Fun Family Projects to Do Around the Home
Even while you are under quarantine, there are all sorts of productive ways to spend your time. In fact, this might be your best opportunity of all, since few public venues are open. Restaurants, music venues and clubs, bars, and movie theaters are probably not a good idea to visit right now, so if you are not spending your time there, you can try some home remodeling projects for both the outside and inside of your property. Such home remodeling projects can vary a great deal in scope and price, and some homeowners may have more of a budget (and interest) than others. What sort of projects can be done to make your house and lawn look their best? And how is this a good investment in the long run?
Landscaping Done Right
This is not a major topic for those who rent their properties or live in an apartment, but for homeowners, landscaping is something to take seriously, from tree pruning to lawn mowing to having a brand new wooden deck added. After all, many surveys confirm that most American homeowners like to spend a lot of time in their front or back yards, so they will want to have a nicely maintained lawn with all the features they would want. What should these home remodeling projects look like?
Creating a home garden can be a lot of fun, and it can also benefit local wildlife. Of course, a proper home garden needs a lot of setup, such as having the right soil type, the right amount of shade vs sunlight, and water, but all of this can be researched online and found in magazines. Also, take note that vegetable gardens need a lot of sunlight and don’t do well in shade under trees or next to the house. They should be right out in the open.
A home garden can be populated with flowers of all kinds, ferns, shrubs, and vegetables, and these gardens attract wildlife such as bees, spiders, and bats. Don’t be alarmed by them; bees are essential pollinators, while spiders help catch pests, and bats can eat a lot of mosquitoes and other troublesome insects. Expect hummingbirds to visit too, if you have the right flowers in your garden. Meanwhile, your outdoor home remodeling projects can include beautification of that garden, such as setting down paving stones, a birdbath, trellises for vines, birdhouses, and much more.
Outdoor projects can also involve some hardscaping, or man-made features ranging from backyard swimming pools to wooden decks to a garden shed, and the fence that keeps the yard private. Some Americans like to have an outdoor kitchen or grill section, which can be fully stocked with BBQ supplies, a grill and meat smoker, a picnic table, an umbrella to block the sun, and more. It’s a good idea to also have a mesh net draped on poles and the house’s roof, to block insects such as flies, wasps, and hornets from intruding on a backyard party. This kind of setup can be completed with floodlights for evening parties, too, or even a sound system. If you have the budget and interest, you might create such a setup for yourself, or fix up and update your current one. If you can’t or won’t visit local restaurants, why not have a miniature restaurant in your backyard for barbecue and drinks?
It should be mentioned that outdoor home remodeling projects like these don’t just make the property look nice for your family; they are also a smart investment. After all, a well-landscaped property may attract more buyers when it is put on the market, and it may sell for a better price, too. Statistics show that investing just 5% of a property’s value in landscaping can yield an ROI (return on investment) as high as 150%, after all.
Home Remodeling Projects And Repairs
If you are not going to work and cannot visit many local venues, this is a good opportunity to catch up on your property’s repair and upkeep needs, and some of them might have been neglected for some time now. This is a good time to take care of a leaky pipe or an old toilet, and calling local plumbing repair experts can restore your house’s water efficiency. After all, many American properties are leaking water every day, often gallons of it, and this will really add up on the water bill over time. Not only that, but leaking pipes can cause water to pool on the floor or in the basement, and leaking water in the walls can cause mold growth and stain drywall. Plumbers can fix leaky hardware, free up clogged pipes or drains, and replace old features with water-efficient, newer models. If you get a new toilet, shower head, or bathtub installed, this new hardware will pay for itself over time. Local plumbers will know how to make your property as water-efficient as possible.
The air conditioning may also need some work, especially if you often run the AC or heater. Whether your home uses round ductwork or square ducts, they must be cleaned off to improve air quality, and any leaks or loose sections should be fixed or replaced at the hands of an HVAC professional. Experts can also fix issues with your heater, and they can clean off or repair the blower fans deep in the system. You can easily clean off the wall grates for your HVAC unit, but anything more advanced than that calls for a working professional who can fix things just right. And if you have both the budget and the need, you can even have the entire system overhauled and replaced with a new one, if your current HVAC system is very old. Such old systems are dirty, break down often, and weren’t built with modern energy efficiency standards in mind.
Don’t forget the exterior hardware, either. If you live in Florida or the Texas coast, you probably have high impact glass windows or hurricane shutters on your property, and these might need replacing if they are old or damaged from a previous storm. Or at the very least, they should be inspected, and the same is true of your house’s roof, gutters, doors, and the garage door mechanism. Gutter repair crews can reattach your busted gutters onto the house, or remove them and install newer, wider gutters that can easily collect a lot of rainwater. A garage door repair service can help you if the sensors on your garage door are faulty, or if the motor is busted or if the chain has slipped free. It can be troublesome to have a malfunctioning garage door since no vehicles can get in or out of the garage.
