Small Changes, Big Difference
How making simple, easy changes can
Watch any home improvement show and you’ll see dramatic changes to the homes being worked on. By adding bold color, coordinated design and new fabrics and furnishings, we see a room change and morph into something completely different-looking. On Decorating Cents, a program on HGTV, the second half of the show often features a re-design.
These homes undergo a change in a room merely by rearranging and making simple design changes. What’s equally fascinating to me is how the rooms with the simple design changes – and simple efforts – can be just as dramatic and boldly different as the ones with the major design marathons.
Because we’re moving into the holiday season, design changes that can bring big results quickly are the goal. You want to freshen up your home for company and the upcoming holidays, but you don’t have the time – and you need to reserve your energy – for the cleaning, shopping, decorating, and cooking ahead.
I recently shared with you a quick change that I made to my dining room (adding crystals to my chandelier) and what a difference that made. This week, I’m sharing some more of the projects around my home that took two hours or less and that made a big difference. I hope you enjoy them.
Outdoor living
Upstairs off the family room, we have a veranda that overlooks the pool. In the summer, the veranda is shady and out of reach of mosquitoes and in the winter, the veranda is a perfect spot for a blanket and a book. My veranda was a mishmash of uncoordinated furnishings and looked unfinished.
In a weekend, I put on two coats of stain on the floor that only took me an hour. I refinished our double chaise lounge with the same stain to coordinate the wood colors. The next step was to sew a new cover and coordinating pillow in all-weather fabric for the chaise and hang some coordinating curtains. For less than $200 and a little time, I had a new, good-looking outdoor room.
Lights, camera, action
The next project was to revamp some of the lighting in our home. At our stairway, we had some inexpensive sconces that filled a quick lighting void when we built the house. But, they weren’t very attractive. For $60 I installed three new outdoor fixtures that coordinated with the wrought-iron in my home in less than an hour. The look is fresh and is more coordinated with the style of our home.
Mirror, mirror
Our upstairs bathrooms had mirrors with no trim. Now was the time to create some new mirror frames. I looked at some of the mirror trim kits available at home centers, but they looked dinky and cheap. I wanted something substantial. Larger, more custom-looking mirror kits could be found on the Web, but they added up to about $600 for our three mirrors. I wanted a big price look for the best price possible.
A trip to the hardware store turned up decorative moulding with a flat back that worked perfectly. Next was the powder bathroom. I was never really crazy about the silver mirror in this bathroom, so I painted it and stained the light fixtures for a bronze look. They turned out terrific. Would you ever imagine you could change the look of a lighting fixture?
Project details
Look around your home for opportunities to improve, upgrade, repaint or revamp. Even simple changes can make a big difference in the look of your home – and your home’s aesthetic appeal. For complete project details of the work around my house, including instructions on how to do it yourself, go to http://tinyurl.com/33fk4s.
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Kathryn Weber is the publisher of the Everydayclean.com Cleaning Calender, that calender that puts you in control of your home by ending the power struggle. For more information log on to http://tinyurl.com/d9rh5.
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