DIY/Home Archives - Seek Your Trip

October 30, 2018 by Arlene

3 Aspects of Your Home Which Could be Letting it Down

Are you happy with your home? Or are there aspects you wish you could change to make it better? The most essential quality of any home is that it should be where you feel safe and comfortable, so if you choose to decorate it in rainbow colours or fill it with books, that’s entirely your prerogative – although you’ll probably find it will need changing should you decide to sell! If you’re cold, damp, miserable, or feel down about how your home looks, that’s when you need to take action to change whatever’s letting your home down.

1. Heating and hot water

Being warm in the winter is an important consideration, and after experiencing the coldest winter for decades last year, you wouldn’t want to risk being vulnerable to another Beast from the East. If you want to improve the warmth of your home, the first stage is insulation. Older homes, in particular, may not have insulated attics or walls, and much of the heat you generate will be passing out of the house to be wasted. Loft insulation is essential, but you should take professional advice on whether your home is suitable for cavity wall insulation as some homes can become damp after installation, so they’re better off with other solutions. Boilers that are getting on in years, especially if they aren’t condensing types, will be costing you money because they use more energy than modern condensing units. Likewise, older radiators, particularly those with no thermostatic control, are likely to be considerably less efficient than modern systems.

2. Doors and windows

If you don’t have double glazing units in your home, your windows are likely to be leaking heat and costing you money. Even period homes can be fitted with new wooden sash windows like those available from timberwindows-direct.co.uk. These are particularly good if you can’t or don’t want to have UPVC double glazing in your home. Modern windows have far more security features than older ones, meaning burglars are less likely to break in as they’ll have a much harder job. Secure doors with up-to-date multipoint locking mechanisms are also safer, and you can now get keyless entry systems if that suits you better.

3. Flooring

Floors can make or break a room, as a dirty carpet or muddy tiles will attract far more attention than dusty shelves or piles of magazines. If your carpet is in good condition, a deep clean should freshen it up, but if it’s too stained or starting to wear thin and fray, you should get rid of it. Wooden floors and tiling are far easier to keep clean and hygienic than carpet, but if you prefer the extra warmth and comfort carpeting provides, choose new ones in colours that add style to the room, and buy the types with inbuilt stain-resistant coatings.

The best part of the day is coming home to a warm, safe, comfortable home where you can relax and unwind for a few hours after a long day, so make sure your home is as warm and comfortable as it can be for the winter ahead.

March 23, 2018 by Arlene

4 Items You Can Easily Recycle At Home

Environmentalists and DIY enthusiasts know that you can recycle almost anything. Recycling and the reusing of materials is one of the biggest movements of our generation. We generate a lot of waste on a daily basis, and the best way to make sure that we don’t deplete our resources and the planet doesn’t suffer is to find new ways to put these waste to good use. Other than that, it is also so much fun. There are millions of people who have turned DIY projects into passion projects and economic activities.

Before you go dumpster diving, bear in mind that not everything can be recycled. Luckily, those are just but a few. Most of the things we use or dispose at home can be turned into something else amazing. Check these out:

Shredded Paper

Once you put those old documents through a shredder, you think that’s it right? There are so many things you can do with shredded paper. The same shredded paper can be turned into a blank piece of paper once again. You can also keep them somewhere then pull them out every time you need to start a fire. The best way is to use them to make different art pieces like Paper-Mache models or make a really cool scarecrow to keep of the birds from your garden.

Water Bottles

One of the most common items in any dumpster are water bottles. Most people throw them away because they know they will always buy another bottle of water. Subsequently, it is now one of the biggest environment polluter in most countries in the world. Ironically, recycling or reusing water bottles is one of the easiest things to do, but most people don’t seem to practice it. For one, you can always carry your own water using a reusable bottle and save a few bucks every time you feel thirsty. You can also cut out the bottom end and use it to plant seedlings and create the coolest outdoor garden.

CDs

With the digital era, you can now binge watch your favorite TV series on Netflix and have all your favorite music on your phone or laptop. All the other important documents can be safely locked up in the cloud. This doesn’t mean that you can now throw away all the CDs, DVDs and VHS’s you have racked up over the years. Turn them into art. There are so many CD art pieces that you can come up with. With their impressive reflective properties, you can turn your dull home into a light and color museum. All you will need is a couple of YouTube tutorials and lots of adhesive.

Cardboards

Every time we buy a new appliance, we end up with a very large cardboard that we don’t know what exactly to do with it. The easiest solution will be to throw it away, but you will regret it the next time you want to relocate to another city. Cardboards are generally good for storage and moving out. To make it even easier, you can label each cardboard according to its contents for you to easily trace your belongings.

