home improvements Archives - Serendipity Mommy

6 Fabulous Ways to Make Your Space More Inviting

December 22, 2020 by Mandy

People are spending more time indoors. While they’re inside, they start to notice that their house needs a makeover. You also might have noticed the same thing about your home. Sometimes, you just need to fix up your interior because your décor is dated. You also might want to change things around just to have a new look. Here are 6 fabulous ways to make your space more inviting.

Change your Color Scheme

Your home’s colour scheme might need to be revitalized. You can improve the colours you have now by repainting the rooms. Repainting your rooms is a simple and easy way to make a change. You can pick out new colours for your home by matching them up with the furniture you have in each room. Your home’s colour scheme should blend with the furniture. It is also recommended to change furniture items in your home to transform its colour scheme.

Remember, your walls and flooring provide the background to your interior. Your furniture items are the objects that help to bring out the colours that are displayed around your home.

Add Greenery to Your Home’s Environment

Another way to uplift your home’s environment is by using plants. Real flowers and even artificial trees can make your home appear more relaxing and inviting. Greenery can also bring the outdoor atmosphere into your personal space. You can add hanging plants around the living room or use lots of flowers to add charm. Add plants along with the window seals of your home. House Beautiful advises people to set small plants along with the window seals or put them on shelving or stands.

Larger plants such as artificial trees or large potted plants should be positioned in the corner of a wall or behind pieces of furniture such as couches or chairs. You can use any type of plant that you desire. However, just make sure that the plant that you choose doesn’t require a lot of upkeep. Artificial plants are the easiest to use since they don’t require any type of care.

Utilize Special Lighting

Lighting is an important element of your home’s layout. Houses that have poor lighting tend to look dark and uninviting. Interiors that have too much light can be irritating to people. The trick is to find the right balance. You want just enough light to make your rooms pleasantly functional. To accomplish this feat, you must use light that allows people to adequately see when it’s dark or cloudy outside. Your lighting should also be dim enough to not interfere with activities such as watching TV or socializing.

Accent lights and indoor spotlights can be strategically used to provide light in dark areas of your home. You can add dimmer lights to your environment or hang above an art piece or personalised photo frame as well. They make great personalised gifts and can be used for most lighting situations. Automatic lighting should be another consideration since it can save money on your bills.

Renew Old Flooring

Retiling old flooring is a good idea for sprucing up any room. Homes that have worn down floors look old and uninviting. However, when you add new flooring to an environment, it changes the room’s appearance and gives it life. There are tons of flooring options available to use. You can retile your floors with laminate materials and you can also use interlocking wooding planks. Also, paint your wooden floors as well.

An affordable yet still beautiful way to accent flooring is to use statement rugs. From minimalist patterns to intricate designs, rugs can help bring life back to your floors. Themed rugs, such as coastal rugs, can bring some bold colors into your home. Also, aside from choosing the color and design, pick out a rug made out of a material that will compliment your flooring.

While painting your floors might not be the best option for heavy traffic homes, it does work where rooms are not frequently used. Some homeowners lay marble down on their floor and other property owners add new carpeting. There are a ton of different flooring options that can be used to transform the floors inside your house.

Use Mirrors to Improve your Interior

Adding mirrors to your home’s interior will give it more depth and make it look bigger. Mirrors create the illusion of added space. This can be a great feature to use in small rooms. A mirror can also add a special touch to a room. Having a mirror positioned in the right place at the right angle can give your room a unique look. Large wall mirrors are good for rooms that have little space. They will make the area look twice as large. Smaller mirrors that you can place on the wall will accent a room. The main thing to remember is that mirrors expand rooms and gives them more substance.

Rotate art and Get new pieces

Rotating art pieces inside of your home is suggested. Rotating the artwork in your home quickly changes up the living environment. Artwork provides a finishing touch to a room’s décor. The right pieces will make it stand out and look appealing. Rotating the art on your walls can help your home to have a new look. Sometimes, you should purchase new pieces whenever you can. You do not have to buy expensive pieces all the time unless you can afford to spend the money. Just remember that artwork makes your home’s interior a more pleasant place to live.

5 Steps to Completely Clean Your Bathroom

October 29, 2020 by Mandy

When the weekend comes around, the last thing you want to do is clean the bathroom. And while you could shuffle that responsibility off to another family member, someone has to take care of it. No matter who ends up cleaning the bathroom, you want to end up with a complete job.

It might seem intuitive to some, but there is a way to organize your cleaning efficiently so you can move onto the next thing as soon as possible. After all, the faster you finish your chores, the sooner you can get on with how you really want to spend your day.

1. Clear Out the Clutter

In the interest of time, it might be tempting to leave everything in its place and clean around it, but doing so only lengthens your task. Instead, clear everything off the counters, behind the toilet, shower, medicine cabinet, and tub so that every surface is clear.

