Home improvement investments you can take with you when you move

If you’ve spent a lot of time on the home you live in, it’s likely you’ve spent money it. Whether it was for repairs, or simply to upgrade the home, we know there are costs to maintaining your dwelling. With big-ticket items, the home improvement investments are usually hard to take with you when you leave. You can only hope they will increase the value of your home when you sell. This goes for flooring, millwork or built-in kitchen cabinetry, and things of the like.

But did you know there are home improvement investments you can take with you when you move? You may have to clear it with the realtor and new homeowners first. Sure, you might sound like a cheap-o, but to be honest, if you’ve done a lot of interior design upgrades to get your home to match your taste, you could save a lot of money, and trouble, by bringing them with you. Calculating their costs could bring your receipts into the thousands. So it may be worth asking!

Here is a related article you’ll also want to check out:

• Tips from Coquitlam movers on how to detach and reuse wall items when moving

Here are some ideas:

Move door knobs, plus cabinet knobs and pulls with you.

If you have fancy door knobs in the kitchen or bathroom, or on bedroom and closet doors, these can be easily unscrewed to take with you. Sometimes, getting the ‘look’ you want for your home means going ‘all out’ to get the hardware that matches your decor. However, these are by far a ‘cheap’ purchase. They can be costly, and they’re the type of item that ‘adds up.’ To save your investment in these upgrades, you can easily replace your current knobs with cheaper, but still fantastic-looking ones from IKEA or otherwise,. Then, take your fancy knobs and pulls with you when you move.

Carved or moulded doors can be part of your move.

Doors are another purchase that can come cheap or expensive. On the high end, you have doors with carvings in them, and doors with millwork or moulding on them. Outside doors with glass windows are also worth a lot more than plain flat ones. Whether indoor or outdoor, you can unhinge your doors and – provided they are standard sizes that will fit in your new home – take them with you.

With kitchen cupboard doors, solid wood and ‘fancy’ ones can also be something you technically could take with you. However, these are often custom measured for your space. So before you start unscrewing those hinges in a hurry, check if they will fit in your new home.

Let the movers know that you want to take the doors, to save you less hassle. If they plan in advance, they can prepare the right tools, oils or WD-40 to unhinge them.

Ceiling fans you’ll want to move with you.

For most cases, we’d leave it up to you to decide if you want to uninstall your ceiling fan and take it with you on moving day. It is a slight upgrade from some light fixtures alone. However, the type of fans you’ll want to move with you for sure are the bigger investments, such as smart fans. These are quite costly (compared to ‘regular’ fans), and something you’ll probably be asking yourself about the moment you find you’re moving!

Thermostats can be investments to keep.

Some of you reading this may not know, but others will; thermostats can get fancy too. Well, maybe you all knew, since newer homes probably don’t come with the mercury thermostats anymore anyway. But we’re talking about the even fancier thermostats – smart thermostats. Here is a video that explains the types of thermostats, and how to install a smart thermostat.

Expensive light fixtures you can move to your new home, carefully.

We wrote an article on how to move a chandelier. We recommend taking a look, especially if it was a larger home improvement investment you want to move with you:

• Making preparations for moving a chandelier in Vancouver

The same principles apply to other specialty light fixtures you want to hang on to.

Granite, quartz, concrete, marble or other stone countertops to move, technically

If you can manage it – though it twill be very hard to detach, and may need professional work to re-fit in a new space  – you can bring your stone countertop with you. We wrote an article on how to move heavy countertops here:

• How To Move A Granite, Concrete Or Heavy, Countertop

We know that moving a countertop will be a big deal. And since they can crack easily, you may not want to risk it, despite how much you feel you paid for them. Don’t forget, unless your new home owners are gutting your current place anyway, you’ll also have to put in a new countertop for them when they arrive on moving day.

Bathroom shower heads are easily detached for moving day.

Most of the time, you can remove a shower head on moving day to take with you. Of course, put back the one that was there before you invested in the turbo jet or aerating shower head! Here is an article that explains the types of shower heads out there, so you can tell if your is worth keeping.

Now, if your shower head looks like some of the luxury ones shown in this article, you’ll definitely want to find out how to uninstall and take it with you! Or make sure the realtor puts it in the value of the home!

LED lights – should you take them with you on moving day?

Nowadays, LED lights are fairly standard and are coming down in price. However, sometimes, when you first replace all your old bulbs with LED ones, the investment can be large. A few years ago, they were definitely the kind of thing you would unscrew and take with you whenever you moved from one place to another. Nowadays, we’ll let you make that judgement call – you’ll know how much they’re worth. Just don’t forget them, they can be so inconspicuous!

Appliances are easy to move from one home to another, if you follow the pro tips.

If you feel you’ve invested a lot into high-grade appliances you hoped you’d have a lifetime, don’t worry, you can move them. The only hard part will be making sure the new home buyers know that they don’t come with the house. They should know this as early as possible, especially if they thought they were getting the ‘ultra 3000’ version of appliances with the home price.

See these articles on our site about how to move common appliances, as they have to be moved with professional tips in mind:

• Moving Large Appliances: How To Move A Deep Freezer
• Moving large appliances: How to move a Refrigerator
• How to move and store a washer and dryer

To conclude: save money by packing your home improvement investments in the moving truck.

As we’ve seen above, there are several items you can consider packing into the moving truck, which many might forget about. It may seem like tradition is to leave these home improvement investments for the new dwellers; but that doesn’t have to be the case (especially if you do the work of replacing your fixtures before moving). You bought them for high quality, so there isn’t a reason to give them up, if you don’t want to. Now, if your new place has even nicer fixtures…well…! Let that be your decision!