I have a few sites in the home improvement niche. Those that are more specific, ie just furniture, bedrooms etc are reasonably paid per click, but the sites which encompass all of home improvement are very poor. Some days only $0.1 per click
home improvement niche is good niche, you can study on the keyword again, some of them do provide good CPC
first you should use google keyword tool to check how many people search it,then did your site has a good rank on google with your keyword?
We have about 20-30 home improvement sites. They earn a decent amount per click. Not as high as financial sites, but still not the low $.05 to $.10 per click.
If you only have a home improvement site in your Adsense account, try disabling your Interest-Based Ads settings. One of the reason why you receive low earnings is because the ads on your site shows some other low-paying ads that are relevant to your visitors (if you have Interest-Based Ads enabled). Of course, this may not be the only reason. You also need to test the placement and do your best to limit the number of ads on a page as well. Most of my earnings come from one single ad above the fold.