Darren Palmer’s eight bite-sized renovations you can do on the weekend

We’re all time poor but that doesn’t mean you have to develop renovation inertia. By chunking down the big tasks you need to do around your home into bite-sized, weekend-worthy nibbles you can power through a number of renovation items piece by manageable piece.

Replace your handles

Upgrading your old, tired door handles is as simple as measuring the distance between the holes and searching online or in store to find a straight replace. Unscrew the old ones, hanging onto the existing screws, as otherwise you may have to cut the ones supplied with the new handles to size, and screw the new ones in place. Simple.

Make your home one that you want to return to every day. Photo: Felix Forest

Changing cupboard fronts

A wonderful visual upgrade, you need to check that your kitchen has standard-sized cupboards for this to be an easy weekend upgrade. Standard cupboard and drawer sizes will have plenty of options in stores and online. You’ll need to check the location of hinges, the height and width of fronts and the condition of your carcasses but by unscrewing and replacing cupboards you can transform your kitchen or bathroom cabinets completely. You’ll find some interesting colour, texture and pattern options The only impediment is your creativity.

Paint your doors

It’s not as hard as you might think to give your bathroom a makeover. Photo: Felix Forest

While painting your whole home might be a bit more than you can manage in one sitting, a nice bite-sized job is to apply a couple of coats of coloured paint to your existing internal and external doors. Sure, you might not get through them all in one weekend but you can chip away at this task after work or in the mornings and add amazing contrast and interest to your interior scheme. Remember to use an enamel paint for doors and timber work.

Replace your shower head and toilet seats

One of the things I do routinely when moving into a new property is replace the shower head with a new one. Most replacement shower heads come with thread tape and you don’t need to be a plumber to do this straight replace as it doesn’t interrupt the fitting connection. If you can manage that the toilet seat replacement is a cinch.

Regrouting tiles

Scrape out any old or worn grout and replace with a new colour or a replacement of the existing. A word to the wise – don’t grout floors in white as they will be mid grey in no time.

Replace bathroom accessories

Another quick trip to the hardware store or bathroom supplier and you can give your bathroom a facelift to complement that lovely new shower head.

Fill gaps and scrapes

There are different fillers for different tasks. A quick-dry, all-purpose one like Selley’s Rapid Filler is great for scratches and scrapes on walls or filling in bumps in timber work before painting. Fill gaps between skirtings, cornices and walls with no more gaps. Use a two-part filler like builders bog for areas that need a more hard-wearing but still sandable solution.

Remove redundant “features” and install new ones

Pulling out old, dated or worn shelving and storage cabinets can free up wall space and liberate your rooms from a tired look. Installing wall hung units or floating shelves can give you an opportunity to clear your home of clutter or create a place for you to best display your favourite items.

Images and extract from HomeSpace and Easy Luxury by Darren Palmer (Murdoch Books, RRP $39.95 each), with photography by Felix Forest. 

Originally published as: https://www.domain.com.au/news/darren-palmers-eight-bitesized-renovations-you-can-do-on-the-weekend-20170317-gun8zc/