Much is said about renovation and how to improve a homestead. Yet while this advice can be helpful, it’s rarely individually geared to your own property. It’s not hard to see why. If home bloggers were able to give you specific advice, you’d wonder how on earth they managed to get a hold of your floor plan and what that weirdness could imply.
That said, sometimes this advice can be very ‘top-down,’ that is, instructions that may or may not apply to your household. The best advice, then, is rendered when a column is able to help you unlock the real potential of your home yourself, empowering you to make those decisions while also showing you that there’s nothing you can’t do with creativity, an okay budget, and the willingness to design.
In this post, we’ll discuss a few of those empowerment tools, and how you can make the most of them. We’re certain that with a little creative ambition, you can truly elevate your home past any sort of standard you have considered the limit until now. Without further ado, let’s begin:
Reformatting Old Utilities
If your home has been standing for a while, it may have had a few previous owners. As every owner passes through, changes to the home that may have made sense at the time define how the space is shaped and how it’s utilized.
For instance, you may move into a home that has a blocked-up chimney and fireplace. This may have been because a previous owner did not see a renovative effort as worth it, or perhaps they wanted to limit the maintenance needs of this area of the house, or perhaps because they installed an electric fireplace for simplicity and didn’t feel as though this utility would have been important.
But now you’re there, you get to define the space anew. Perhaps the idea of a proper wood-burning fireplace stove unit could be a fantastic means of returning your living room to a feeling of vintage functionality. As you can see, reformatting old utilities in this way, using chimney repairs to start, could be worth your time and money. Little efforts like this can also unlock the potential of your home.
Reformatting an old utility doesn’t necessarily mean making that functional, of course. It might be that you have an old well in the garden of your rural home, but now that you have a mains water supply there’s no need to use this. Having this bricked up and properly filled may prevent an unnecessary injury, as well as the cost of maintenance that may come over time. As you can see, unlocking the potential of your home means formatting your home in the most proper manner, using what’s already there to benefit you.
Perfecting The Curb Appeal
Curb appeal is a great means of trimming your home and improving its value. However, even if you have no plans to sell anytime soon, perfecting your curb appeal can be a worthwhile enterprise. Why is this? Well, it’s nice to come home and see your residence perfectly trimmed from the outside. It can truly help elevate a home in terms of how beautiful it looks, and how it represents your personality.
You don’t need to spend overly in order to improve the curb appeal, either. For instance, replacing the mailbox with a newer, more structurally sound option (such as a letterbox within an exterior wall) can be helpful. Making sure your hedges and garden are trimmed and lining the path with flowers can be a perfect addition. Theming your windows and door with similarly colored paint can, in large part, help your home feel beautiful once more.
Letting In Natural Light
You’d be surprised just how radiant a home can seem after you make the most of the natural light it’s afforded. Of course, not all homes are lucky enough to occupy a location that gains many hours of natural sunlight a day, especially in the colder months. It’s also hard to negotiate with the sun, or at least, no interior designer has managed to do that yet.
For this reason, making the most of your natural light takes a little bit of tactical thinking, but can be so worth the effort. You may find that installing Replacement windows Greenville (or wherever it is that you are located) might encourage more light into your rooms, whilst placing a mirror on a feature wall helps expand the reflected light in the space, giving the impression that a room is larger than it actually is. Lighter colors such as beige painted walls, as well as lighter sofa or bed cushions and sheets, lighter carpets, and painted furniture can also make a big difference. In some areas, such as a downstairs bathroom, using blinds for privacy while also allowing in light during the day (to prevent this small room from seeming dingy and oppressive) can totally revolutionize how the room feels.
Privacy Is Worthwhile
A home is nothing if it doesn’t feel safe and secure for your family. But safety and security aren’t only achieved through heavy locks, strong windows, and tools like motion-sensitive floodlights. It’s also achieved through privacy.
Keeping that in mind can be important because it can help you define how privacy might work in your own home. For instance, putting up fences around a property border or planting trees may help you totally block sightlines from public roads or from other buildings in your neighborhood. While we can’t stop every nearby building from seeing into our garden based on their height, for instance, tricks like this may help you can 70% more privacy from onlookers than before. That’s a good way of helping you feel freer and less observed in your space, which is what we all need from time to time.
With this advice in mind, we believe you can unlock the real potential in your home going forward. Don’t forget to have fun with the effort!
