How I got what I wanted, for a whole lot less.

File the tip under “just because you see it on Pinterest doesn't mean it's a good idea.”

While painter's tape promises clean lines, it can come with issues. And, of course, there’s the time requirement: It takes forever to apply.

Rant over.

Sometimes you see something you just need in your space, no matter what. You know there will be a downside, but it’s just too perfect. For me, it was the window-style fixed shower panels. I started seeing this look last summer when we were renovating the bizarre and so-ugly bathroom in our Victorian home. Honestly, anything was an upgrade from the teeny, low-ceilinged, stained-beyond-all-hope stall shower that came with the house that I might have just gone with the first shower I saw.

What’s cooler than an exposed brick wall? An exposed, weathered, white brick wall!If you’ve been pining for that distressed, vintage look, read on—and don’t fret. It’s totally DIY-able and costs next to nothing… as long as you’ve got plenty of time. When my husband and I uncovered the original brick in the apartment over the former stable behind our Victorian, I knew I wanted to go with a random, weathered white look for our newest Airbnb.

If I admire one home design advancement, it just might be the advent of soft-close. You never realize how annoying slamming toilet lids and cabinet doors are until you experience the calm relief of closing those things quietly. This invention is so ubiquitous now that you can even get refrigerators with soft-close drawers—which, frankly, is a little gimmicky… but I still like mine.What if you have cabinets that date back to the time before this common upgrade?

It’s hard to resist the siren call of exposing hidden brick. When you know it’s tucked away under drywall or plaster, just begging to make a big statement, you’ve just got to do it… right?It sounds so easy when you tell friends your plans: “Yeah, we’ll just tear out the plaster and expose the brick. It’ll be amazing.” And if it were a TV show and you could fast forward to the finished product, it would totally be amazing.

I can get behind a design trend just as fast as the next person. Exposed brick? Sliding barn doors? Reclaimed wood? Check, check, and check! I dream of a farmhouse sink and a subway tile backsplash and am about to do the all-open-shelving thing in our kitchen. But there’s one seemingly mandatory design decision that I have zero interest in making: adopting the open kitchen. In our 1890 home, the kitchen is at the back of the house in a textbook-style late-Victorian floor plan.

Anyone who’s ever done a renovation on a budget knows that you have to find places to cut costs. Everything can’t be a splurge, after all. When my husband and I redid our home’s third floor to make it a full-time Airbnb, we were starting from scratch, so expensive things like HVAC systems ripped huge chunks out of our budget. I knew we had to restore the gorgeous original wood floors, and that meant another big expense.

Kitchen renovations are basically one long series of compromises. Stumble upon a Ferrari red Bertazzoni range at half price? Obviously you have to slash the budget elsewhere (many elsewheres) to make that the star of the new kitchen. More often than not, these compromises are focused on the savings and not the splurging. Those splurges are oh-so-tempting, though, and wait for you around every corner—and on every Pinterest or Instagram refresh.

Nothing screams ‘Sad Kitchen’ like shoddy old countertops. Okay, a bad floor or rickety old cabinets are probably right up there, but a decades-old, grungy, cracked, and damaged counter can turn an otherwise perfectly decent kitchen into something to cringe over. When my husband and I prepared to put our previous home on the market, our realtor encouraged us to replace the dated laminate counter.

I used to live dangerously, buying paint willy nilly without ever trying it out on the walls first. Who needs samples anyway? Be bold, be daring, and trust your instinct, right?! Once, I even made a choice just by looking online and letting the painter pick it up at the store. Surprise! I made some regrettable choices. In fact, it’s kind of amazing how many times I was happy with my decision without trying out paint first. But how many ways did I find paint disappointment?

See a bathroom pedestal sink and you can’t help but think things like sleek, streamlined, graceful. And they are undeniably handy in tight quarters when there’s no room for a full-fledged vanity, and they do tend to be much less expensive than a sink and vanity. Also? There’s just something romantic about them.

If you’ve ever looked into tile prices, you probably know that materials can destroy your renovation budget in no time. My jaw hit the floor when I saw the prices on some of the beautiful tiles popping up in Pinterest. Honestly, who is out there paying 50, 75, or 100 bucks and up, per square foot? (And when the manufacturer website doesn’t even tell you the price, you know the old saying is true—if you have to ask, well, you can’t afford it.

It’s hard to imagine how we did things before Amazon, which brings us anything we need in a very short timeframe. But there’s more to the site than super speedy delivery. For several years now, I’ve been indulging in my champagne taste on a beer budget, thanks to Amazon Warehouse and third-party sellers. See that price right next to the item you must have? That doesn’t have to be the price you pay.

Yes, they are so luxurious, but there's a catch.

Thrift stores aren’t just for scoring super-cheap clothing and decor. What if I told you there is a place to stock up on renovation supplies (and great furniture) without paying home improvement store prices? And shopping there contributes to a great cause? Some smart shoppers may know just what I’m talking about: Habitat for Humanity ReStore. With nearly 900 shops around the country, these stores are the ultimate win-win.

File under Who Knew?!: That plunger you probably have sitting by your toilet isn’t the only kind of plunger out there. It’s probably not even meant for what you think it’s meant for. The plunger and brush combo kit hanging out in everyone’s bathroom is a move-in staple bought on auto-pilot. Plungers are one of the most common tools for dealing with life’s little emergencies, but they are not a one-size-fits-all-toilets tool.

Oops. That’s the last word you want to hear coming out of your mouth when you’re painting. But things happen. Painting may seem straightforward, but a surprising number of things can go wrong. Blame it on bad luck, poor planning, or Mercury in retrograde—whatever. Sometimes things just get royally screwed up and you need to fix them, now. Almost anything paint-related is fixable, if you know what to do and act in the appropriate timeframe.

If you only own one household tool, it’s probably a cordless drill. They’re pretty essential for even the most basic home improvement projects. But it’s not just a matter of grabbing one and getting to work. Drills may seem straightforward, but there are actually a lot of ways to mess up. Here are some common mistakes to watch out for.

When I moved into a sprawling old Victorian in Louisville, Kentucky three years ago, my neighbors terrified me with their tales of four-digit utility bills. I’d swapped an under-900-square-foot bungalow for the three-story, 1890 behemoth, and was so scared of the bill the first year, I chose to freeze rather than turn up the thermostat.

When you’re redoing a kitchen, flooring has a huge impact on the way the room looks. The orangey faux terra cotta we inherited in our Victorian kitchen drove me nuts and I couldn’t wait to replace it. New floors aren’t cheap though. If you’re considering an overhaul of your kitchen up to and including the floor, it’s easy to drop way more than you intend to. The good news is you don’t have to.

Painting the bathroom is just like painting any other room, right? Not so much, it turns out. I’ve painted my share over the years and never treated them any differently than any other room, but I’ve been doing it wrong. When it comes to bathrooms, there are a few things that make painting a little trickier than the rest of the house. Sam Ross of Nailed It Contracting was nice enough to pepper him with painting questions when he painted my bathroom recently.