I’m sure that long before photographers and well-wishers began to gather outside of St Mary’s Hospital in London, awaiting the birth of the Royal baby, everything down to the last detail was ready for the new arrival.
It’s the same, whatever the size of your home – whether it’s a bedsit or a Palace – there is work to be done when bringing home a baby for the first time. Whilst in those first few months it is relatively easy to keep track of baby’s comings and goings, once the crawling phase starts, parents need to be extra aware of the dangers which lie around the home.
In a modern age, when the average UK home contains 170 metres of exposed wiring, trips, tangles and all manner of potential risk lies in the cables around a home.
One of the most important safety jobs around the home, yet among the simplest, is making those cables safer. A wide array of products are readily available on the market, in outlets such as B&Q, Homebase and Screwfix, from decorative trunking, to Cable Tidy tubing, to clips that keep wiring in place when you take your laptop away.
And whether you’re preparing a modern flat or a stately home, style and aesthetics need not be sacrificed in the name of safety.
Long gone are the days when the only options for hiding cables were old fashioned boxy trunking or channelling walls, and that’s brilliant, because the relevant cost, disruption and ugliness of these options was never ideal – but it was the best available at the time. D-Line’s innovative products have revolutionised safely hiding cables, and fit in with any décor, without the need to bring in an expert!
If you love colour, the trunking is paintable, developed to accept emulsion or gloss so perfectly matching your style. Where there is traditional skirting, D-Line’s decorative semi-circular trunking can run along the top and be painted or stained to look like it is all part of the boards – except it opens and securely shuts to put cables in an out. Likewise, where wooden floors are installed, the necessary beading can be substituted for D-Line’s quarter-round Floor Trim, which does the same job, is installed in half the time and also gives somewhere to hide wiring! Perfect for electrical products such as surround sound systems.
All that is now needed to make any home cable clutter free, and still looking great, are the products themselves, a few minutes of time and, at most, drilling a couple of holes, although even this isn’t necessary, as the trunking is self adhesive.
So, from palaces to pit villages, gone are the days when a baby, toddler or even a family pet going near the electrical cables is an inevitable disaster, or a safe home has to lose its sense of style.
Paul Ruddick is Founder and Managing Director of D-Line. http://www.d-line-it.co.uk; 0191-2360960; D-Line’s range of products are available in leading retailers, including B&Q, Homebase or Screwfix.