Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean you have to hang up your tool belt. You can keep the DIY going with winter home improvement projects. Do these without propping open doors or freezing your fingers off setting up shop in the garage.

Let the indoor work begin with these seven value-adding projects:

#1 Update Your Laundry Room

                                                  

Images: Jenny Vecchiarelli

Laundry rooms in need of an upgrade tend to suffer from a lack of features, so this is typically a sledgehammer-free project. That means no windows propped open on a seven-degree day to let out dust.

#2 Add Crown Molding

                                                  

Images: Christine Kaloudis

Crown molding adds some heavy-duty appeal to a home without any heavy materials to haul through the ice and snow. You can put it at the top of walls or door frames or on the wall along the top of cabinets.

It’s not just pretty; crown molding will cover dings and nicks on walls, and it gives your home a custom look buyers love. You won’t be using a ton of paint on molding, so fumes won’t be an issue, either. 

You can do this winter home improvement project – painting, prep and installing – in a weekend with a miter saw, drop cloth, paint, nail gun, and a ladder.

For professional results, be sure to pick the right size. Crown molding ranges in width from 3 to 20 inches, so choose one that’s in proportion to your ceiling height:

• For standard 8-foot ceilings, the molding should be 2.5 to 6 inches wide.
• For 9-foot ceilings, 3 to 7.5 inches wide.
• For 10-foot or higher ceilings, at least 8 inches wide.

#3 Change Out Cabinet Hardware

Here’s a simple upgrade you can practically do with hot cocoa in one hand: replacing the old pulls and handles on cabinets with new hardware.

If you inherited minimalist cabinets with no pulls at all, you’re adding function, too. “It’s simple and will have dramatic effect on a room,” says Kathryn Emery, a home improvement and lifestyle expert with an eponymous YouTube channel.

A hardware redo’s one of the simplest winter home projects because all you need is a screwdriver and an hour or two.

#4 Get a New Faucet

A faucet is the brains of your sink. Put a better one in, and your sink is suddenly smarter. Normally, plumbing projects are near the top of the list of “Don’t Try This At Home” ideas. But this one is an easy one— as long as you get a faucet with the same number of mounting holes in your sink.

Just turn off the water shutoff valves under the sink, and follow the instructions that[…]

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