Clearing everything will not only give you access to every place you need to clean, but it will also give you a chance to get rid of any clutter. Empty shampoo bottles, expired medicines, and old razors can finally make their way into the trash and not take up much-needed space.

2. Spray and Soak

Now that you have clean surfaces, take your all-purpose bathroom cleaner and spray your shower and tub to let them soak. This can help you get rid of any soap scum or mildew when you go back to scrub.

If you find a lot of deep orange stains that resemble rust, you might want to consider installing a water softener for prevention. These hard water stains are mineral deposits and can be difficult to remove.

Also, squirt some toilet bowl cleaner into the toilet to let that soak as well.

3. Start from the Top Down

While the cleaner gets to work on your more challenging areas, it’s time to clean your other surfaces. Start from the top and work your way down.

First, use a duster to get rid of any dust or cobwebs. Then, spray and clean your mirror, counter, shelves, doors, towel racks, and lights. Don’t forget to wipe inside your medicine cabinet, your baseboards, and the back of your toilet both behind and underneath. You also want to clean all around the seat and around the outside of the bowl.

Finally, empty the trash and wipe out the can, if necessary.

4. Circle Back Around

Since you let your tub, toilet, and shower soak, cleaning them should be a breeze. Take the toilet brush and scrub the inside of the toilet, paying particular attention to what’s under the rim.

Moving on to the shower, scrub down the walls, shelves, showerhead, and doors or shower curtain. If you have a separate tub, go ahead and scrub it, starting with the top and working your way down. Once you clean everything, run the water to wash the cleaner away.

With all that complete, wipe down all your products and return them to their rightful places in the bathroom.

5. Eyes on the Ground

The only thing left to do in your bathroom is the floor. After you sweep, start with the farthest edge of your bathroom and mop your way out the door. Then, close the bathroom and give the floor some time to dry.

Until Next Week

This list may seem like too many steps to clean your bathroom, but this chore doesn’t have to take too long. Plus, if you keep it up each week, you’ll find the mess stays under control, and your bathroom always smells fresh.

What’s the best flooring for your living room?

February 28, 2020 by Mandy

Alongside our kitchens, the living room is most likely the most used room in your home, with it being both somewhere to relax after a long day and an area to entertain guests on a Saturday night – it really is the heart of the home! With flooring often being the main feature of the room, we need to do our research before we set our heart of a particular type of flooring. Whether you come from a busy family household with lots of foot traffic or you live on your own, there’s an appropriate choice for everyone. Let’s have a look at what the best choices are and hopefully we can make your decision a little easier…

As much as we’d wish it wasn’t a factor, durability and practicality is something that we all need to take into consideration and put as a priority when deciding on a new floor. Especially in the living room where heavy usage is common and is exposed to dangers such as scratches and stains.

As a first rule, we’d stay away from carpet. Although still used widely in modern homes and new builds, we’d keep the carpet in the bedroom and guest rooms. The reason being is that carpet tends to look worn and trodden in after a while and can discolour if exposed to too much sunlight. So, since your living room will see lots of foot traffic and depending on your window, lots of sunlight!, we’d recommend a different approach to flooring your living room. Stains are another issue when it comes to carpet, as soon as anything that can stain lands on it it’s game over, the only way you’re likely to get them out is by getting your carpet professionally cleaned.

Now that leaves us with more practical options: wood, vinyl and laminate. Although all of them are more manageable and practical than carpet, they all come with their own advantages and disadvantages. So, let’s play them off against each other.

If you’re wanting to go down the completely practical route, then we’d recommend laminate or Luxury Vinyl Tiles as the safest options. LVT is water, scratch and stain proof – you’ll have no worries with LVT and is probably the most practical and easy-going option. Laminate is largely similar; however, it is only resistant to these so be aware of this when deciding. Laminate is generally cheaper, perfect for those of you on a stricter budget. You’re not even sacrificing aesthetics with these options either – both of which coming in very convincing imitations of natural products such as wood and tile.

That leaves us with solid and engineered wood – we’d say the perfect choice for the living room. Wood flooring is famous for its incredible durability and luxurious appearance. Wood has been used on floors for centuries, offering us a real timeless and beautiful appeal; what better place to show it off than the living room? Although requiring a little more maintenance than the aforementioned LVT and laminate, particularly if anything is spilled on it, wood does hide scratches well and can be sanded down multiple times. Having said that, this should not normally need to be done for at least 15-20 years, so your beautiful floors are likely to last a lifetime!

You might find yourself asking the question: what’s the difference between solid and engineered wood and how do I decide on which is best for me? The main distinction between the two is that due to the nature of the plank construction, engineered wood is able to cope with fluctuating temperatures which means you can install under-floor heating. This is something that is growing significantly in popularity and certainly a feature that you’ll want in your living room of all rooms, so bear this in mind!

Plants That Improve the Air Quality Inside Your Home

February 2, 2020 by Mandy

Plants help to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by replacing it with the healthy oxygen that we all need. Having plants in your home can help improve the overall air quality, but some plants do this better than others. To get you started, here’s a list of some of our favorite plants to improve the air quality inside your home. Which will you be adding to your indoor garden?

