Home design ideas that may seem completely unobtainable for most consumers are possible if you build it yourself and cut out the obvious budget killers (home entertainment rooms, gold embossed trim, etc.). The photos shown here are likely from multi-million dollar homes. But if you break it down, decide what features are most important, eliminate the unnecessary, and possibly reduce the scale… then some dream designs can be affordable if you do the work yourself.
DIY
Free Heat for Your Home: Homemade Briquettes and Logs
Many people don’t have easy access to firewood or the tools and ability to cut, split, haul and stack it. Buying firewood may be out of your budget. Here we’ll present some virtually free ways of making fuel briquettes and logs at home with simple devices. To make briquettes/pellets/bricks/logs, you can use free materials such as newspapers, junk mail, cardboard, wood chips, wood shavings, sawdust, leaves, pine needles, manure, rice hulls, straw, corn stover and other biomass fibers. The basic process usually involves soaking the materials and then compacting them with a press into blocks.
Kitchen Cabinet Organizers and Add-ons
There are plenty of handy kitchen cabinet organizers and add-ons to choose from. They make cooking and working in the kitchen more efficient and enjoyable. Besides the options shown here, you can get knife racks, lazy susans, swing-out pantries, cutting boards (built-in, slide-out or free standing), tilt-down trays for scrub pads (behind false sink fronts), glass insert for hot pans, roll out vegie bins, spice racks, organizers for utensils and more. Most of these oganizers are affordable and easy to install by do-it-yourselfers.
Accent Tile
It’s easy to liven up your home with colorful accent tiles.
Communal Living with Nikki Silva
Learn how to make beautiful, non-toxic houses out of recycled materials for around $8/sq. foot.
Miscellaneous Earthbag Projects
I come across loads of earthbag projects that lack sufficient detail to be profiled individually. Here, we’ll combine some of these projects and see what others are doing.