Clever Disguises for Common Household Eyesores

These clever tricks will help keep common household eyesores hidden in plain sight!

The following is a guest post by Bryn Huntpalmer with Modernize

Not every aspect of owning a home is pretty. Appliances, electronics, heating and cooling equipment—necessary though they may be, don’t exactly make for magazine-worthy home decor. But you know what they say in the interior design world—when the going gets tough, the tough get decorating!

Name almost any common household eyesore and you can bet there’s a boatload of camouflage out there that will help you send them out of mind, and more importantly – out of sight. Most of these fixes are simple enough to make you wonder why you didn’t think of them first, cost almost nothing, and are easy enough to install in a few minutes. Here’s a look at some of the sweetest cover up schemes we’ve seen.

Pay No Attention to the AC Behind the Curtain
The window air conditioner: big, heavy, chunky, and absolutely non-negotiable on hot summer days. You can dress these up with short cafe curtains hung on a tension rod over the unit—they’re easy enough to remove when you need to cool yourself unobstructed.

Give Your WiFi Router a Cozy Home
Routers look unsightly and out-of-place—especially if your style is less than modern—but their boxy shape means that they can be easily disguised. Pull the pages out of a hardcover book, or pick out a decorative cardboard box from a craft store and cut a small hole in one side. Tuck your router inside and enjoy your cat videos free from the distractions of ugly electronics.

Dress Up Your Outlet Covers
When you’re serious about your decor, every blank surface in your home becomes an opportunity to add a subtle accent or note of color. Switchplate covers make for an easy DIY project—doll them up with patterned fabric, old maps, or the pages you took out of your book for your router cover. Slather them with Mod Podge and voilà! You’ve effectively transformed your outlets into art.

Spiff Up a Scuffed Refrigerator
There’s no way you’re going to toss a perfectly good refrigerator because it’s a little dinged up, right? With stainless steel peel-and-stick appliance paper, you can give your fridge, your dishwasher, or even your stove a quick update, without plunking down hundreds for a new model.

Shutter Your Utility Meters
I guarantee your meter maid won’t mind this fix. A few bi-folding shutters propped up in front of your utility meters makes your exteriors happier, without sacrificing functionality. When it’s time for a reading, you just fold them right up. Form and function—it’s what great disguises are made of.

Curtail Your Cords
Messy cords that are prone to tangling are the bane of everyone’s existence. It doesn’t matter how professionally you present yourself, a wad of cords sprouting out from behind your desk can definitely make you feel less than put together. Using a black bedsheet and a tension rod, one homeowner was able to transform her desk with this no-sew backdrop.

Stop Hating Your Heating Systems
Not feeling the DIY thing? Snap on a pre-made register cover, radiator cabinet, or baseboard heater cover-up. They’re designed with vents to keep the hot air flowing throughout your home, but they come with sophisticated art decor designs and burnished brass finishes that lend a certain polished patina to even the most underwhelming parts of your home. In fact, I’m not even sure I remember what my heating registers looked like before. Now that’s a disguise!

About the Writer

 
Bryn Huntpalmer lives in Austin, Texas where she currently works as editor-in-chief of Modernize with the goal of empowering homeowners with the expert guidance and educational tools they need to take on big home projects with confidence. In her fringe hours she hosts a birth story podcast called The Birth Hour.

Christian Montiel

Christian is the Senior Manager of Brand Media for Coldwell Banker Real Estate. In this role, he oversees social media for the brand as well as media planning for all national advertising campaigns. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling, building LEGO sets and binging TV's latest hits. He currently resides in Miami, FL.