Rosette Monell

Home improvements are an essential part of your life. Regardless of the project size, any home improvement will take time, effort, and money to accomplish. It is an important undertaking because it affects two things: the quality of your daily living and the resale value of your house.

Something of this magnitude should be planned because of the factors that must be put into consideration. For instance, the number of improvement projects you can tackle with the time that you have in your hands or the fact that the same project can achieve two goals at the same time are just a few scenarios that you need to keep in mind. It can be quite stressful, without even counting the size of the project in.

So create a plan to properly deal with all you’re going to do. Learn about creating a home improvement plan checklist to evaluate your options to help you make the right decisions.

List down potential projects

Begin with your checklist by determining the potential home improvements you can make in a course of a specific timeline. It could be within months or years. Mark each project as one that you’ll make to improve your quality of life and other ones for increasing your home’s resale value or it could be for both.

Make certain of the scope of work and your timeline

Next up on your checklist is to find out the scope of work that needs to be accomplished for each project. What projects are you going to get started with and estimate the size of the improvements that will be worked on. You can effectively do this by conducting a walkthrough of the subject areas.

After assessing the amount of work that needs to be done on the subject areas, you can start mulling over a rough timeline on each project. Determine which tasks must be completed before others. For example, remodeling the entire kitchen comes first then adding an aluminum profile on your cabinets. You will find that dealing with the larger scope of work first before downsizing is a better strategy than the other way around.

Set a budget

Once you’re done with the assessment of workload and the timeline, it’s time to start building a budget for your projects. This is important so you’ll know that what you want to do fits your budget. Make sure that you don’t forget to include anything that might add to your expenses. Every fee that has to be paid and all materials necessary must be included with your computations.

Return on investment

Focusing more on the financial aspect of doing home improvements, gauge the return on investment for each improvement. To better understand specifics, you can work with a real estate professional to determine the effects of certain improvements you make where you can have good returns.

Summary

To sum up, creating a home improvement plan checklist entails being as involved as possible to conserve resources and evaluating what will produce better results in the long run. Make use of anything that can help in easing the entire process. It may take some time, but nothing tops the feeling of seeing a home improvement go well.

Author’s Bio:
Rosette has a knack for anything DIY. She spent her younger years learning about the different hardware tools and equipment in the hopes of establishing a hardware business in the future. Her career options may have changed, but today, she continues to write so passionately about her first love.

By Lucy Wyndham

The number of bloggers in the United States is set to grow to 31.7 million in 2020, Forbes reports — which is a lot of competition. If you’re a car enthusiast looking to start a blog, you need to find smart ways to make yours stand out from the crowd. Niching down, providing readers with actionable steps, and remembering the importance of visual branding will help your car blog get the attention it deserves.

Choose your niche

Cars are a saturated blog niche and it’s easy to find numerous within moments of running a search. Niching down is a great way to stand out from the crowd. You’ll find it easier to write in-depth content, build an audience of engaged readers, and become a thought leader on your topic. So, consider your specific area of expertise. Perhaps you’re a whizz at car repairs and maintenance. Or maybe you could write detailed car reviews and ratings. Car buyers are always eager to hear unbiased opinions from reliable and trusted sources. In fact, 95% of cars buyers look online for information before making a purchase. There’s no need to over-specialize, but choosing a solid niche will give your blog coherence and boost your credibility.  

Provide actionable steps

Focus on providing readers with the most useful content possible. This means not just telling your readers what to do, but also explaining clearly and thoroughly how to do it — something many car blogs are lacking. Think about the goal your reader is trying to achieve. What exact information do they need from you to achieve it? Make sure you teach your reader how to achieve their goal and include as much detail as possible. If you’re posting a car repair tutorial, for example, include examples, how-to steps, and valuable resources (such as, a list of necessary tools). Clear and descriptive images are also highly useful. Never skip any steps, no matter how small. The more useful your content is, the more unique and memorable you become to readers.  

Don’t forget visual branding

It takes roughly between five to seven impressions for people to remember a certain brand. That means visual branding is just as important as crafting unique, high-quality content. If your car blog appears outdated, ugly, or boring, visitors are likely to click off quickly — no matter how good your content may be. Additionally, a visually unappealing blog leads to a higher bounce rate, which decreases your visibility in the search engines. This means it’ll be harder for readers to even find your blog in the first place. Updating your car blog with a responsive, modern, and aesthetically-pleasing layout will attract readers and decrease your bounce rate. 

Running a successful car blog in 2020 is certainly possible, but you’ll have to work to stand out from the crowd. Following these tips can ensure you remain valuable and memorable to readers and don’t get lost in a sea of sameness.