Home renovation Leicester - Craven and Hargreaves

Storage Solutions and Upcycling Tricks for City Life

Life in the city can mean a sacrifice in terms of living space and after all with all that socialising and wining and dining, who needs a mansion to come home to, right? When it comes to putting everything back after a spot of home renovation Leicester then these tips may just save you some time AND space as well as giving your home a quirky touch or two.

It’s never the wrong season for a good old fashioned clearout and often the precursor and even motivating factor for a revamp of your living space and storage options is to don the gloves and get started on the clutter cull! Luckily the fine folk at Storage Solutions have come up with an infallible ‘five box declutter technique’ to help you make those ruthless decisions. Essentially this involves marking five boxes dedicated to 1 – Bin; 2 – Store; 3 – Donate [or sell]; 4 – Keep; 5 – Relocate.

De-cluttered? Good. City living goes hand in hand with minimalist style and what could be more in vogue than upcycling? Both trends are satisfied in the idea of using old shower hooks on wardrobe bars to tidy away all those handbags. It’s a simple, cost-effective way of putting some surprisingly bulky objects out of sight.

In the kitchen, those fortunate enough to benefit from high ceilings can fix a rack upcycled from a bicycle wheel or the round top of a decorative metal garden table to some ropes to be attached to rings in the ceiling. From this surprisingly chic contraption (a conversation piece for sure) you can hang those infuriatingly un-storable pots and pans.

One of my favourite little tricks is gluing or (perhaps more safely) drilling the lids of glass jars to the underside of a table or sideboard and storing bits and bobs in the jars underneath! It’s an ingenious idea for craft rooms, garages and sheds and is strangely addictive once you see how handy it can be. You can even try it out in the kitchen for your spices and herbs – perhaps underneath some shelves – doubling your shelfspace.

Clever storage and old world charm need not be mutually exclusive and for those who feel that a good bookshelf choc-a-bloc with fine reading is imperative, a bookshelf can easily be built into the wall at the foot of a bed in a small bedroom, which lacks the space for a standing bookshelf. To give it that quirky upcycled twist, if the room design allows an old wooden ladder could be split, making a mid wall corner bookshelf. With just a little thought and imagination the opportunities for ingenious, space-saving, inexpensive city storage solutions are endless.

The idea of the Mood Board

Never has this expression been more apt than when applied to the idea of the Mood Board. For many, especially those involved in home renovation Leicester, the Mood Board is an essential tool that enables the would be designer present their ideas visually, giving an impressionistic idea as to their vision for your room. It is more about presenting the atmosphere of the design ideas rather than a snapshot and is an incredibly clever way to ensure that a designer is on your wavelength before making a decision. Mood boards are generally concocted over a period of time after several meetings and conversations and provide that essential proof-positive that a designer is taking your requests seriously and listening to your ideas.

If you look at the Mood Board and think, “Wow, that is me down to a T!” then it can be extremely liberating, not to mention stress-saving to hand over the reins, trusting that the designer knows what you want.

What does a Mood Board look like?
A Mood board will probably look like a collage, with scraps of fabric and swatches of paint and perhaps a sample of oak wood flooring – all coming together to show the intended colour scheme. Of course it could well be a digital Mood Board (also known as a ‘Digital Mash-up’), which eliminates the designer’s need to find physical manifestations of his vision and can lead to a more accurate and expansive portrayal of his desired atmosphere. An effective Mood Board will be roughly to scale in that each swatch and sample will take up the same sort of space on the board as it will in the relevant room in proportion to the other samples. This makes it much easier to visualise just how well the fabrics, tones, textures and shades will work together.

Just the beginning
For designers and project managers like Craven & Hargreaves the Mood Board marks the moment at which mutual trust and understanding is achieved and represents the first step on a journey that will end with your dream room or in more expansive projects, your dream house. A Mood Board is a very intensive and highly intuitive tool and so it makes perfect sense to make the most of that connection and retain continuity throughout each step of the process to ensure that that everyone remains on the same page.