How You Can Prepare Your High-Traffic Home for the Holidays
If your home is already filled with hustle and bustle, you can only expect things to ramp up as the holidays approach. Combine time off from school and work with holiday gatherings and you’ve got a recipe for ruckus. You might thrive on these high-energy occasions, but you won’t be thrilled if your home bears the brunt of this activity. The last thing you want is to enter the new year with scuffed paint, damaged drywall, filthy surfaces, and other forms of disarray. So, how can you prepare your high-traffic home for the holidays? Here are some ideas from our experts.
How to Prepare a Home for the Holidays
Keep the Outdoor Elements Out
The majority of your holiday get-togethers will take place indoors, but it doesn’t take much for the outside world to creep its way into your home as guests arrive and children play in snow. Placing down high-quality mats will prevent water, dirt, and debris from getting tracked in. Still, you may want to clean your floors on a frequent basis to make sure no grime lingers on your floors for too long. Of course, dirt and snow aren’t the only elements to worry about entering your home -- the cold winter air can come in through cracks and gaps in your home if they’re not properly sealed up. If you want to keep your home warm this winter, you may want to do some caulking in key areas.
Protect Your Interior House Paint
High-traffic holidays put your home’s paint job at risk. Children have a habit of bumping into and running their fingers across walls, and adults are sometimes guilty of the same things. By the time your gathering comes to an end, you might notice a handful of smudges, scrapes, and scuffs throughout your most popular rooms. While most of these flaws can be easily cleaned or removed, it’s best to prevent them altogether. You could perform interior painting before your holiday event(s) to ensure that your walls are well-protected and to discourage direct contact. In lieu of this larger project, you can install or update the trim that protects your walls at various points, such as baseboards and chair rails. Most trim repair and replacement jobs are simple to pull off and don’t take up too much time, but professionals can help if needed.
Put the “Deck” in “Deck the Halls”
By the time the holidays roll around, you may have already shut down your deck until spring. However, in areas like Raleigh, NC, temperatures can still be warm enough to enjoy some time outdoors well into December. And if your home is busy, it might be nice to offer some additional space for yourself and guests out on your deck. If so, make sure your deck is in good shape for holiday gatherings, too. Applying fresh deck stain will both enhance your deck’s appearance (impressing your company) and shield it from sunlight, precipitation, pests, and more. It’s a good idea to prepare and stain your deck before the worst of winter sets in anyway, so now’s a good time to tackle this project.
Reinforce Your Floors
If any part of your home bears the brunt of heavy foot traffic, it’s your floors. It’s usually not realistic to reinforce and/or seal all the floors in your home, but you might consider doing so for the ones that most need help. If, for instance, you spend lots of time in your refinished garage, you might install high-quality residential concrete floor coatings in this area. Much like staining your deck, coating your concrete floors enhances their appearance (and the entire room by proxy) and protects them from multiple threats. At Anderson Painting, we’ve found that Penntek offers the most durable concrete floor coating options -- these polyurea coatings are durable, flexible, visually versatile, and long-lasting.
For more insights and advice on preparing your busy home for the holidays, speak with the experts at Anderson Painting. Call today at 919-610-1855 or email us at info@andersonpaintingnc.com!
