So what’s the deal with the little things? Trim pieces, light switches, caulking, hanging those pictures that have been in your spare room for months. They’re the least glamorous parts of a project. The stuff that nobody wants to do, but we all need to do. They make a home look polished and finished, and they’re important for any homeowner.
In between big projects this year, I’ve decided to focus on finishing these little things. A big need in our house was new outlets & light switches. Not only were the current ones mismatched with some that almond color, and some darker, but they were coming loose. This can happen to outlets & light switches over time because they just go bad at some point. When you plug something in, if it doesn’t stay in the outlet well, that’s a good sign that it’s probably time to change it.
Now I have very limited electrical knowledge, having just changed my first light fixture last year, but I had heard that outlets & light switches were a pretty simple process. I went to YouTube to educate myself on this process, and then I went to the hardware store to buy supplies.
This is a very inexpensive, & very DIYable project. You want to make sure you shut off the breaker before you mess with anything. Then you unscrew the old outlet or light switch, and when connecting the new one, you connect the black or hot wire to the screw labeled “hot wire”, the white or neutral wire to the screw labeled “neutral”, and the ground wire to the blue copper screw. I worked on a few of these a day until I had changed over everything in my house. This was an easy project that made a big impact in modernizing our house.
Another little thing I’ve been working on is trim pieces. The trim in our house is something of a nightmare. Previous owners used baseboards everywhere including door frames, and tiny shoe molding for crown molding. Pieces were not cut right, nail holes weren’t filled, and no caulking was done. Eventually I’m going to need to go through and probably redo most of it, but for now, I’m focusing on touching up little areas on the existing molding. This includes cutting out spaces for light switches that land right in the middle of molding.
Additionally, I’m working on hanging pictures, repotting plants that have outgrown their current pots since last year, rearranging decor with the change of seasons, and of course just a good spring cleaning. It’s important for me to share these projects because they’re part of real life. It can be easy for DIYers to only share the most impressive or most beautiful things, but that just further encourages skipping over all the little details. This year, I’ve set many project goals for myself, but decided to include time to also focus on the realistic needs of my home.
bonita by rachel 