Our recent home renovations have reminded me of some wonderful ideas we've had around the house, not only for our every day living, but a couple even made the renovations go easier!We're doing quite the interior job-floors, paint, doors, molding, and blinds- but don't have an exterior space like a garage or storage shed to get furniture and belongings out of the way while we work. So we're working several rooms at a time, and using one main one for storage. When we finished the living room hardwood and started bringing out the chairs, table, and TV stand, we immediately put "sliders" on the bottom and WOW, what a difference... for BOTH of us.
1. Sliders: Sliders are little felt tabs with sticky backs that you adhere to the feet of your furniture so they don't scratch the hardwood. But what we found was not only were they protecting our floors, they were a form of accessibility! Now sliding the furniture around (even the 150 lb tv stand) were a breeze for Craig, who used to ram up against things in his wheelchair to move them. Not good for the furniture, that's for sure!
Speaking of the TV stand, the task of breaking it down and setting it back up loomed over me for days, and we hoped to just slide the stand out of the way to lay the floor, and then slide it back. Our builder said no, it's got to be out of the room for him, so I sat down with a roll of masking tape and a pen and went to work. Although I'm pretty savvy around the AV system, I figured labeling it all would just make it go that much quicker for me, and I was right. We have 6 components in addition to the TV and 5 speakers to plug in, so I was looking at at least 40 ends of cords and speaker wire to contend with.
2. Labeling. Labeling is a no brain-er when it comes to moving; i.e. you label the boxes by room so they get to the right place immediately. When I labeled the av cords and it took about 5 extra minutes when I pulled them out (include component and plug name: stereo-cd1 or tv-satellite line out) made set up a total of 15 minutes as opposed to 30 (or 45 if I screwed something up)!
We had a limited budget for our renovation as you always do, and had to think about how we were going to tie in color to the new rooms without buying new accessories. We made some inexpensive decisions that will really help the room.
3. Tieing in colors. Paint and stain are easy, you've already got them, made the choice for that color in the room, and likely have plenty of it leftover. You can repaint old tables and chairs, or just their legs; you can use stain to accent plain clay flower pots with stripes or solids; and if you're really dedicated, use the curtain material for accent pillows. We've sanded and refinished a 3-shelf metal and wood-plank plant stand in the deck stain for instance, as well as switched our existing art work around so the bluer pieces are in Craig's blue office, as well as getting some new artwork cheaply framed at the "unframer," which is about 1/5th the cost of typical mat & glass framing. We've also picked out small red 2" accent tiles that we'll build a backsplash of in the kitchen to tie in our reds from the kitchen towels, plates, and accessories. And we aren't replacing the cabinets, but new handles will make it look like we did!
Stay tuned this month for more kitchen ideas and a DIY gift that will tame the mane!
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