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September 20, 2017

By Ian Pearson

Every person wants to have its own ‛home, sweet, home’, designed according to its needs. The problem appears when the property is not actually yours, but a rental. When you decide to live in the rental property you have to be prepared to accept the fact that it will never be exactly how you want it.

But that doesn't mean you can’t adapt it to your needs. In this case, the key is in compromise. Usually, landlords don’t allow any bigger renovation changes so you need to keep it minimalistic but efficient. Even if you have open minded landlords who will allow you to make bigger changes it’s never a good idea to invest too much into a property that will never be yours. Here are some ideas to keep both sides satisfied.

The Palimpsest

One of the extremely personal elements that affect our moods and feelings the most is the color of the walls. The chance of having the right colors in the rental apartment is really small and this is not an easy thing to change. The landlords can be okay with you painting the apartment only if they make the conditions. Most of them would just like a repaint job to refresh the old colors, and they usually require a repaint job from their tenants every few years.  In some cases, you can paint the colors you like, but only under the condition to paint it back how it was before you leave. Besides the financial factor of that double paint job it can happen that you use too dark or too saturated colors you won’t be able to repaint right. The best choice is to use ‛the palimpsest’ technique, which basically means to create layers, and you can do that with hanging removable wallpaper. Just make sure to use the wallpapers that are easy to take down, like one of the ‛paste the wall’ varieties.

Too Bright, Too Dim

Light has a very special role in our lives mainly for its impact on our mood and feelings. It’s very important to have plenty of natural light during the day. Unfortunately, if your rental apartment hasn’t got many windows or if it’s surrounded by much larger buildings there isn’t much you can do. Adaptations required to improve that can be very hard on your budget and they probably wouldn’t be approved by your landlord. But when it comes to artificial light, changes can be made without difficulties. We’re very sensitive to light so there is a big chance that your landlord’s light fixtures would be too dim or too bright for you. But fortunately swapping them is one o the easiest renovation techniques without visible traces. You just need to store the original fixture somewhere safe so you can return it when you decide to leave.

Trapped in a Storage

When having two apartments, people have tendencies to turn one of them into a storage. Then when they decide to rent the place they usually don’t bother to move the things back to the apartment where they don’t need them. So you may find yourself surrounded by a bunch of unuseful things that aren’t yours but you can’t throw away. The situation gets even more complicated if the apartment doesn’t have a basement or the landlord is reluctant to give you the key. You haven’t even begun to organize your own things and you’re already stuck up to your neck. One option is to install shelves, but that requires a number of screws and a need for another paint job afterward.  Luckily, today you can choose from a variety of effective supercheap storage units that will make you feel like all that stuff never existed.  In addition to ‛clearing the junk’, you can organize your own things in them and provide a lot of additional free space. And the best thing is that you can alway take them with you and fit them into another property without difficulties.

Think Big, Do Much Less - The Conclusion

Once you start with the renovation process you’ll come to the point where everything seems like it needs changing. If you follow that impulse you’ll end up spending a lot of money and buying a lot of different things you’ll have to leave behind sooner or later. But sometimes it is enough just to change the surface of things. For example, most of us have problems with the bathrooms because they’re the most personal and intimate spaces. Replacing the tiles requires a lot of skill and money, but you can always give the old tiles a bright makeover. You just need to buy a tile refreshing kit or spray paint and you can do it yourself. The same goes for kitchen elements and floors. Always keep in mind that rental property is a temporary thing and use your finances to ‛disguise’ it rather than to change it permanently.

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