Perk up your rooms for very little cost

Spring is the perfect time to give parts of your house an inexpensive makeover, writes Kya de Longchamp

FINALLY, the days are long enough to enjoy bright evenings at home and weekends are pregnant with possibilities. Come blinking into the light and try one of our simple projects to perk up the room-scapes of your great indoors.

Put a new season on a faded wooden side-table.

Starving for change, but short of cash? Any secondhand shop can provide you with cheap, shabby but structurally sound wooden pieces and nicely shaped occasional tables are regularly dumped as unworthy. Ensure you’re happy to lose the bare look of timber for paint, and choose a pale colour for a flourish of French country chic or go for vintage relaxing with putty colours in cool greens and greys.

Sand the table thoroughly to give yourself a good key. Treat any knots with knotting solution or this will weep through the finish. Remove any remaining dust and close the grain with a wipe of white spirit. Using two brushes, one for rangy areas and the other for fidgety bits, give the piece a coat of wood primer and leave to dry before coating with two layers of acrylic paint in your chosen shade. For a quick cheat work outdoors and use a spray primer and finished colour from Plasti-kote Satin-Super (from €9.99 for 400ml). Use up to three coats for a perfect, opaque finish and allow two days for coats to dry.

Stick up some shelving to stack and store.

I can’t avoid the old clutter topic at this time of year. That covertly stuffed away redundant rubbish is also weighty ballast floating around inside your head, you will realise it’s time to clear out and set your spirit free. Adding open storage rather than more cupboards will challenge you to save what’s worthy of exposure. You can put a kit shelf or fashion your own shelving to suit the space with 18mm MDF with supports no more than 600mm apart.

For practical reasons and to protect sheer sanity, a shelf must be entirely level. So pick your spot and use a spirit level or laser to get your marks on the wall. Check for buried cables in the wall with a cable detector. Set out the positions for your supports and using a drill bit for either masonry or a stud in the timber framed partition, tapping in a wall-plug if needed. Using multiple shelves, keep them about 35cm apart and you can add some quiet but stylish plywood Pränt boxes from IKEA, that slide on felt pads forward with the touch of finger. We also love the new Floral stacks of three boxes from Dunnes Stores, perfect for the bedroom or a dressing room. From €5

Put spring on display

Shifting confections of ornaments, plants and found objects can liven up a dull shelf, table or mantle in moments. Explore unusual ways to assemble and stage unusual eye-catching pieces. Look out for new or vintage glass cloches (basically a glass dome used to force plants) and use it to highlight a treasured object placed beneath it like a small terrarium or even sprout some indoor seeds. Seasonal flowers fresh or from the garden are your gift to yourself so keep them in tip top condition from the start with these simple preparations.

Wash the chosen vase or container thoroughly to remove any lingering debris or bacteria that could attack your stems. Remove any leaves that will be below the waterline and rot. Once you’ve set a length for each stem trim a few centimetres off its end, and place in the vase filled with lukewarm (not cold) water.

Add flower food and nip out fading blossoms as they appear. Check the water levels daily. Resist taking wild flowers, they really are a national treasure. For a design to make your own spectacular and virtually free paper flowers, try this gripping project from Design Sponge, ideal for dressing up a spring wedding banquet too. Available at http://ow.ly/aiSzv

Shuffle up a new season

Just because the couch has nestled there for time immemorial and the dining table seems gripped jealously by that corner, does not mean they are cemented into those positions for the rest of your natural life.

If you have any sort of open plan arrangement there are often several potential staging points for the big ticket items of furniture. What about a weekend reshuffle? Think about the logical traffic path through the spaces and play up architectural features, views and function areas.

There are plenty of computer aided design (CAD) software tools online which allow you to virtually lift and shift your furnishings across a virtual layout on your PC screen before you commit. Take measurements of your furnishings and the window and door positions for the most accurate rendition in 2D or even 3D.

Try the free Room Planner tool at House to Home. housetohome.co.uk.

If furni-prints (those dastardly dimples in carpeting under the feet of furniture) are holding you back try this restorative cheats.

Let an icecube sit in the dent and when it starts melting, tease the fibres up with the edge of a small coin. Mop up any excess water.

Let the light in.

Heavy or lined curtains are not necessary with double glazed windows, and with a lingering, pearlescent evening light in the spring and summer, why not enjoy all the natural illumination and passive heating on offer. Whip down the light killers and re-dress your windows with inexpensive unlined no-sew panels or sheers. Here’s something even I can manage in an afternoon. For your entire curtain length, if you don’t have an existing curtain to use as a template, work from the window. Allowing for the header or the length of clip-on curtain rings, measure the length of the window from your pole. Add 10cm to the bottom and top of your fabric to allow for a hem, and 3.75cm each side for the horizontal hems. Based on the width of the window, add another half width again to give your curtain a nice voluptuous fullness.

Leave a 12mm seam allowance if you have to join widths of fabric together and if doing so join smaller pieces to the outside of the panel. Hem your curtains using an iron-on bonding webbing on the wrong side — 2.5cm web for the sides, and 5cm web for the top and bottom. Turn under 12mm all around. Turn down 7.5cm at the top and bottom, and 2.5cm at the sides, before slipping the bonding web into the fold and closing. Add clip on curtain rings.