Home Remodeling Projects And Paint
Painting your home’s interior is an example of home remodeling projects that can be done without an expert, if you have the interest. Interior painting is a minor form of home remodeling that can be quite fun and rewarding, and doing that or putting up wallpaper can make a house feel refreshed and stylish. Of course, you are urged to make sure that you buy paints with low VOC emissions, for the sake of safety, and the room that you are repainting should be well ventilated. You can apply some new paint to update your house’s look and fit new interior design trends, or launch these sort of home remodeling projects just to fit your own tastes. Repainting the walls can involve the whole family, and besides the paint itself, you will also need paint rollers and their trays, short stepladders, and newspapers to protect your floors during work.
You can, if you have the skills, include furniture paint in these kinds of home remodeling projects, mainly wooden ones. An old dresser or armoire with chipped, faded paint can look brand new once the old paint is removed and a fresh coat is applied, and this is much cheaper than buying a new one. You can also apply wood varnish to exposed wooden surfaces, but here again, be sure that VOC emissions are low. This is an important precaution to take, especially if you have babies or small children in the household.
Refreshing the Kitchen
What about the kitchen, one of the most important rooms in the whole house? Millions of homes have their kitchens updated in major home remodeling projects when professionals are hired, and not without reason. A remodeled kitchen is a much cleaner and more practical place for cooking, and this option is more popular than ever. Kitchens and the master bathrooms are among the most popular rooms to remodel, and from 2014 to 2019, the remodeling industry expanded a great deal. There has been a 4.7% annual increase in private consumer spending for home remodeling projects, and that usually includes the kitchen, among other rooms. Americans love to cook at home, and 24% of dinners are made entirely from scratch (as opposed to pre-prepared foods or eating out).
A bigger kitchen remodeling job calls for hiring professionals, who can remove and replace the floor tiles, add new lighting fixtures, replace the countertop, refinish and repaint the cabinet doors, and a whole lot more. If you cannot afford this, there are still some options open to you, such as putting up new wallpaper or repainting the walls (as mentioned earlier), and you can also get a drawer unstuck and replace its hardware. Local hardware stores should offer the right tool and parts to fix a faulty drawer, and you can even replace a drawer’s handles. If nothing else, you can give the kitchen a total scrubbing, from wiping down the counters to sweeping the floor and mopping it. This alone can make your kitchen much more appealing to cook in.
Furniture and Decorations
Whether or not you are repainting the walls or having new windows fitted into the house, you can certainly adjust the decorations inside, and this does not require professional help for the most part. In fact, interior design experts suggest that American homeowners update their home’s interior decor every five to 10 years, and many homeowners do exactly that. If your home is starting to feel a little tedious and stale, but you don’t need to remodel it, consider an overhaul of your decor. This ranges from wall-mounted framed photos and paintings all the way to items on your fireplace mantle to rugs and furniture, and everything in between. This can be done for general rooms such as the living room or dining room, and bedrooms, and even the bathroom. Updating interior decor like this is a great way for a homeowner to make their living space reflect their lifestyle and tastes.
As for references, all kinds of magazines and websites can provide ideas on what interior decor can look like for any sense of style, and many homeowners on Pinterest and related websites are happy to share their ideas and discuss them with other users. You might even overhaul the furniture and decorations across the home to create a new theme, anything from art deco to Victorian revival to a modernist 1960s look, or maybe something even more specific. The possibilities are endless.
Don’t forget that changing furniture can change the function of an entire room, or at least change how the room flows. Often, when an adult child moves out, their old bedroom is converted into an art studio or a music room, or even a guest bedroom. Or, a basement can be emptied, cleaned, and then converted into a home entertainment center with a TV stand, rug, couch, coffee table, and more. If you’ve always meant to have a cozy basement entertainment center like that but never found the time to create it, this may be your best opportunity of all. Just cleaning out the basement and prepping it can keep you occupied for some time, and you may feel great about seeing that emptied and cleaned room around you. Now you can remake it in your image.
In conclusion, this quarantine means you are spending a lot of time at home with the family, and you can put all that time at home to good use. In our busy lives, it is easy to put off or forget about all the repair and upkeep needs of a home, but now, it can all be taken care of, and your house will look and function much better with some home remodeling projects being done. Whether or not you need to hire professionals, you are bound to love the end result, and it can make a home quarantine much more pleasant.
