DIY Before & Afters | Do It Yourself Projects & Hacks

“Wait…that looks familiar.” Is what you may be thinking at this exact moment and hey, you’re right! This cute lil’ cabinet was the after photo in Molly’s cabinet upgrade. She DIYd her way to a subtle, yet impactful aesthetic upgrade to give her cabinets a cohesive look. From Molly: While I love the storage the multiple built-in cabinets our house came with, I hated the cathedral cabinet doors.

Sam hated her kitchen, but she and her husband couldn’t afford to make real changes to it. Being on a budget meant they had to prioritize and focus on the floor — her least favorite part of the room. From Sam: I really really hated our kitchen, but we basically couldn’t afford to make real changes to it because each change begets another change and the whole thing really needs more work than were personally willing/able to put into this house and at this time.

On a peaceful, sidewalk-free street, lined with trees and near a lake, is Matt and Amanda’s 1947 bungalow in the San Rafael hills of Pasadena. It’s not hard to see what attracted the couple to this house, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t need a lot of work. The house had a lot of potential (and light), but not a lot of personality. Matt and Amanda wanted to create a rich, unique Craftsman feel.

With low ceilings, white walls and track lighting, Matt and Amanda’s post-war den in their California Craftsman didn’t exactly inspire the soul. As two people working in a hectic and creative field (they’re both actors), they wanted to add loads of personality to their small den, while also creating a retreat. In short, they wanted to banish the boring. Their plan? Transform the blank canvas above into a room with English pub vibes.

At first glance, this space above the bathroom in Brett’s apartment looked like an unfortunate eye sore. But Brett saw this area as more than wasted space. He had a vision, and very specific goals for the small space. And his DIY solution is both attractive and functional. Using 1/2 inch PVC piping from Home Depot and some standard wooden slats, Brett transformed this otherwise useless space into his bedroom!

First of all, shout out to Tanya’s mom for choosing kitchen elements way back in the ’80s that wouldn’t look totally insane to our modern eyes. As smart as her choices were, time waits for no man and since the kitchen was showing its age, Tanya figured she would jump in and help her mom update her space.

Amanda and Chris Covo spent eight months renovating their 1920s bungalow, also known as the Sallie Johnson House. Johnson was a freed slave and her home is now a historic landmark in East Austin, Texas. (You can listen to Sallie’s narrative here.) When the couple first saw this house, it was completely run down.

Interior designer and stylist Brett and her husband Brandon bought a 1900s Craftsman house in Oakland, California in March of last year, but they couldn’t move in right away. The architectural charm was immediately obvious, but it also needed a lot of work. A renovation was definitely in the cards.

Clashing patterns, chipping paint, and mismatched furniture is far from unusual in Beijing’s rental market. But Becky Lane’s apartment in an older neighborhood near the city’s fashionable Sanlitun district was another ordeal entirely. Despite this apartment being at the higher end of her budget and in a state that would make most expats go running for the nearest renovated home, Becky said yes to renting.

If you have an old basement or other unused space in your home, you might dream about remodeling that space into something beautiful and useful. For Suzanne and Peter, that dreaming started the moment they bought their San Francisco home three years ago. The dark and dank basement room that came with the house no longer exists and has been replaced with a bright, open and welcoming space.

There are remodels…and then there are total transformations. Julia and Kurt bought a run-down studio apartment nine years ago. The layout was weird and it was on the teeny side. But instead of just improving the look of the current home’s foot print, they thought outside of the box! They decided to take over the home’s huge rooftop terrace to convert their studio apartment into a two-level, two-bedroom modern home. Originally all the living spaces were on one level.

When Fernando and Maximiliano bought a classic house in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca, the building had been abandoned for years and every room was begging to be renovated. With a very minimal budget they decided to redo every room themselves. When we bought the house the living and dining room were two separate rooms, and every wall had a different color or wallpaper. The wooden floors were buried in dirt.

Amy fell in love with this sofa’s good bones and excellent cushions, even though the fabric was a little drab. After inspecting the piece to make sure it wasn’t too good to be true, she took it home and got to work and giving it a super easy and affordable refresh. From Amy: This is one of those sofas built with an incredibly sound construction, it’s something that is hard to find these days for an affordable price.

This little cutie pie garage sale dresser has been hankering for a makeover for a decade—and the results are well worth the wait. Perhaps inspired by the fantastic results, the rest of this corner got itself a spruce too! Before we gaze lovingly at the dresser as it looks today, let’s hear a little bit about what it was before: The side tables were a garage sale find for $10 which we had bought at the start of our marriage 10 years ago.

