Weekend Projects That Actually Pay You Back

The single highest-value weekend project in most houses costs under $150 and involves a shovel. It's moving rainwater away from your foundation. Nobody will ever compliment you on it. But a wet crawlspace shows up on an inspection report, and a wet crawlspace is a five-figure conversation.

That's the filter for everything below. Two questions sort a good weekend project from a bad one. Would an inspector write it up? And would a contractor charge $600 for ninety minutes of actual work? If the answer to either is yes, it belongs on your list. If the project is mostly about your personal taste in tile, it doesn't.

Project 1: Downspouts and grade

Materials: 10-foot lengths of 4-inch corrugated drain pipe ($12 to $18 each), a downspout adapter and elbow for each leader ($8 to $14), a couple of bags of topsoil or clean fill ($4 a bag), pop-up emitters if you're burying the runs ($10 to $15). Figure $60 to $150 for a typical house.

Tools: Round-point shovel, tin snips or a hacksaw, a cordless drill with a 1/4-inch nut driver, a 4-foot level, and a length of string.

Call 811 first. Free, and you want it on record before you put a shovel in the ground.

The job: get every downspout discharging at least six feet from the foundation, and get the soil sloping away roughly six inches over the first ten feet. Most houses fail both. Builders backfill with loose dirt that settles for twenty years, and by the time you buy the place the ground tilts back toward the wall.

What goes wrong: pop-up emitters clog with silt and freeze solid in January. If you're north of the snow line, run the pipe to daylight and skip the emitter. Also, corrugated pipe sags. Hold a string line from the outlet to the discharge point and keep a consistent fall, even if it's only a quarter inch per foot.

Project 2: The front door package

Buyers decide how they feel about a house in the eight seconds they stand on the stoop waiting for the lockbox. That's the whole pitch for this one.

Materials: One quart of exterior door and trim enamel (Behr Premium Plus around $22 a quart, Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel closer to $30 and worth it on a south-facing door), a handleset and deadbolt in a matching finish (Kwikset from about $90, Schlage Encode or a solid Camelot set $150 to $260), new bronze or matte black kick plate ($25 to $40), a full weatherstrip kit and door sweep ($25 to $45), house numbers ($20 to $60), and two matching sconces ($60 to $180 for the pair).

Tools: A 2.5-inch angled sash brush, a 4-inch foam mini roller, 1.5-inch painter's tape, a #2 Phillips, a chisel for hinge and strike mortises, and a non-contact voltage tester. Klein's NCVT-3P runs about $30 and you should own one anyway.

Pull the door off its hinges and lay it flat on sawhorses if you can. Paint hangs and sags on a vertical door, and gravity is undefeated. Two thin coats beat one thick one every time. Don't paint below 50°F or in direct sun.

The sconces are the part people skip because it's electrical. It's a fixture swap, not a rewire. Breaker off, test the wires with the NCVT, photograph the existing connections before you disconnect anything. If you open the box and find cloth-wrapped wire or no ground, stop and call an electrician. That's not being timid, that's knowing which fight isn't worth it.

Project 3: Real trim in one room

Nothing makes a builder-grade room look expensive faster than trim. A 3.25-inch base with a cap molding on top, or picture-frame molding on a dining room wall, reads as custom to anybody walking through.

Materials: Primed MDF or finger-jointed pine base at $1.80 to $4 a linear foot, cap or shoe molding at about $1.20 a foot, a case of 2-inch 18-gauge brads ($10), paintable acrylic caulk ($4 a tube), lightweight spackle, and a quart of trim enamel. A 12x14 room runs $200 to $400 all in.

Tools: A 10-inch miter saw (Ryobi and Hart sliders sit around $130 to $200; a Metabo HPT non-slider is a long-standing budget favorite near $130), an 18-gauge brad nailer, a stud finder, and a coping saw. The cheap cordless brad nailers get one big thing right: no hose, no compressor, no dragging a tank up the stairs. What they get wrong is weight and a slight delay on the trigger. For one room of base, that's fine. For 2,000 feet of crown, buy the pneumatic.

Rent instead of buy if this is a one-time job. Most Home Depot rental counters will put a miter saw and a finish nailer in your truck for about $30 to $45 a day.

What goes wrong: your walls aren't flat and your floors aren't level. Inside corners get coped, not mitered, or they'll open up by Thanksgiving. Gaps under one-eighth inch get caulk. Anything bigger gets the saw again.

Keep MDF out of bathrooms and mudrooms. It drinks water and swells like a sponge.

Project 4: Attic insulation

Unglamorous, invisible, and the only project on this list that sends you money every month.

Materials: Blown fiberglass or cellulose, roughly $20 to $45 a bag depending on material and region. A 1,000-square-foot attic going from R-19 to R-49 lands somewhere around $500 to $800 in bags. Add cardboard or foam baffles for the eaves ($2 to $4 each), a few cans of gun foam ($8), and a tube of fire-block sealant for flue penetrations.

Tools: Both major home centers loan the blower free with a qualifying bag purchase. You need two people, one in the attic and one feeding the hopper, plus 2x10 walk boards, a headlamp, an N95 or better, long sleeves, and safety glasses.

Air-seal before you insulate. Foam the top plates, the wiring penetrations, and the bath fan housings. Insulation slows heat. It doesn't stop air, and air is how you lose it.

Two hard rules. Walk only on the joists or on boards spanning them, because drywall won't hold you. And don't bury a recessed can light unless it's stamped IC-rated.

Project 5: Kitchen hardware and the faucet

Half a day, and it changes the room.

Materials: Cabinet pulls at $3 to $9 each (a 25-door kitchen runs $120 to $250), a pull-down faucet from Moen or Delta at $150 to $300, two braided stainless supply lines ($12 each).

Tools: A cabinet hardware jig is the whole job. Kreg's runs about $40 and True Position's TP-1934 about $100. Use one. Eyeballing 50 holes means 50 chances to be a sixteenth off, and your eye catches it forever. You'll also want a basin wrench ($15 to $25) and a headlamp, because the space under a sink was designed by somebody who hated you.

Here's the trap, and it gets people every time: you shut off the angle stop under the sink and it won't close, or it closes and then weeps. Old multi-turn stops seize. If yours won't shut cleanly, stop, close the main, and decide whether you're comfortable replacing the stop or whether that's a plumber's $180. There's no shame in the second answer at 6 p.m. on a Sunday.

The weekend plan

Friday night: Buy everything. Measure twice, then buy ten percent more trim than your number says. Pull the door hardware off and set the door on sawhorses so the first coat goes on early Saturday.

Saturday morning: Door coat one. While it dries, dig downspout trenches.

Saturday afternoon: Finish drainage, door coat two, hang the sconces before dark.

Sunday: Attic or trim. Not both. Pick the one your climate argues for.

What to hand to somebody else

Panel work. Anything structural. Shower pans and shower tile, because a leak behind tile is invisible for two years and then costs $9,000. Gas lines, always.

The projects worth your Saturday are the ones where the skill is patience and the risk of getting it wrong is a trip back to the store. Everything else, pay the guy.

Then go stand at the end of your own driveway and look at the front of your house like you've never seen it before. You'll know exactly what next weekend is.