Renovations and home remodeling have become welcome options for families who are spending much more time at home but who want to be able to stay in their current homes. As you consider the next few months of hybrid or virtual learning, extended time with children who aren’t spending as much time at daycare, or just working from home yourself, here are some great options for parents who want to renovate their home during COVID-19 and freshen up the look of their homes.
Making Space for At-Home Learning
Whether it’s knocking out a wall, putting in a new partition, or planning an entire addition to the house, giving children a space that is devoted to schooling can help the home feel less of a tight squeeze. According to the Homelight Q3 Survey of top Real Estate Agents, as many as 45% of markets are seeing a surge in parents turning spare bedrooms or playrooms into homeschool spaces. For children who may have been doing school work from the dining room table or sitting in a shared bedroom, being distracted has probably become a common problem for the school day.
As a result, parents are getting creative with both small and large renovation projects that work to devote space to learning: this may mean sectioning off a playroom to have a school “room,” or it may mean creating a multipurpose addition to the home. When choosing this kind of renovation, consider what the additional space will be used for when your children aren’t spending as much time learning at home in the future.
Creating or Expanding Home Offices
Your home office may have been a small nook in your home or the smallest spare bedroom up until now, but with full-time work-from-home becoming a much more common trend in 2020, many workers are growing cramped in their current home office setups. To accommodate better or bigger desks, comfortable chairs, and a professional background for their video meetings, many people are making their dream home office.
Working from home can get monotonous without the benefit of a larger building in which to change scenery. By choosing to remodel to add natural light, extra space, or better soundproofing to your home office, you can make your daily experience of working from home more comfortable and positive.
Adding Built-Ins and Other School-Related Elements like White Boards
Whether you are making a designated at-home learning space or not, one popular kind of renovations lately has been adding built in desks in unused sections of the house, such as under the stairs. You can also add a white board or other learning accessory to a blank wall that makes it easier to keep up with the family schedule and to take notes or work math problems without having to stare at worksheets all day. These smaller projects can be undergone in a smaller amount of time while still devoting some energy and space to the new normal, giving everyone a little bit of a pick-me-up from the new additions to the home.
