Once you’ve moved into your own home, you’ll wantto make yourself feel more at home by redecorating rooms to suit your style. Unfortunately, limited time and money often mean you can’t do your whole house at once. Here’s how to decide where to start decorating first:
Choose one room at a time
When you first move into a new house, it might be tempting to start a number of different rooms at once. You might think that starting more rooms now will mean you complete them sooner. This is often not the case as it won’t increase the amount of time you have to spend on redecorating but will spread the disruption it causes. If you have to pay out a lot of money for an unexpected repair in one room, you could even find yourself running out of money and unable to complete any of the rooms you have started.
Choose one room to focus all of your attention on first. This could be the room that is in the worst state of disrepair, the one you think you’ll be using the most or just the one you feel you can afford to redecorate at the moment. While you complete that first project, try not to alter the style of any other rooms. If you find your old furniture doesn’t go with the previous residents’ design style, or it simply doesn’t fit, find somewhere to store it until the day you’re able to redecorate that room. For example, The Storage Locker has a riverside storage facility in Victorville, as well as Barstow and Adelanto, where you can hire a safe space to store your extra furniture. They have a number of different sized lockers so you’ll only pay for the amount of space that you need, and you can store your items for as long as it takes to finish decorating any room.
Get quotes well ahead of time
If one of your rooms needs serious maintenance work and the help of an external contractor, it’s often best to get a quote to complete the work as soon as you move in. Even if you’re not planning on completing the work for many months or years, it’ll give you a good idea of how much money you’ll have to save up to complete the work, and how much money you have to spare on other decorating projects in the meantime. You could even invite a builder around to give you a quote before you agree to buy the property. Any information they provide could help you negotiate a cheaper price when buying your new home.
Make sure your home is structurally sound
If you find a roomhas a damp patch, cracks in the wall, or even a leak in the roof, this should be one of the first rooms you complete. Even if it’s not a room you think you’ll use often, it’s important to repair any serious structural problems as soon as possible. If you leave them an extra few months or weeks, you could be allowing more damage to occur, and it could cost you much more to repair.
