Winter is a great time for home improvement projects. There’s no better way to symbolize a fresh start than changing up your home just before the New Year. For this year, my husband and I have chosen to work on our living room.
These are three great home improvement projects to complete during the winter:
Painting
My 2-year-old son went through a major drawing phase and took it out on my living room walls. Now that he’s gotten it out of his system, we decided to repaint. There’s only so much my beloved magic erasers can do.
As first-time painters, this was an interesting project for us. The first thing we did was scrap off a piece of our paint to take to the home improvement store to match. While we were there, we bought all the necessary supplies: brushes, poles, trays, painter’s tape, etc. Once we were home, we covered our floors with plastic and our moldings with painter’s tape. We used our big roller brushes for the wide-open spaces on the walls, and smaller sponge brushes to work around smaller spaces, like light sockets. It took the two of us about an hour or so to get it all done.
Repainting is the perfect project for winter because you can leave the doors wide open for the walls to dry and not worry about a huge electricity bill.
Redecorating
We just bought a new couch that is larger than our old one, so we had to redecorate our whole living room to make everything fit comfortably. Once we had all the furniture in place, we had to take down all the pictures and artwork on the walls, leaving lots of obvious nail holes. We decided to repair them before moving everything to their new locations.
We use Home Depot’s DryDex Spackling Paste anytime we have to fill nail holes. It works great and dries quickly. You have to wait for the paste to turn white to indicate it’s dry, and then you can sand it down to paint over it. This project is perfect because we already had paint on hand from when we repainted last month. It’s also a great project for winter because, if you’re anything like me and have tons of artwork and pictures on the wall, this is going to take you quite some time. If you’re working during the winter, you won’t lose steam as quickly as you will during the sweltering summer.
Knob swap
Go crazy and buy some fancy knobs to change up your living room. This is a great idea for anyone on a budget who can’t afford large home improvement projects. Simply upgrading the knobs in your living room can give it a fresh look. This could be the entry-way doorknobs or even the knobs on the drawers of your side tables or entertainment center. During Christmastime, I like to swap them out with festive-looking knobs that match the colors of my ornaments. Winter is the perfect time to knob swap because you can often find tons of colorful ones online, and you won’t have to justify the bright colors!