading home decoration tips. But do not sweat it, if you choose wrong, this is not like having to wait for the hair to grow back after impulsively shaving your head. It is pretty simple to repaint a room! Next, go to your local home improvement store, such as Loews, Sears, or Home Depot. Bring the surface area that you computed with you, and an employee can help you buy the right amount of paint. He or she can also help you find the brushes and the other equipment you will need. Now go home, cover the floor in newspaper and the edges of the walls with tape, and begin!

By: Alexander Fishback