10 Home Improvements You're Wasting Time and Money On

Garage addition  
How badly do you want to keep your car out of the rain and sun?  

If you have a driveway or a one-car garage and are thinking of expanding it to a two-car indoor paradise, that 26-by-26-foot dream home drains cash faster than your car drains 10W-40.  

All that carpentry and electrical work adds up to nearly $58,000 on average and adds little more than $33,000 to the value of your house. Never mind that you just tacked an extra room on to your electric bill and gave yourself yet another roof to eventually replace. If you have a one-car garage, do yourself a favor and consider just replacing the door instead. It's a far lower starting price ($1,500 to $3,000) and retains more than 70% of its value come selling time.  

Replacing a fiberglass entry door  
You love your old, scuffed-up fiberglass door. It looks like home and, for all you know, has been saving you hundreds in heating and cooling costs for years.  

It's just too bad that door's been lying to you this whole time.  

Not only is a fiberglass door nearly three times as expensive as its steel counterpart, but it's also not doing your house any big favors. A $3,600 fiberglass door loses roughly 44% of its value the minute it's installed. A $1,000 steel door, meanwhile, isn't nearly as aesthetically pleasant, but retains 73% of its cost. At that rate, it's the most valuable single remodel you can do to your home.  

Bathroom addition  
This one's a really tough call families in one and one-and-a-half bathroom households struggle with every year once it's time to host holidays and family reunions.  

If you love your old home but would love it more of the folks who built it a century ago took 21st century personal space needs into account, the cost of another bathroom is probably the deciding factor. Even on the cheap, a 6-by-8-foot bathroom addition can cost upward of $40,000. While your family and visitors will no doubt appreciate it, it'll be underwhelming to homebuyers who've been looking at properties with the same number of bathrooms all day.  

A bathroom addition automatically drops 50% of its value, which means the $40,000 you spent to stop your family's ceaseless complaints tacks on only $20,000 to your selling price. Thanks for the $20,000 loss, kids.  

Backup power generator  
Emergency preparedness comes at a price, especially for worrywarts.