Ways to Protect You and Your Home During a Renovation

When you insist on performing most of the renovation or decorating tasks yourself on a home project, it pays to protect yourself and your home. It’s all too easy to damage something or yourself in the process. Here are a few ideas on how to provide some affordable protection when working alone.

Protecting the Floors

One of the biggest issues for homeowners when decorating is damaging the floor below their feet. It might be the stairs or the actual flooring itself e.g. carpets or hardwood floors. But once they get paint, plaster and wood chips scattered on them, it’s tough to get it out.

You can easily vacuum the carpet several times and still not get every little wood chip that can easily turn into a splinter in your foot when walking around bare foot. Using a form of surface protection is sensible to avoid this problem. Trimaco offer a variety of different temporary floor cover options. These include breathable surfaces, liquid repellents, non-slip, and padded coverings to avoid indentation damage on the floor below. Even something as simple as a ladder moving around can badly scuff a hardwood floor without a padded floor protection system in place.

When repainting the walls, it’s essential to have a floor covering, as paint splashes are commonplace no matter how knowledgeable you are or how careful you complete the task. Trust us – we know from bitter experience here.

Protecting Yourself

While redecorating, you should protect yourself too. When removing plaster to re-plaster the walls and then repaint them, it’s easy to get plenty of white powder in your eyes. Pretty soon, you will have red eyes and trouble working on your home projects because you cannot see well. At that point you’re at risk of injury when using any tools. Buy a pair of well-fitting goggles to protect your eyes from paint and plaster blowback.

Wear overalls to cover the main parts of your body. While it’s still advisable to put on an old pair of jeans and tatty t-shirt, overalls are inexpensive and show that you’re taking the project seriously.

When working with tools, wear a durable pair of gloves too. If you’re not used to manual labor, your hands won’t hold up to rough work. Protect them with gloves that have a durable surface and good grip. Also, if you have a pair of sturdy boots, wear these to protect your feet in case you drop a tool accidentally on one of your feet.

Remove or Cover Furniture

Don’t take the risk of your furniture getting paint, plaster and other assorted debris on them. Getting dried paint off furniture is not easy. You cannot use paint thinner because it will likely strip down the wood finish on the furniture along with it. Get a proper covering to protect them. This could be canvas or plastic sheeting. As long as it’s large enough, it should be sufficient.

It doesn’t take much extra effort to consider protection issues before beginning a project at home. You’ll be thankful that you did when the first surprise paint splash happens too.