Aloe Vera

Having aloe vera around is always a good idea to treat burns and sunburns. Living aloe vera plants can improve air quality by reducing the amount of formaldehyde in your home. A preservative and component found in many types of furniture and plastics, formaldehyde is best kept outside your home.

Areca Palm

There aren’t very many indoor plants that provide a sense of height to your greenery. Most are in pots that need to rest on the floor or grouped on shelves, but the areca palm can grow to 6-8 feet and bring tropical flair into your home while improving air quality.

Lady Palm

Not only does the lady palm remove everyday toxins from the air inside your home but it also specifically targets odors and many cancer-causing organisms. To improve your family’s health and decrease your risk of cancer, bring a lady palm indoors.

Bamboo

Bamboo is already found in many homes because it is easy-to-grow, requires little maintenance, and has a unique appearance. Not only does bamboo help improve air quality by reducing the levels of formaldehyde in the air in your home, but it can also reduce levels of harmful benzene and trichloroethylene.

English Ivy

English ivy is famous for the classic look that it commonly provides to the outside of buildings as it climbs up brick or trellises. You can also grow it indoors to improve air quality throughout your home. A hearty plant, it will grow without the use of potting soil that attracts gnats and other insects. Instead, watch the roots grow in a glass vase.

Chrysanthemum

Image via Flickr by AndrewRRose

Next time you are stopping by the florist to pick up something for someone special, grab a bouquet of chrysanthemums, also known as mums, for yourself. These beautiful flowers reduce the levels of ammonia in the air and brighten up any room with vibrant colors. Chrysanthemums are commonly known as “the get-well flower” because of their ability to purify the air.

Peace Lily

While those with cats should avoid placing peace lilies in their home, these lovely plants can help reduce levels of benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, and acetone in your indoor air. By creating cleaner air for you and your family, it may be rightly named by creating a sense of well-being and peace.

If you care about the air quality in your home and want the best for your family, discuss your needs with a certified HVAC service provider who can advise you on many different methods for creating a healthy air environment for you and your family. Not only can you improve the air quality inside your home with plants but also by replacing or upgrading your HVAC system with different filters, purifiers, or components. Help your family to breathe easily and increase their comfort at home both naturally and with the help of an expert.

3 Ways You Can Create a Healthier Home

September 10, 2019 by Mandy

Source: Unsplash | Thanos Pal

Your home could be having more of an impact on yours and your family’s health than you realize. If you don’t resolve to make your humble abode a far healthier place to live in, you could be breathing in or drinking a host of harmful contaminants every single day.

Creating a healthier home is important, especially if you have kids. Read on to find out how you can set about this all-important task:

Invest in a high-efficiency furnace

The more efficient your home’s furnace is, the more health benefits you and your family stand to reap. With such equipment fitted into your home, the air that you breathe in will be a lot cleaner — the furnace will filter out harmful air impurities such as mold and dust, meaning you will no longer find yourself at the mercy of certain allergies and irritations.

How does a furnace work? As stated on www.actionfurnace.ca, this kind of HVAC setup uses variable speed motors to ensure that heat levels are kept even and uniform throughout the whole home. As they are, for the most part, powered by either natural gas or electricity, this kind of equipment is also incredibly eco-friendly. Invest in one, then, and you won’t just be protecting yourself… you’ll be protecting the environment as well.

Filter your tap water

There are a plethora of health-related reasons why you should be filtering your tap water. Here are six of them:

Filtered water is devoid of chlorine, chemicals, contaminants, and metals
Point-of-use filters provide water that doesn’t have any lead in it
It cuts out the need to purchase bottled water (the plastic can leach into the bottle and create a harmful chemical known as Bisphenol A
Byproducts, such as Trihalomethanes, that are reported to cause certain cancers are not found in filtered water
The pH level of filtered water is far more balanced than other kinds of water
Cryptosporidiumand e-coli aren’t found in filtered water, meaning it doesn’t cause as many gastrointestinal problems

Fill your home with indoor plants

Indoor plants bring with them a host of health benefits, mainly due to the way they filter and clean the air; they absorb CO2 and release oxygen, they increase humidity, they reduce pollutant and airborne dust levels, and they help to keep the temperatures down. You should, then, look to fill every corner of your home with plants and foliage that thrive when placed in indoor settings.

Worried that you wouldn’t be able to keep your indoor plants alive? Fear not, as don’t necessarily have to be green-fingered to succeed at this task. All you have to do is:

Keep the soil moist (using water that is room temperature)
Place them in well-lit rooms
Resist the urge to move your plants around a lot
Fill the pot with a balanced fertilizer
Prune the plants regularly

Never listen to the old wives’ tale that coffee is good for indoor plants — it’s not! Besides, tipping what remains of your morning brew will only attract flies and other insects into your home.