Bland rental kitchens and bathrooms are about as common as noisy upstairs neighbors, but at least you can make small temporary fixes to transform your space. Take some serious inspiration from these clever renters, who invested a little bit of time and very little money to make changes they could live with, then reverse when they moved out. This awkward bathroom — with a seashell-shaped sink — got a weekend facelift that only cost $350 (also lead image above).

Sheena and Jason’s vintage Airstream is a soothing, lovely, bohemian dream on wheels. They travel the States in it with their beautiful dog Riley. Now the interior is all-white, with natural textures and bold patterns, but it sure didn’t look that way when they bought it. “Our entire trailer was one giant DIY project. We bought Mavis in original 1975 condition.

This project is a great example of how a few dollars and a few minutes can make a dramatic change in your home—and your mood. As Anne described her situation, “Cooking and baking make me happy, but seeing my workspace sulking in the shadows was putting a damper on my spirit.” Let’s see her cheap, quick, renter-friendly, and reversible solution to the baking blues! So much better!

Sage looked long and hard for the perfect piece for her entryway. It needed to fit the spot, and be deep and flexible enough to fit a variety of footwear. Most importantly, she didn’t want the visual mess of open shelving. Sage didn’t want to spend too much so she first went the IKEA route, and ruled out a classic “fauxdenza” (made from stock cabinets mounted on the wall), before finally hitting up Craigslist in a long and patient search for something to work with.

The interior of a 16-year-old camper is as outdated as you might imagine. Even in the best of conditions, green carpet, over-sized (not trendy) floral patterns and some questionable wood veneer can leave a small space feeling even smaller. That’s what makes this stylish — and affordable! — RV remodel so great. It now looks good and feels much larger than just 188 square feet.

What’s this, a blank wall? What could possibly be done with it—a coat of paint? Some sassy wallpaper? A coat of paint with a sassy wallpaper border? Be prepared for something so much more dramatic and intriguing than all that… Even though the title of this submitted project was “Pegboard Cross Stitch Mural,” I still wasn’t prepared for this. It’s incredible, it’s dramatic — yet perfectly scaled, and totally unexpected.

This is a cute little cabinet, perfect for storing all manner of things. But Melissa had an entirely different purpose in mind, and the whole project took about thirty minutes from start to finish. One member of her household is particularly happy with the end result.

This is a Very Serious Dresser, and while it is certainly beautiful and worthy of preservation, how does one incorporate a dark, gravitas-filled antique into a home that’s decidedly not all stained glass windows, turrets, and gargoyles? Don’t worry—the answer is not “paint it white.

It’s impossible to believe, but at one point, these chairs were like two perfect plums. We first discovered them in NYC’s Chelsea Flea Market, one cold Sunday morning, in the early ’90s when my husband (then boyfriend) and I were recovering from a live Jane’s Addiction hangover. The flea market was a place you wandered through when you had nothing better to do and little energy to do it.

This Philadelphia row home came with many enviable features when Matt and Anne Thomas bought it. Stunning architecture. Tons of space. All that natural light. The one thing they didn’t love was the home’s extremely red-toned cherry wood floors. But, the floors had just been re-done and were nice in every other regard. Replacing them would have been wasteful.

The MELLTORP is one of IKEA’s ubiquitous and affordable tables. It’s minimal and modern, but it also makes a great blank canvas for a DIY. Here’s how Tiphaine of Kraft & Carat transformed it. This is extremely cool, and the way the table now matches the chairs is uncanny; choosing colors that close to each other often leads to awkward almost-matching, but this looks perfect.

Hugh Molten, a South Carolina-based real estate agent, didn’t plan for such a big project when he bought this falling-down old church. “I originally had the vision to simply clean it out and live in it basically as-is; create a small shower in the corner, stainless prep tables for the kitchen and call it done.” Today, this 1600-square-foot former house of worship is an incredible industrial modern home, and how it ended up that way was a long and interesting journey.

You are currently gazing upon a floor that is not only old linoleum—it is the old linoleum floor of a fish-gutting room. Is there any hope for this room, or is it doomed to be forever haunted by dearly departed stinky fishies? The old, fishy floor has been replaced with a watery blue dream; it’s like a river you can walk on. This stained plywood floor was created by Tanya of Dans le Lakehouse, and I’m in awe of her vision.

