Update Your Bathroom for Latest Trends

You don’t have the time, money or inclination to give your bathroom a complete makeover, but you do want to update it. How can you update your bathroom without spending a lot of money on a full bathroom renovation? A little DIY “elbow grease” and a few touches here and there may be all it takes to give your bathroom a facelift.

Don’t Replace – Refresh

The biggest difference between cleaning a bathroom and cleaning any other room in the house is that a bathroom is a wet room. As such, it has special cleaning needs that other rooms don’t require. Mold accumulates in the tile grouting and soap scum gradually builds up on tiles, your shower screen and even on fittings like your shower head. If your bathroom is looking a little dingy, mould and shop scum may be the culprits and a little “spring cleaning” may be in order.

There  are some tips that can help you make your bathroom sparkle again:

Maintaining Your Shower Screen shows how to make your shower screen shine again using a solution of white vinegar and water.

If you have ceramic tiles in your bathroom, check out How o Clean Ceramic Tiles and learn the best ways to clean and maintain ceramic floor and wall tiles.

How to Maintain Stone Tiles will tell you want you need to know about maintaining and cleaning stone tiles.

If you start your bathroom update with a thorough cleaning, you’ll be much better able to see what else needs to be done.

Don’t Replace – Resurface

Now that you shower screen and tiles are sparking, do your bathtub and sink look dingy? You can give them a good scrub, but if they’re scratched, chipped, stained and/or faded, more drastic action may be called for. Before you call in the wrecking crew, though, consider getting quotes from bath& basin resurfacing specialists. They can make your tub and sink look like new again and even change their colour, giving your bathroom a whole new look. Better yet, resurfacing costs a fraction of the price of replacing a bathtub and basin.

Perform Painting Magic

There’s nothing like a fresh coat of paint or two for updating your living room or bathroom. The sane thing is true in the bathroom. You may have liked that soothing pale blue wall colour 5 years ago, but is it putting you to sleep today? Have a look at the bathroom design ideas on our photo pages and be inspired by all the bathroom colour schemes that are in vogue today. Choose your favorite, contact your local paint supplier and perform painting magic in your bathroom.

“That’s a great idea, but my tiles don’t match the paint colour I want,” you say? Well, there’s a solution for that, too. If you want more professional result, tile resurfacing specialists can perform the same magic on your tiles that bath & basin resurfaces can perform on your tub and sink.

Don’t forget the Details

By updating your bathroom on a budget, you probably have enough money left add a few details that can make all the difference to your bathroom. For example, consider replacing your shower head with a modern water saving shower head. Unlike old style water saving shower heads that basically saved water simply by restricting the flow of water, modern versions cleverly work by improving the way water flows out of the shower head. Imagine the refreshing fall of rain and you get the idea.

When you update your bathroom this way, by cleaning, refreshing, resurfacing and repainting instead of replacing, you can save thousands of dollars and have a bathroom that looks as good as new. Now, why not have a nice shower in your new bathroom and treat yourselves to a night out? You deserve it.

Flexible Flyscreens?

The fly screen was a grate invention and has helped millions of Australians enjoy the fresh air in their homes without the nuisance of all the insects that invite themselves in whenever they are given the opportunity. Still, there has always been something less than perfect about standard rigid fly screens. They say you can’t reinvent the wheel, but there have certainly been improvements made to wheels over the years. The same is true of fly screens. For a modern improvement on the iconic Aussie fly screen, look into flexible fly screens.

What are Flexible Fly screens?

As the name implies, flexible fly screen without its rigid aluminum frame and you get the idea. Instead of having a frame flexible fly screens are “framed” in either Velcro or a magnetic ribbon. There are a lot of advantages to such a system:

Made-to-measure flexible fly screens create a tight seal, even around out-of-square windows and oddly shaped openings, such as caravan windows.

● Made-to-measure flexible fly screens create a tight seal, even around out-of-square windows and oddly shaped openings, such as caravan windows.

● Flexible fly screens are easy to remove, giving you quick access to your windows when you want to open or shut them.

● They can be rolled up and stored when not needed and reinstalled in no time at all.

Flexible fly screens are ideal in many situations where normal flyscreens just don’t work:

● Hinged at the top, awning windows swing outwards, making indoors the only possible place to hang fly screens. It’s not likely you’ll make the best use of your awning windows if you have to remove a rigid fly screen every time you want to open or shut them, but with a flexible fly screen, all you have to do is peel back an edge, open the window, and fix the fly screen in place again.

● you can hang rigid fly screens outside of casement windows, but that creates problems when you want to clean or remove them.

● Hopper windows open inwards. You can install fly screens outdoors for these, but this creates the same problem you have with casement windows and you may not want to leave them permanently in place. Install flexible fly screens and you can install or remove them in seconds.

Another disadvantage to standard fly screens is that when hung outside the windows, they aren’t very attractive. If you have timber framed windows, you really don’t want to hide them behind fly screens. If you install flexible fly screens, you don’t have to.

There is still a place for rigid fly screens in the home. A fly screen sliding door, for example, is ideal for you sliding glass door. However, if you use a little “flexible” thinking, you’ll probably find that flexible fly screens are perfect for dozens of other applications. Custom made to order, you can install them yourself or get a quote for supply and installation.