Dar­ren Bart

Oc­to­ber is over and for many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, the count­down to Christ­mas has qui­et­ly be­gun. Not just the usu­al con­ver­sa­tions about where we will lime, what we will cook and who is host­ing this year, but con­ver­sa­tions about the house.

The cur­tains need chang­ing. The walls need paint­ing. The kitchen has been both­er­ing us all year. The bath­room could re­al­ly use an up­grade. And some­how, be­tween Sep­tem­ber and De­cem­ber, we con­vince our­selves that all of it needs to hap­pen be­fore Christ­mas.

I have al­ways found this par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing about us.

We can spend the first eight or nine months of the year liv­ing with the things we know need at­ten­tion, on­ly to reach the fi­nal quar­ter and sud­den­ly de­cide that every­thing must be done at once. And trust me, the con­trac­tors know this, too.

By this time of year, many are al­ready booked with projects and work­ing through wait­lists. Those who man­age to se­cure a con­trac­tor may find them­selves deal­ing with stretched time­lines, de­lays or the dread­ed con­trac­tor who dis­ap­pears be­cause they have tak­en on more work than they can rea­son­ably man­age.

Much of this could be avoid­ed with a lit­tle plan­ning through­out the year.

As an in­te­ri­or de­sign­er, I of­ten see home­own­ers ap­proach ren­o­va­tions as one big event. But home im­prove­ment doesn’t al­ways have to work that way. Small­er re­pairs, main­te­nance jobs and im­prove­ments can be spread across the year. Some things we can rea­son­ably han­dle our­selves. Oth­ers should be left to pro­fes­sion­als. The point is not to turn every home­own­er in­to a con­trac­tor. It is to stop treat­ing De­cem­ber as the dead­line for every­thing we have put off since Jan­u­ary.

There is al­so the fi­nan­cial side to con­sid­er. Ren­o­vat­ing sev­er­al rooms at once can put se­ri­ous pres­sure on a house­hold bud­get. Break­ing projects in­to man­age­able stages gives you an op­por­tu­ni­ty to plan, save and pri­ori­tise in­stead of spend­ing a large amount sim­ply be­cause every­thing must be fin­ished be­fore Christ­mas.

But there is an­oth­er cost we don’t talk about enough: the men­tal cost.

Ren­o­va­tions are ex­cit­ing, but they can al­so be ex­haust­ing. There are de­ci­sions to make, quo­ta­tions to re­view, ma­te­ri­als to se­lect, trades­peo­ple to co­or­di­nate and, of course, the dis­rup­tion that comes with hav­ing work hap­pen­ing in your home.

So I have to ask: do we re­al­ly need new cur­tains every year? Does the en­tire house need to be re­paint­ed every Christ­mas? Does the kitchen need to be de­mol­ished and re­built?

Does the bath­room sud­den­ly re­quire a com­plete ren­o­va­tion be­cause it is De­cem­ber?

Or have some of these things sim­ply been sit­ting on our list all year, wait­ing for the mo­ment when we fi­nal­ly have the mon­ey, time or mo­ti­va­tion to ad­dress them?

There is noth­ing wrong with want­i­ng your home to feel spe­cial at Christ­mas. We love en­ter­tain­ing and hav­ing fam­i­ly and friends over. There is some­thing won­der­ful about prepar­ing your home for the sea­son. But there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween mak­ing your home fes­tive and feel­ing like your home needs a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion every year.

Maybe we need to start think­ing about our homes in quar­ters rather than sea­sons.

The first few months of the year can be about look­ing around and ask­ing: What isn’t work­ing? What needs re­pair­ing? What would make every­day life eas­i­er? What have I been tol­er­at­ing for far too long?

The sec­ond quar­ter can be about tack­ling the small­er things: main­te­nance, re­pairs, paint­ing a room, re­plac­ing hard­ware, or­gan­is­ing stor­age or tak­ing on DIY projects you can ac­tu­al­ly man­age your­self.

By the third quar­ter, you can start think­ing about the larg­er projects. If the kitchen re­al­ly does need ren­o­vat­ing or the bath­room has reached the end of its use­ful life, this is the time to speak with pro­fes­sion­als, get quo­ta­tions and un­der­stand what the project will in­volve.

It al­so gives you a much bet­ter chance of se­cur­ing the con­trac­tor you ac­tu­al­ly want, rather than who­ev­er hap­pens to be avail­able in No­vem­ber.

Then De­cem­ber can sim­ply be De­cem­ber.

Fin­ish what makes sense. Dec­o­rate. En­ter­tain. En­joy your home.

And if some­thing doesn’t get done? That’s okay. It can go on next year’s list.

Our homes are not Christ­mas sets. We live in them every day.

Good de­sign should make your life bet­ter through­out the year, not sim­ply make your home look im­pres­sive when guests ar­rive in De­cem­ber. The best de­ci­sions are of­ten the ones that con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit you long af­ter the Christ­mas tree has been packed away.

Our homes de­serve more than a De­cem­ber dead­line. They de­serve thought­ful de­ci­sions that make liv­ing in them bet­ter—in De­cem­ber, cer­tain­ly, but al­so in Jan­u­ary, March, Ju­ly and every oth­er month of the year.

Dar­ren G Bart is the Prin­ci­pal De­sign­er at DGB Con­cepts Ltd.