Designing an area to do their homework

The school year is a new beginning, not just for the kids but for you too. Take this opportunity to provide loved ones with a creative learning environment. Adding new home décor items will keep them organized and you happy with all the clutter neatly put away. It’s not just about making a room look nice, it’s about functionality and feel.

Designating an area or a desk will help them know where they can go to get homework done.

Filing cabinets are half the battle to winning the organization game.

Brightly coloured cans that can house school supplies keep the work surface clutter free but also easily visible.

A very comfortable chair is essential, there is no need to be rushing to get work done because of neck pain.

Proper lighting is so important! Get a good task lamp for reading and writing. You can even change the ceiling fixture to something that throws off more light in that area to help out where dark corners persist.

You'll be amazed by how much your surroundings will motivate you.


This is an excerpt from a newsletter that is distributed to all former, current and future clients of Village Builders Inc.  If you would like to receive this newsletter feel free to email me at www.robabbott@villagebuilders.ca

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc

Designing the perfect baby's room

So you’re doing the baby’s room.

If you want to do the dream baby’s room there are certain things that you need to remember.

The first thing you need to realize is that any baby room that you are going to put together has got to functional. It isn’t going to help if the baby’s room looks pretty and cute but there is nowhere to change the baby. So you need a changing table in the room. If you don’t like the look of a changing table then use a dresser. Find a dresser that usually has a mirror attached to the back of it; they are about your waste height. 

Remove the mirror and place either a sheet of tempered glass on top or just sit the changing pad on top of the dresser. This gives you a perfect changing table and doesn’t look like a typical changing table. This will also give you lots of storage for the baby’s things.

Paint the trim and the wall colours so that they are soft and welcoming. You do not want to pick loud colours for a baby’s room; you want the baby to stay calm when it’s in the room not get all pumped up. This will also help you stay calm when the baby has decided to cry for 5 hours and you’re on your last patient nerve.

A nice chair rail placed on the higher portion of the wall with a different wall colour running up to the ceiling looks nice and allows you to change up the colour. If you have it in your budget put some wainscoting around the room, this helps warm the room up and if painted the proper colour can easily brighten up a room.

Your main light fixture should be not just cute but also functional. A ceiling fan is usually the best bet with a built in light, baby’s sometimes need to be cooled down in a hot room and there is no greater way to do that then with a ceiling fan. You can add other lights on side tables for night lights or to help set the mood and calm a crying baby.

The coolest thing to do in a baby’s room these days is to do a wall mural. You don’t have to paint the mural yourself, you can actually buy wallpaper that when installed in panels side by side make a mural. You can get murals that are a couple of feet wide up to 12 feet wide. In my baby’s room right now there is a 12 foot mural of Winnie the pooh and his friends. Its 7 feet high and was installed by the grandparents in under 2 hours. Wallpaper these days is a lot easier to use then it use too be, it now comes with the glue already applied on it. All you have to do as you unroll it is slide it threw a tray of water. The murals come off the roll in the order that they are suppose to go on the wall, you just line them up one after another after another.

Placing a shelf a couple feet from the ceiling is also another way to bring some character to the room; it’s a nice place to store things like stuffed animals and pictures that are out of the way. It also helps bring some character to the baby’s room.

Whatever you do make sure that you do not crowd the room with furniture, try to keep the baby’s room simple because overtime the room will fill up with gifts from relatives and other things that you find for the room. You never want to go overboard with filling a baby’s room especially when it hasn’t even arrived yet.

Remember that the room is your own unique space. You should make it your own, don’t just make it out to be trendy, make it your baby’s room. A common thing for people to do is to renovate the room so it allows them to change it to fit the baby’s growing personality.

Rob Abbott

Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.