March 19, 2018 by Arlene

How to Make Your Holiday Rental More Attractive

With the help of services like Airbnb, it is now easier than ever before to earn money from renting out your place to travellers. You can turn your studio apartment, or a bedroom in the house, into a holiday rental that generates revenue in several simple steps. You can even rent out your place while you’re traveling; the money you earn can help finance future trips too.

Getting started with Airbnb and other similar platforms is easy. Before you do, however, here are some DIY tricks and home makeover tips that will help make your space more attractive to travellers.

Stick with One Colour

Browse through holiday rental listings and you will notice one thing almost immediately: simpler places with chic interiors are the most popular. If you are a traveller, you already know the kind of simple, minimalist interior that works well.

To create that minimalistic look, you can start with a single colour. Pick a colour for your walls and stick with it as you work on the rest of the interior. You can choose to add one or two accents to the space to spice things up, but make sure you limit the number of colours.

Sticking with a single colour for all of your walls also makes maintaining the space easier. You can do touch-ups and fix problems like stains more quickly. Chances are you have leftover paint of the colour to do these quick-fixes in between guests.

Add Natural Wood

There is something about that natural wood texture and colour that works really well for holiday rentals. Combining a single, simple colour with wood texture is a sure-fire recipe for boosting the appeal of your holiday rental.

The combination works with a large number of people. In fact, the majority of younger travellers as well as seasoned wanderers love the combination so much, they will book your holiday rental almost immediately just for the ambience alone.

Speaking of ambience, keeping the space warm and cosy is a must. Pick a theme for the space and make sure all elements – including the furniture you add to the room – are suitable for the theme.

Insert Character

Last but not least, add character to make your space truly unique. Wall ornaments, accessories, and small details like the fabric you choose for your decorative pillows all influence the overall character of the room. The same can be said for window treatments and the appliances you add to the room.

You can, for example, transform the radiator you use for managing the interior temperature into a characterful part of the room itself with the help of products from warmrooms.co.uk. Go a step further and add mirrors to certain spots around the space; this is a useful tip if you have a relatively small space and you want to make it appear bigger.

As you can see, preparing the room for travellers isn’t as complicated as you think. These simple DIY and interior design tips will help you design and create the perfect space for Airbnb and other similar platforms.

March 1, 2018 by Arlene

The Most Vital Home Amenities for Rich People

When you’re rich, you don’t really want to settle with a regular home. You have money to spend, and so you spend it. That’s the kind of thinking that many rich people understand, and professionals like real estate agents and homebuilders know it too. That’s why luxury residences aren’t just about majestic facades and huge spaces. They’re also about catering to what wealthy homeowners want when they have the money to afford luxury.

So what do rich people look for in properties for sale? Here are among the top must-have features that these luxury homes must have:

Fantastic View

Rich people don’t want to see their neighbors, nor do they want a view of alleys and regular roads. Instead, when they have a home they prefer to see the breadth of their huge property. A garden view would be nice, though a panoramic view of nature with trees and mountains in the background would be terrific.

In the city, it’s all about the view from up top. You get to see the lights down below, and when you’re up high you feel like the king of the hill.

Private Gym

This is one room that many affluent people demand. If you have the money, do you really want to go work out in public, and share equipment and space with others? Of course not! Even getting there is troublesome, what with the traffic. When you get there, you then have to wait your turn on certain types of equipment, and recently sued materials can be rather icky.

But if you’re wealthy, a separate room in your home with weights and other workout equipment is both convenient and healthy for you. It’s more sanitary too, while you also enjoy greater privacy. While you’re at it, you may want a spa in your home as well.

Wine Cellar

Quite a few people regard wine as a status symbol. If you enjoy and know about wine, then you must be wealthy and sophisticated. A wine cellar is then a great addition for people who subscribe to this type of thinking, since they can store many bottles of wine.

Entertainment Center

Even middle class people think about reserving an entire room for fun and recreation. This can be as simple as putting in comfy chairs and a huge TV, though for some rich people this can turn into a private theater. But other homes can feature video games as well, and for the affluent the game rooms can have a billiard table, retro pinball games, and video arcade machines. A fully stocked bar can make it complete.

Premium Swimming Pool

Swimming pools aren’t really exclusively for the wealthy. But then when you’re flush with cash, you certainly can’t abide ordinary swimming pools, and you’re especially averse to inflated pools. What you probably will want will be either an Olympic-sized pool if you’re a serious swimmer, or a gorgeous infinity pool with special features like fountains, waterfalls, and slides.

A Large Garage

Jay Leno isn’t the only rich celebrity with a legendary automobile collection. It’s a particularly common interest among men. But where will you put those cars you buy? You’ll need to keep them at home, and for that you need a huge garage that can also function as a showroom. The bigger the garage is, the better—Jay Leno supposedly has 169 automobiles, to go along with 117 motorcycles.

Money may not buy you happiness, but it sure can get you a great home! With these amenities, who’ll want to leave home?