Don’t you just feel more energised when the long days are here? When the birds are singing, you feel happier and more cheerful. Even if you are staying home, you want to feel sprightly and happy.
There are lots you can do to your home to help you in this regard. Today I am sharing five tips you can use to spruce up your home. And by the way, if you keep up to date with always maintaining your home, you should be well on the way and find these five things easier to do.
Paint or reupholster one piece of furniture from your living room
This is an easy one to do if you don’t want to spend money buying new furniture but need a fresher look in the living room. Moving the furniture about shouldn’t be too hard. But I find the best thing to do under these circumstances, is to choose one piece of furniture and give it a makeover. You’d be so surprised what just one change will do.
This piece could be a single-seater that you choose to reupholster to add a pop of colour to. Or you could choose a small side table and, using chalk paint, give it a makeover that would become the talking piece in that room.
No need to be scared or tentative to try it either. There are lots of YouTube videos with women doing some amazing work with their hands, and a few paintbrushes. Trust me, after you watch two or three videos, you will become hooked and start right away. See how I did some furniture makeover here.
Make a few new no-sew cushion covers for your bed
A freshly made bed is so inviting, but the bedroom can easily have a stale look after a while, especially if you keep it the same. I love looking at color ideas for your bedroom here.
Do like me and add a splash of texture, pattern and colour, by choosing an interesting, patterned fabric and turning it into a beautiful cushion or two to cover the one/s you already have.
For each cushion, just cut two squares that are a little bigger than the cushions you want to cover. The extra fabric will be your seam allowance. Using fabric glue, seal three sides together, wrong sides facing. Turn through to the right side and insert the existing cushions. Fold the seam allowance on the open end to the inside. Glue shut.
Prop your new cushions up on your bed, and step back to admire your handiwork.
If you are one who learns better with visuals, then here is a quick YouTube video for you.
Add a vibrant splashback to your kitchen
Have you noticed that splashbacks are all the rage now? There are some funky, new ones made of glass and apparently, they are quite easy to install. I haven’t been brave enough to attempt to install mine myself yet, but I have nabbed one from an online store. Delivery was very quick and so efficient as the backsplash turned up all nicely packaged and in one piece.
I have even heard that you can upload a picture of what you want your backsplash to look like and some companies can have it done and sent off to you in no time.
Here’s our pantry we did ourselves.
My granny wouldn’t have a clue that her kitchen could look so good, other than by making a lovely gingham table cloth and matching curtains
Make your bathroom/shower room look even bigger
I saw this one from a YouTuber recently and I really want to try it. To make your bathroom look even bigger, use two shower curtains instead of one. No, don’t just increase the width, it’s the length that we are talking about here.
Having the shower curtain from ceiling to floor, gives the illusion of height, doesn’t it? So go for two shower curtains. Join one by sewing the hems together on the wrong side. On the right side, just sew over a bit of lace, or another interesting accessory to mask the join. Cut and hem of the second curtain at floor length. Then hang the curtain from near the ceiling.
The idea is that the eyes will be taken upwards, then down to the decorative feature where the two curtains join, and then down to the new hem. The new look is amazing and doesn’t cost much.
Have a look at our own new bathroom makeover
The conservatory or outdoor space can be jazzed up too.
Recently I was reminiscing on how much I paid a landscaping company some years ago to paint my garden fence and create a little section for planting flowers.
It was a lot! Too much in fact.
Now, every summer I jazz up the garden myself by getting a few free flower seeds and making the painting of the fence a family affair that we do ourselves.
All you need are a few paintbrushes and a can of Cuprinol which you can get here or at your local B and Q. Job done at a mere fraction of the cost and so much satisfaction knowing you did it yourself!
You can also spruce up your back patio/verandah/conservatory area. It’s nice to have a semi-outdoor space where you can relax, read a newspaper, do art and craft, or engage in some other activity. We all know the great outdoors is great but at times it might be too windy or wet or there might be too much of a glare. Well, one big-money spending decision we made a few years now is to have a conservatory with glass roofs built at the back of our house.
I have never regretted that decision at all and in fact, it has added so much to the value of the house and indeed to our lives. We try to decorate it to go with the seasons and I must say it does look amazing. It’s all glass, mostly anyway and I just need to clean the roof about every other year. I’m glad too that we have big glass windows from the kitchen to the conservatory so even when it is too cold to sit in there, we can still admire the beauty from inside. It’s a real breath of fresh air and sometimes I find it hard to believe that it is in my home.
So there you go. I hope you have been inspired to take on the doable challenge of sprucing up your home for a fraction of the true cost.
Cheerio X
Cushions and flowers can make such a difference!