Updating, upgrading, and renovating parts of your home is generally not a small task to take on. Often each room will require a fair bit of planning, time, effort, resources, and money to complete. Each of these factors can often put a halt to any progress being made, especially if you are prone to procrastination. So, whether you have just moved into a new property and want to put your own spin on the place, or if you have lived in the same place for several years and simply fancy a change, here are several top tips that you can implement into your home revamping journey, so as to make it easier, smoother, and to help give you ideas on what you could do.
Take some time to get inspired
When it comes to updating the rooms in your home, you will find that one day you just decide to make a start with it. This is all well and good until you realise that you have no idea what you want to do with said room. To avoid this from happening, and to prepare yourself for when you finally decide to start your upgrade, look for inspiration as early as possible. You can do this sporadically throughout the day when you have a spare five minutes, or you can put aside a little time each week to continue researching and compiling ideas for your project. Social media is a great tool when it comes to looking for inspiration on home upgrade projects. Not only can you easily search hundreds of thousands of images from all across the world, exposing you to different cultures and regions, but you can also easily create folders and mood boards to save all your favourite ideas. So, before you reach the day where you finally have the motivation and drive to start putting your plan into action, make sure that you have spent some time looking at what it is you want to do, and figuring out how you will achieve it.
Home item management
Clutter is a big problem in many households, mainly because people keep buying stuff that they don't need, while simultaneously not throwing away other stuff that they don't need. This will make any house look untidy. When it comes to updating any of the rooms in your home, you will likely find yourself in a predicament where you want to include new items or finally replace the second-hand appliances or furniture that you were gifted with, or that you thrifted. Whatever the case may be, try to create a clutter-free mindset, and only keep the items, appliances, and furniture that you actually want, and regularly utilise, rather than holding on to everything. Similarly, ensure that you are not just buying stuff, simply because you want to. Take some time to think how, and why are these items, appliances, or furniture going to positively impact the upgrade of your home, and the quality/ease of your life.
Fixtures and fittings
In the past, when people would redecorate or update their homes, one of the important criteria to meet would be to ensure that all cables and pipework throughout the property were hidden from view. Over time this has become less and less important with people now using cable and pipe management as a part of the interior design. You will occasionally find people using various types of conduits to run electrical cables through their homes and along their walls and ceilings. Instead of buying cheap, tacky plastic casing, people will spend a little extra on the conduit so that it looks aesthetically pleasing. Not only can you use this method to help produce a unique aesthetic within your home, but it also removes the need to run cables through your walls, spending a lot of time, effort, and money destroying them, and then replastering them. The same can be done with plumbing and any other pipes you wish to use throughout your home. Instead of putting them out of sight behind walls, or under the floor, you could consider using quality-looking plumbing pipes along with stylish school board clips to secure them along your walls, so as to make them a part of the decor. There are other fixtures and fittings available to use in ways to help you update the rooms in your house, but these two examples will likely be the most impactful, for various reasons.
Get proper professional help
For some people, half the fun of upgrading a home is the DIY aspect. For others, doing DIY projects is simply a tool in which to save money. Regardless of your stance on the situation, there will likely be a time when you need to consider hiring professional help to complete a task, whether it is because you lack a certain set of skills, tools, or qualifications. When you arrive at this point in your home upgrade journey, make sure to hire professional tradespeople, instead of simply who is available, or cheapest. Often you will find that the people who are always available, or cheapest, are in that position for a reason. If you try to cut corners with home updates, especially when it comes to hiring external help, you will often find that you get what you pay for, and in the long run, you will need to get another set of professionals in to fix the problem that you or the cheap and easily available tradesmen created. So, before you go full steam ahead into a task that you are not trained to do, or before you hire the first person you come across, make sure to do adequate research on the business, or person, ask for references, and get several quotes from a variety of people first.
Create a timeline for large projects
If you are updating all the rooms in your home, then it might be tempting to try and do it all at once. Sometimes this can work, and granted it will get the job completed quicker. However, in most cases, this opens you up to a whole host of problems. Instead of biting off more than you can chew, what would be advisable is to create a timeline, where you estimate, and plan exactly when you will start/finish specific room projects. This way although the entire project may last longer, your home life should be less affected on a day-to-day basis. If you create a timeline and for example, know when the bathroom will be unusable, you can plan how you will cope with this change for the period you expect. This will be much easier to do as opposed to uprooting your entire family, and homelife, simply because you want to finish the project faster.
Don’t forget about the details
If you are thinking about updating all the rooms in your home, then it is likely because you want a change around the place. Sometimes all you need to do is make subtle changes to a room, and often a whole renovation is not required. When it comes to planning your home updating project, remember to think about the details of each room as you may get some easy wins by simply changing a few small, and easy sections. For example, curtains, door handles, lights, light switches, and plug sockets are all relatively cheap yet impactful items in most rooms that can be changed to bring around a large difference in appearance. They are also, for the most part, fairly simple to change over too (although any electrical work should be done, or checked by a professional if you are not confident, competent, or qualified). So, before you spend a lot of time, effort and money on renovating a room, remember to look at the details and see if you have any quick wins that you can utilise.
Set a budget and stick to it
Often home upgrades will cost a lot of money, regardless of how much work you do yourself, or how hard you look for good deals on items, and materials. For this reason, if you are planning to update all the rooms in your home, you should create a budget, and stick to it so that you do not end up in unneeded financial difficulty, or stuck in the middle of an unfinished project due to running out of funds.
Painting and wallpapering
Of course, one of the most tried and tested ways for updating a home is through repainting, or wallpapering the property. This is mainly due to how quick and impactful it is to do, and the only decision you really need to make is deciding on the colour schemes or patterns you wish you implement into the design on your walls. Even if you have never painted, or wallpapered before, these skills are relatively easy to pick up, and even master. So, if you are thinking about updating your home, why not consider adding a new splash of colour in this way?
There are many other considerations to think about when updating your home. However, make sure to take these top tips on board to help you with your projects.
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