Home & Garden

Despite what people think, there are many disadvantages to being tall, most of which arise in a domestic setting. The good news is that good home design can eliminate many of the problems that tall people face. This is particularly easy to factor into a new build, but minor modifications to your existing house can make a dwelling so much more comfortable for tall people.

One hundred years ago, average height of an American male was 2 inches smaller than it is now. House builders build houses for average people and provided you are not too far from this average, the regular house is perfectly functional for you. However I’m 6 foot 5 inches and notice many things in the regular house that does not suit my posture , height and build. Any body taller will notice more problems and to a degree that’s more severe. What I consider a minor inconvenience, a taller person could consider a factor that makes a house uninhabitable. Lets look room by room…

Kitchen — Worktops, sinks, faucets etc need to be an inch or two higher to eliminate stooping down for food preparation. Air extractor fans need to be higher, as do all light fittings, to prevent bashing ones head. Positioning handles on drawers, cabinet and fridge/freezer a little higher also helps. Much of this is only possible at build time, but with the assistance of a good architect can be designed into your house.

Bathroom — probably the worst room in the house for a tall guy. The shower head needs to be tall enough to allow you stand straight and still have a generous water spray hit your head. Not having to bend too far down to the shower controls is a nice-to-have. Some vendors stock extra long baths, a must for the tall person who likes to immerse their whole body, knees included in the water. The final problem in the bathroom is a mirror positioned too low on the wall. There’s nothing worse than bending at the knees to get a view of your face when shaving.

Bedroom — the major issue here is the bed and it’s length. Also the sleigh bed designs, with the vertical board on the end is one to avoid. Another tip here is to increase the height of your wardrobe hanging rails a little to avoid having your shirts hitting the bottom floor of the wardrobe.

Simple modifications can make a house more comfortable for a tall person, be it you, your loved one or your 6 foot 4 inch fourteen year old son. For more on how to modify your house and lots more on the advantages of being tall and disadvantages of being tall, visit BeingTall.com

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It’s difficult to make a home your own and ensure it does not just take on a bland feel, but with these tips, you might find something that helps you put your mark, on your space.

1) Transfers

For those making the decision to paint a room, transfers on walls are available nearly everywhere nowadays. They need minimal skills to put up, minimal time to remove and add a dimension to rooms that is incredibly personal and can be good fun. They can also be used to brighten up current schemes.

2) Kids

For those who have small children in their life, kids are great when home design is in question. Think handprints on flowerpots, foot casts on the front door step, murals in bedrooms, bright and marine orientated family bathrooms. Kids give us the opportunity to make spaces a nice place to be and bright, especially their bedrooms and communal living areas.

3) Organization.

Books and DVDs can now be stored in a manner of dynamic and modern styles. Storage devices can add another an aspect to a room that leans towards the unconventional, while still carrying out their objective. Look online for some fantastic storage companies.

4) Color and Design

Don’t be afraid to mix and match design and color. Remember these simple rules, no more than three colors or patterns to a room. Flowers on cushions work with others that are striped or of a totally different fabric for example. Colors work together if they are all from the same pallet, bright blue doesn’t work with pastel green, but would work with another bright color. Experiment and don’t be afraid to take your time.

5) Software helps.

There are software packages that help us design rooms at the touch of a button, why not give it a go and see what you come up with.

6) Run a theme throughout the house.

Rather than walking from one room to another and feeling like you are being shocked by your eyes in each, try and pick a theme and have the colors or style echo throughout your house in communal spaces. It means that the whole house ends up with a “feel” to it, rather than just one room being a little of one thing and another being a little of something else.

7) Take your time

Our homes are our sanctuary. Take your time, shop about and don’t rush to buy cheaply if you can take the time to save a little more for something you really want, you’ll be glad you did when you find it’s still in your home years later. Ask for discounts when buying and don’t be afraid to banter.

The great outdoors.

Try and make your outdoor space, however small, an extension of your home. You will find you will use it more if you like it and in time will benefit from being outdoors through an increased sense of wellbeing. Water features, small herb gardens and potted flowers all add to the sense of home.

Good luck and enjoy yourself, after all, isn’t that what being at home is about?

Home improvement is one sphere where help is easily available. You may hire somebody locally or rope in friends and family members to help you in your project. You can even hire a professional to help you in your task, but of course you may incur a lot more expenditure to pay him than you would if you take your friends’ or family members’ help. But one thing is for sure, help is definitely available and in these modern times, it is available round the clock, every day and all throughout the year.

Technology can also be of great help to you. Computers and televisions or even state-of-the-art tools all do a great job to get your work through. All these methods are great resources in your project of home improvement. Of course you would want the best when it comes to improvement to your home but you will be flooded with ideas from all and sundry. As many different personalities of people, so many different ideas they generate. You must choose only the ones which you feel will be helpful to you and make sure you don’t involve anyone whose ideas clash with yours and invite the jeopardy of the timeframe or the work completion quality. If you happen to watch a DVD on home improvements after you start the work, please do not change your mind half way after starting your project and insist on changing your plans from the original ones to something quite different. This can be extremely irritating to your hired help who will find it very difficult to be in his best mood. This may affect the work quality you had planned.

