You must consider your home to be more than a financial investment. It is a personal and emotional investment as well. It is where you return to after a hard day. It is where you spend precious time with your family. It is where you sleep, where you relax, where you can completely be yourself.

How you feel in this environment will impact so many different aspects to your daily life, and how well your home is designed plays a critical role in that. Don’t let budget constraints let you down. Take home improvement and design projects on as the lifelong commitment they should be, and start feeling better in your home by following this easy guide today:

Create a Mood Board

The first step to any home improvement or design project should start with a mood board. This can be done in a notebook, or, more likely, on a board on Pinterest. You will want to compile all the ideas you like that you find, and narrow it down. If you want a fully cohesive home, you can plan out each room in advance so that your projects can be uniform and bring harmony to your home. Either way, you will be surprised at how many good ideas there are out there. Don’t let your imagination be your limitation, and source inspiration to help you design.

Commit to a Final Plan

The next step is to commit to a final plan. This could be choosing a single DIY project, for instance creating a farm table for your kitchen, or it could be committing to an entire room. Make up sketches, find real color swatches or wallpaper samples, and start finding the right furniture. A room will take a lot longer than a single project, and some rooms cannot be done by yourself, but committing to a final plan can help you budget and bring your dream to life.

Cost Analysis and Budget

Money is going to be your biggest obstacle because even if you are completely on board with repainting or building a table, you still need to pay for the materials. That is why it is best to do a cost analysis for every project that you do, and to also make it generous. This way you can save up for smaller projects before you start, or you can take out a personal loan for a bigger project like a kitchen remodel. Before you get just any old loan, however, find the best option for you from this short term personal loan guide. You can spread out the costs, just don’t let yourself get stuck in a bad deal to do it.

Give Yourself a Deadline

If you are committing to the project yourself, give yourself a deadline. This could be a resolution that you will work on it for an hour or two every day, or it could mean taking the day off so you can put up wallpaper in one room. Either way, you need to set deadlines. No one likes to live in a project, and never start a new project before the last one is finished.

You can live in your dream home; you just need to design it and bring those designs to life. This doesn’t have to be done all at once, and, by spreading out projects and costs, you can better afford and design your home to magazine-level quality.