By Ted Healy of DNG TED HEALY

Those rays of evening sunshine, while welcome, can show up lingering surface dust and highlight other tasks within the home that may need attention especially if you have, or are about to, put your home up for sale.

Where to start?

The trick is to start slowly, maybe on a weekend afternoon, and ideally share out tasks among family members, giving them a deadline for completion.

Over the next few weeks we will look at specific areas, both inside the home and out, which may need attention and ways of refreshing those areas. This week we will start with the floors.

Our carpets, rugs and timber floors can be magnets for dust collection.

On a fine dry day the rugs can be taken outside, hung over a wall or line and beaten using a broom handle, the old-fashioned way, to give them a low-environmental impact spruce up. It may be an idea to wear a mask and don’t leave out overnight or in the wet. Regular vacuuming prevents dust settling.

When it comes to cleaning carpets you can hire an industrial machine or call in a professional carpet cleaning company. Your carpets will be like new!

Solid timber floors can be rejuvenated with a simple sanding and varnish/staining. Depending on the thickness of the board, they can scrub up as new with a little work. Oiling/staining will give that new finished look.

If a full sanding is not required, small scuffs/blemishes can be gently rubbed out using a small amount of Cif soaked into a cloth.

This is enough to get started with before moving onto the bigger jobs within the house and then tackling the outside.