If, like me, you were hoping that this art hack involved adding enormous sea monsters to this idyllic beach scene, you might be the teensiest bit disappointed, but if you want to see these discount pieces transformed into lovely original abstract paintings, read on! Let’s start with a little backstory: When I came across these pre-framed mass reproduction art pieces at HomeGoods, they were the perfect size for our space but lacked the modern minimal look I was going for.

A reader found this old dresser in an alley and knew right away that she’d hit the jackpot. And after hours of scrubbing and sprucing, this dresser is even more beautiful than the day it was built. Here’s how reader Krissy Gilhooly tells the story of this exciting discovery: I found this piece abandoned in the alley behind our house. When I first saw it, I was expecting it to be rickety and have sticky drawers, as most furniture is when it’s thrown away.

This little stairway landing is so pretty. It’s got hardwood floors, a gracefully placed window worthy of Vermeer, a dramatic work of art, and an intriguing vintage table. Its owner did not feel so positive about the space, however, and saw potential for so much more. Seriously, wow! I love the notion of a stairway accent wall; as you’ll see below, it’s incredibly inviting from below.

Ah, the ever-reliable IKEA KALLAX: a timeless, affordable shelving unit that’s available in a variety of sizes and colors and is useful for holding books, records, storage bins, objets d’art, snakes, and so much more. Yes, of course, snakes… I have to say, the wood of the KALLAX looks pretty beautiful with all the organic matter, and the plants and rocks inside are all well chosen and arranged.

Here’s a story from an intrepid Redditor, who kept getting packages stolen off their porch. Many people can relate: one third of Americans have reported having a package stolen outside their home. So this crafty person turned to a DIY fix. Here’s what this project involved, according to this Redditor: My solution was a lot cheaper and went up in less than an hour! Not permanent, but will do for now.

A reader moved into this trailer without realizing how much work it needed, and it’s always so much more difficult to renovate a space when you’re already living in it—especially when your home is essentially one room. It took some serious determination and a bit of boldness, but this trailer is now home sweet home.

This backyard is a great size and appears to have excellent views, but it must be admitted: There’s a bit more rubble than one might hope. And a few more rats than is ideal, too, apparently. That’s right, rats: Our yard was a high-maintenance relic of an avid gardener. Looking for a way to hide an ugly garden shed, the previous owner thought it wise to build a six-foot concrete wall directly down the middle of the small yard.

When Nicole Goodreau and her fiancé spotted this mid-century Lane cedar chest at their local Goodwill for $30, they knew they had to have it. While the existing army green color and retro knobs didn’t fit their home’s modern aesthetic, they were confident that, with a little elbow grease, they could transform it into the perfect storage piece for their petite city apartment.

When Bonnie Christine found this 55-year-old travel trailer for sale, it was already in pretty damn good shape, but it got majorly upgraded into a gorgeous glamper that’s more elegant and luxurious than many stationary homes. She had been looking for one for a decade when they finally found the perfect specimen: A 1962 26-foot Airstream Overlander.

The window in this bedroom is absolutely dreamy, but the space below it was a bit of a waste—until inspiration struck, and one room became two. Here’s the scoop on the under-window situation: Before we had two slightly tatty built-in cabinets either side of a Velux window. They didn’t look great, and the space in the middle was wasted. It became a catch-all for junk. Because the home is rented, though, we couldn’t make any permanent changes.

“If you want to try something like painting your walls a zesty color—just go for it—it’s only paint,” advises blogger and DIY master Pati Robins. She’s been living in this rental home for 13 years, and as seen with these before photos, it’s had quite the transformation. “If you don’t like it you can always repaint it—and if you don’t try it, you will always wonder ‘what if?

It looked and worked better than anyone thought.

A reader felt that this “dark, old, manly faux leather ottoman” didn’t suit their apartment’s bright, new, laid-back vibe. So all it took was a staple gun and a colorful blanket to give it a fun, sunny new look.

Anyone can do this.

This home on Chicago’s Gold Coast was originally built in 1892, but was transformed into condominiums in 1978. This particularl unit—a two-bedroom space with one and a half baths—hadn’t been touched since. Covered in old carpet (even in the kitchen, shudder) and in need of a lot of work, Kira Cole wasn’t deterred by the design task at hand when she purchased the space.

