Brigitt Earley

Proof that a small budget can make a big impact.

These are the biggest faux pas you can make.

Rather than superfluous doors to nowhere, what the couple really needed was more storage for dishes, glasses, and table linens, as well as a space for a bar.

According to plumbers.

It has many aesthetic and cost benefits.

Hint: It's dish soap! Here's what to do instead!

Here's what to do about those drips, splotchy spots, and more!

"It can tackle everything I need it to: hardwood floors, furniture, upholstery, windows, grout, kitchen appliances, and more."

For starters, don't by the wrong paint!

They seem so harmless...

It's good for way more than making slime.

Stay home and try one of these DIY solutions.

Number 2 is key!

According to a pro who knows.

Lemons are very, very bad!

You might want to stop using that super old blender!

Here's what a real expert had to say.

An IKEA hack isn’t always worth your time or effort.

Because large rugs can get pretty expensive!

I have one major complaint about my house: My kitchen is grossly outdated. I’m talking a brown ceramic sink and a refrigerator that was probably installed in the early ’70s, yet somehow still functions. Still, we’ve done our best to make the design atrocities work for the time being — a kitchen reno just isn’t in the budget yet. The first thing we did? Paint the chocolate brown cabinets white and replace the hardware with modern brass pulls.

Because a kitchen is such a big-ticket item, it’s one area of our homes where we’re generally more risk-averse. “There are always going to be trends we hold onto [in the kitchen],” says Sarah Fishburne, director of trend and design at The Home Depot. “We think of our childhood, of how are parents lived. There are certain pieces of we just aren’t willing to get rid of.” But that doesn’t mean a kitchen is a boring, trendless spot.

You just spent all night making an incredible dinner. The sink is full of pots, pans, spatulas, plates … you name it, it’s in there. The dishes — the plight of home cooks everywhere — must be done. But, shoot, where’s the dish soap? When you’re out of dish soap and have a sink full of dirty dishes, you might wonder how you can possibly accomplish the task without having to trek to the store.

An $8 roll of contact paper can do wonders for your home. You can use it to upgrade old furniture, modernize shelves, elevate countertops, or even forge a backsplash. For the budget-conscious, it’s almost too good to be true. And, as it turns out, some people say it just might be. Why? Apparently cockroaches love contact paper. “Cockroaches will eat almost anything, far beyond what we think of as food sources,” says Howard Bright, the owner of Anti-Pesto Bug Killers.

Whether talking about polka-dot blouses or gold hardware, you know what they say: Trends come and go. You may hate that yellow Formica countertop in your fixer-upper, but we can almost guarantee that the original owners installed it because it was in fashion. So why do tastes change so much over the years? Aqua blue, for example, was everywhere — cars, refrigerators, toys, stoves, bathroom tile — in the years following World War II, explains Claire E.