Quick Home Upgrades to Optimize Your Space
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FAMILY HANDYMAN
Add in Shelves
If you’re looking for some quick home upgrades, why not add in more shelving? Nearly every room can benefit from a little extra storage.
Above-the-Door Shelves
The space above a doorway is an overlooked storage bonanza! It’s the perfect spot for a cookbook cubby in the kitchen or a towel shelf in the bathroom. Consider adding a shelf or cubby over the doorways in your home office, laundry room and bedrooms too.
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Spice Shelf
Spices are a pain to store. They get easily lost in your cabinets, so you end up buying duplicates when you can’t find what you need. Here’s a simple solution. Pick up a bag of adjustable shelf supports and a 1×4 board at a home center. Just measure the height of your tallest spices, measure down from your shelf, drill holes and mount your spice shelf on shelf supports. You’ll put an end to buying three tins of poultry seasoning and more bay leaves than you’ll use in a lifetime.
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Hang a Shelf Over Your Towel Bar
For some reason, once the towel bar goes up, we don’t consider the wall usable for anything else. Why not hang a shelf for toiletries and decorative items? Just make sure to mount the shelf high enough so it allows easy access to your towels.
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Install a New Tub and Shower Trim Kit
Give your shower an instant face-lift by swapping out your existing showerhead, handle and tub spout for new ones. To make this a painless switch, buy a trim kit that uses the existing trim valve. That way you won’t have to touch anything inside the wall. Before you buy, check the manufacturer’s reccomendations for specs, styles and finishes. Also check your tub spout to see if it slips on or is threaded so you can buy the right replacement.
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Add a Second Medicine Cabinet and Shelves
Here’s a way to add even more storage and bump up the sophistication of your bathroom. Mount matching medicine cabinets and add shelves between them. To support these shelves, we drilled holes in the sides of the cabinets and inserted adjustable shelf pegs. The shelves are simply boards finished to match the cabinets. This makes the most of the wall space above your toilet and sink. You could also mount something similar over a double sink setup. The cabinets can be surface mounted or recessed. The shelves give the unit a nice finished quality.