This tall, vintage, secondhand dresser needed a little wood filler and a lot of love, so its new owner gave it all that and a gorgeous coat of paint that totally transformed its look. The new owner of this dresser, who bought it on Craigslist for $75, described it as “a glossy cherry wood… ick!” It did, however, have nice lines, antique charm, and plenty of refined details without too much old-fashioned folderol.

Before and After transformations just never get old, especially when the results are utterly unrecognizable. Case in point: Back in 2013, we posted a project about an empty stairwell space that was transformed into something unexpectedly wonderful. Cut to five years later and it’s been viewed almost four million times. We recently went back to see just what made the project resonate so much with our readers.

It’s been two years since readers gave Laura advice about increasing the curb appeal of her rental property and she’s back with an update. Her plan was to make the lawn healthier and add some shrubs. She was also considering painting the shutters or siding and asked readers to help decide what color might go nicely with the yellow. So, let’s find out how this house looks now and which advice Laura ran with!

Project by: Ashlea Location: Red Deer — Alberta, Canada We purchased a 1940s farmhouse complete with just about original everything. While our little home was big on charm, it was also big on orange, lacquered wood trim, doors, floors and cabinets. Our dated kitchen cabinets were cute, but the swan and fruit basket decals weren’t quite our thing.

Here we have a perfectly ordinary drop leaf dining table. You’ve seen its ilk at thrift stores, and maybe one is in your home right now. This particular one, however, has been totally transformed by a talented Game of Thrones fan into something you might see in The Red Keep. Get the look: How amazing does that look?? It could basically be used by Daenerys to take the Iron Throne. The step-by-step was posted to Imgur yesterday by smife0, whose brother updated the table.

Project by: Dona Location: Shelter Island, New York My husband’s hoarding habit paid off. Once I learned that the bed of a truck is the same size as a queen mattress we took his rusting 1965 Chevrolet truck and turned it into a guest bed! We worked on this project together, it required sawing the cab (now it’s the headboard) in half; sawing the tailgate off the truck body; wire brushing the rust off , etc. We carried the pieces into the house where we put the truck together again.

Eric’s Eames chairs were sitting stylishly in his dinning room for years, complimenting a blue cloth on his old table. After picking up a Saarinen style table and ditching the cloth, he found himself missing the pop of color. Rather than cover up that lovely marble table top, he found a fresh and inexpensive solution. From Eric: Sometimes, buying a new piece a furniture can make other pieces in the room feel mismatched.

This homeowner took her inspiration from the past, including '70s and '80s-style touches.

Lindsay thought she found a “sturdy, but out-of-style wood coffee table” at her local thrift store—but when she got home, she realized she’d been fooled. The ugly veneer made this piece impossible to restore, paint, or reshape. “At that point, I wanted little to do with the table,” Lindsay says. But she’d already dropped $15, so she decided to figure out some solution.And it’s a good thing she kept trying.

Lindi wasn’t sure what to do with this awkward space on the side of her living room. “It didn’t really have a function and was largely unused,” she says. But soon she found her vision: Her home lacked a community work area where her kids could hunker down over homework and Lindi could edit images for her blog. Black vertical shiplap anchors the space, and floating wood shelves in a dark stain add depth—and match the desk.

Katherine‘s master bathroom was filled with wasted space, with a wall of closets and a separate room for the toilet and tub contributing to the cramped floor plan. In order to reveal this space’s true potential, “we pretty much had to start from scratch,” Katherine says. “It was in need of a major facelift.” They started by ripping out everything: unnecessary walls; the dark, gloomy builder-grade cabinetry; even the toilet.

Erin‘s small, square master bathroom was cramped and outdated, with brown tiles and a builder-grade sink that offered no inspiration. But a trip to Italy did: “I kept talking about how I envisioned a master bathroom that looked like it belonged in a boutique hotel in Italy, and my partner surprised me with a vacation to one of my favorite cities in the world! Rome!” Erin says.

Cat and her boyfriend, Brian, seriously lucked out: His family’s hunting lodge in southern Utah is the perfect weekend retreat. But over time, the cabin has transformed from a yearly hunting haven for the boys to a family vacation home. “Naturally, it was in need of some decor and interior design,” Cat says. Cat and Brian’s upstairs bedroom had an awkward slanted ceiling and standard white wall.

The end result is cheery and modern.

Innovative DIY projects are always inspiring, but even more so when they’re budget-conscious! All of these Before & After DIY projects can be done for under $50. So pick your favorite and get to it!

