Your home may already feel like home to you, but there’s never anything wrong with enhancing it’s look every once in a while. And there’s nothing wrong with enhancing it’s value either, in order to give you a better chance of selling it on if you were ever to decide to do so. It is fortunate, then, that when you enhance your home’s look for personal satisfaction, you do in fact increase it’s value at the same time. For advice on how to do just that, make sure to check out the five home enhancing steps below.
Draw up a plan, and make sure everything goes to plan
The best laid homes come from the best laid plans. So, draw up a home enhancing plan when it comes to your renovating endeavour, and do not deviate from it!
In order to draw up your plan, first you’re going to have to get to know and understand the size, shape, style and reality of your home. Look out for things such as what areas of the home are most bathed in sunlight, what rooms are most heavily occupied and what walls are likely to succumb to damp. Once you know all of these things (and a whole lot more about your home) you will be able to draw up a renovation plan that works with the home, rather than against it.
And when it comes to carrying out your home plan, you must never work on impulse and must only work intentionally. You must never have your head turned from the job in hand. You must never feel enticed to deviate from your plan. No, you must fight the urge to buy, say, a piece of artwork on impulse and instead stick to the intention in regards to the way you planned to decorate.
And remember, there is no rush when it comes to home renovations, none whatsoever. So, make sure to break your plan down into steps and then take it step by step. In fact, take it room by room. Whatever you do, just don’t rush, because that’s when you will forget about and miss vital aspects of the renovation!
The small details really do count
Enhancing your home doesn’t just mean making big and grand changes within it in order to catch the eye. No, it’s about tending to the smallest of details, too.
This means doing a number of things. One thing that it means doing is fixing what needs to be fixed, even if whatever you fix isn’t on show to guests. You see, no home, no matter how good it looks, is going to be able to be enhanced if it doesn’t work the way it is expected to work. This could mean ensuring important appliances in your home are working as they should, such as the boiler. And this means less important appliances are working as they should, too, such as fixing a water faucet or tap that is sticking.
This also means giving your home a clean. And no, this doesn’t mean just giving it a dust over with a duster once a week. No, this means getting rid of even the tiniest scuffs and marks. For instance, if your coffee tables are adorned in watermark rings thanks to astray drinks, get rid of the marks! To do this, you should create a concoction comprised of equal parts vinegar and olive oil on to the inflicted area of your table. Also, this means tackling the watermark rings cousin, the bathtub ring. To get rid of this in your tub, dip a half cut lemon into a pile of salt, rub the salted lemon on the ring (using a bit, or a lot, of elbow grease) and continue rubbing until the ring disappears.
The point is, it’s not all about colour scheme, furniture and artwork choices — it’s about tending to the small details, too.
Contemporary is very much the way forward
Some homes, more to the point some specific homes, can pull of the vintage and retro look. For instance, homes such as those placed firmly in the midst of the countryside can pull off the old-fashioned country cottage look with no trouble at all. But, on the flip side of the coin, homes in heavily populated suburban areas cannot pull off such a look.
What these homes, and most other homes, can pull off however are contemporary looks and designs. And what these designs comprise of are relatively simple to both understand and put into practice in your home. For instance, contemporary homes are more often than not very open; they make space out of nowhere, it seems. They do things such as opt for vertical radiators instead of horizontal ones in order to free up precious floor space. They include cases that climb up the wall, rather than around it, so that the same amount of belongings can be stored just without the abundance of space being used. And they take the minimalist approach in such areas, even going as far as to hang tables from the ceiling, rather than have them stand on the floor. Yes, contemporary and modern homes, more often than not, try to recreate an open feel as best they can.
Some contemporary homes take the moniker of contemporary a step further; some, even embrace futuristic designs. This means incorporating as much digital decor in the home as possible. It means making living spaces not only spaces to live in, but interact in. This means adorning the home in LED lights. And this means only ever opting for architecture that is bold, sleek and eye catching. Basically, a futuristic home does everything it can to stand out from the other homes on its street, both inside and out.
Do not curb your curb appeal
And speaking of inside and out, you cannot forget about the exterior of your home, too, when you come to enhance it. It is the first thing anybody who visits your home, whether that be guests or prospective buyers, will see of it.
To add curb appeal to your home, pay extra to your front door. Simply, this is the centrepiece of the appeal, this is the thing everybody will both look to and walk towards. So, make a statement with your door by giving it a big blast of colour — preferably, a colour that stands out from the rest of your home’s exterior. And, around your door you should ensure there is no old hardware, especially old hardware that has rotted or rusted. This could mean getting rid of house numbers that have seen their day and replacing them with fresh, clean ones. Or this could mean changing your mailbox if your current one has rotted or rusted. And, don’t forget your windows, either. No, you should be trying to spruce them up, too; one way to do is to have window boxes fitted beneath them, and then filling these boxes with beautiful flower arrangements that are both nice to look at and lovely to smell.
Something else that you should be doing on the outside of your home is creating perfect symmetry wherever and whenever you can. For one, as you can probably agree, this is pleasing to the eye. Also, the symmetrical compositions of lights (low-voltage landscape lighting should be used) and accents is scientifically proven to be far more welcoming. And a welcoming look is the look you want to create when it comes to upping your curb appeal, right?
Go green
As time goes by, things change and things fall in and out fashion. Now, this isn’t to stay going green and being eco-friendly is just a fashion or a fad, but it is definitely a fashionable thing to do. More to the point, it is something that may just make the value of your home rocket sky high because more and more people want to live in homes that are friendly to the environment. So, go green in your home!
This could mean doing any number of things. The most popular thing to do when going green in (and out) of your home is to have solar panels fitted to it’s roof. By doing this you will henceforth be drawing your energy and subsequently your electricity from the sun, and when you come to selling your home you can use this is a selling point. Other ways to make your home more energy efficient include switching from incandescent lightbulbs to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and shoring up your windows and doors to ensure no energy is wasted through them.
You do not need an excuse to enhance your home’s look. You can enhance it in order to reap the benefits of the enhancement yourself. Or, you can enhance it in order to boost your home’s value and subsequently get more money from it if and when you decide to sell it. So, if you’ve got the time, the patience, the effort and the funds to do so, get enhancing! Your future self will thank you either way.
‘Contributed Post’