The power of paint can’t be denied – we all know how it can transform a room, but the effect is also powerful when it comes to projects that involve the application of paint to furniture and cabinetry. Here are ten examples from the archives (including one where the “furniture” didn’t even exist prior to the paintjob!); check out the befores in this gallery and then click through on each for the always-fun-to-see afters.

Ashley Crites, one half of the team of Relative Renovations, described her master bedroom as “bland, gray, and the dumping ground for old furniture”—not exactly an ideal place to spend a third of your life. So when she had the opportunity to take part in the One Room Challenge, she knew exactly which room to choose. Inspired by Brady Tolbert’s gorgeous tufted headboard, Ashley chose a deep green velvet to upholster headboard panels that span the width of the room.

This north-facing, low-floor unit lacked natural light, but Paige replaced blinds, ripped out a built-in bookshelf, and painted the walls a bright, fresh white.

There are only so many changes you can make to a kitchen you do not own. Jess Bunge, Senior Market Editor for Emily Henderson, faced many of the classic challenges of a rental—dated floors, lackluster countertops, an oddly shaped floor plan—but brilliantly worked around them to make the space one to sigh over. The real star of this new kitchen is the countertop cover. With help from her dad, Jess cleverly cut plywood to fit over the gray granite, and built a matching backsplash.

This garden-level space was the home’s entrance, office, guest room, and living room all in one, and though it was full of intriguing art, fantastic patterns, and great furniture, it needed a little something to make it as welcoming and cozy as possible. Removable wallpaper to the rescue!

The ubiquitous white cube shelf unit is affordable, attractively minimalist, and endlessly useful, but occasionally it needs a bit of a twist to fit in with the rest of a home’s decor. This particular unit—similar to this one from Target or this one from IKEA—needed some real TLC: I had this six-cube shelving unit in the playroom. It has several scratches on top and stickers on the sides but it was still in good shape.

A talented DIYer bought this old desk for $11.25 and managed to transform it into a dead-on knockoff of a $1,299 Pottery Barn desk while adding a clever upgrade in the process. Our intrepid DIYer needed a new desk, but wanted to spend less than $100: I picked up this desk for $11.25 at my local Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

These spaces now burst with life and good vibes.

These stairs were intensely carpeted, too small to be very useful or accessible, and generally less-than-ideal. Rather than simply removing the carpet, which would have been a nice upgrade on its own, the stairs were reimagined completely—and moved. When asked to describe the stairway pre-renovation, the homeowner sums up its character in just two chilling words: Death Trap. Honestly, there is no other way to describe it.

Thanks to a blush of color and a clever installation job, the ubiquitous blank-slate PAX wardrobe from IKEA gets a major upgrade in a graphic designer’s Copenhagen apartment. Four IKEA PAX wardrobes are now painted the same pink as the surrounding walls, giving them the appearance of a built-in closet. Michella Laura has turned pink into a sophisticated neutral that sets off the white bedding and trim to great effect and allows the stunning white-and-blue vintage Murano light to pop.

One of the Dr. Oz Show’s backstage dressing rooms was neglected and nearly empty, but it needed to become camera-ready in a very short amount of time, for a fairly small amount of money. All it took was a style guide, Amazon two-day shipping, and some major glam, and this room is ready for its closeup. The space before is not very inspiring, but it turns out the room was even worse in person: Bland, boring, and plain UGLY!

When one clever crafter gained a larger bed but lost a headboard, a humble roll of washi tape came to the rescue, completing the look without destroying the budget. Here was the issue. Georgina recently replaced her old bed with a much larger super-king, which didn’t come with a headboard. As a result, the plain wall above her bed suddenly looked very bare. She came up with a smart way to elegantly and affordably demarcate the sleeping space.

IKEA hacks are always fun, but this one resulted in a piece that looks more like a high-end mid-century modern credenza that would cost at least 10 times more than it actually did. This BESTÅ is about to truly live its best life. First, a little bit about how Alex Mcclain, the mastermind behind this hack, was inspired by: I really liked a mid-century style credenza I saw from a company called Rove Concepts but couldn’t justify spending the $1,000+ dollars so I had to get creative.

The owner of this space described it as “a very scary sunroom,” and the presence of asbestos alone earns it that designation. After six weeks of hardcore work, it’s now anything but scary. Here’s a bit more insight about what our intrepid DIYer was facing: The before of my sunroom was symbolic of the entire house—unloved, a little broken, but with a lot of potential.