Help is very easy to find as we have mentioned. The trick here is to encourage your friends and neighbours to lend a helping hand so that your labour expenses can be saved rather than spend a small fortune by asking expensive professional help. It would always work out cheaper to employ some neighbours and friends instead of professional contractors as the contractors would charge you overpriced labour and material charges. But you may have to put up with your friends’ and neighbours’ demands and opinions. If you do not want to bother yourself with all this, then of course you can handle this project on your own. It would also be a lot quicker and easier on the pocket too!

As one of the few crazy idealistic people trying to buy a house at the moment; mainly due to the current economic climate it seems other potential buyers are taking cover in their mum’s attic until this all blows over. To make the situation even more exciting I foolhardily made my bid before the building even came on to the market so could not comment on the apparent ‘recession’ push the price in my favour. My reckless approach to the side, I am now confronted with the task with the duty of teaching myself interior design and true to form wanted to get a computer in the mix somewhere.

Last year I reviewed Google SketchUp for Click and thought that I’d give it another spin before decided it was possibly a little bit too complicated for the relatively simple room designs that I wanted to create. I was looking for something more along the line of the basic CAD (Computer Aided Design) applications that members of the public are allowed to use in stores such as IKEA. After a little searching I stumbled across a free of charge, open source application called ‘Sweet Home 3D’ which seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

There are a couple of different versions of this application offered, including compatibility with Linux and Mac OS’s realistically the majority of users will go for the 25mb Windows version which can be downloaded for free from http://sweethome3d.sourceforge.net . Interestingly a Java version is also available which runs straight from any Java compatible web-browser consequently removing the essential download and installation.

As the name suggests, this program is primarily aimed towards those looking to do an element of interior home design; it isn’t a fully blown CAD package. What makes it so easy to use is that you simply give it the dimensions of your room(s) so you can get the walls in the right places, then it is just a case of dropping in objects such as bathtubs, beds and kitchen units. All your furniture is separated in to different categories such as ‘kitchen’, ‘bathroom’ and ‘bedroom’ which makes selecting the correct item incredibly easy. Over fifty pieces of furniture come in the initial installation but there are literally hundreds of additional 3D models can be downloaded free of charge which range from a telephone point to a spiral staircase.

The colour and size of the objects can be easily changed, so while you might not be able to locate the exact match for the sofa on page 5 of the IKEA catalogue you should get a fairly good match. Once content with your 2D design you can then able to switch to a full 3D view so you can get more of an idea as to how it will look in the flesh.

Whilst Sweet Home 3D isn’t at all comprehensive when compared to other CAD packages, this is also what makes it special. Unlike an application such as AutoCAD, it should take literally minutes to get to grips with rather than taking you three months to learn and costing you hundreds. Those looking for something advanced will probably be disappointed but those looking to quickly knock up a room design or a floor plan should find this application ideal.

The giant rabbit was erected and mounted on the foundation of the original fountain so after The Handy Goddess (Barbara Wurden) moved the fountain she is reconstructing and hand building a concrete trough for her outdoor two tier water fountain in this diy home improvement landscape project how to video designed for the do-it-your-self type person. Also demonstrated in this project is her favorite multi-tasking tool, the Magic Saw magicsaw.com

In the early days of the 20th century, America followed Britain into the architectural response to the previously dominating Victorian style. The upper class and upper middle class during this time believed in a complex set of social rules about appropriateness which is greatly reflected in many houses from that era. The homes built at the time were full of fancy single purpose rooms for public functions and private use as well as less ornate rooms for their children and servants, as deemed appropriate by the social mores of the day.

Jump up to the present day now, where our modern housing trends seem to echo the Victorian trend to large superfluously roomed homes. As the American family has slowly shrunk over the last 40 or so years, the size of the homes that we live in has steadily inflated so that many of our neighbourhoods are shoulder to shoulder with characterless monster homes built to the edges of their tiny city lots. Many of these homes echo the Victorian trend of multiple rooms all serving related purposes, sometimes exactly the same purpose.

This trend is of little consequence until you take a look at a vital difference. There were cultural reasons that the Victorian-era family needed duplicity in their homes. The rules about public and private areas dictated that you needed to have a foyer, a parlour near the entrance to your home to receive guests, a butler’s pantry, a china closet, a drawing room, and servant’s quarters. Some of these rooms were needed, of course, because home design hadn’t progressed to the point where kitchens had food and dish storage built into them yet, but some were also a matter of manners.

In our modern times most people would be hard pressed to explain why they really need to have a living room as well as a family room much less six bedrooms and five bathrooms in their house. One of the accompanying trends that we’ve seen over the same years that houses have been increasing in size is a shrinking of the ‘average’ family size in North America. So, this means that we’re building bigger and bigger spaces to live in with smaller and smaller families.

I’ve been very interested in the trend that’s slowly becoming more prevalent in North America lately. At the end of the Victorian era there was the drive to return to more useable spaces, emphasizing the form of function and the genuine materials that houses were made from instead of faux finishing. This trend meant for many people the movement away from homes that existed for other people to homes that existed to be lived in. This was known as the Arts and Crafts movement.

Our modern down-sizing trend is strikingly similar to the Arts and Crafts movement in many ways. Both movements were concerned about building livable spaces with quality materials. Many of the small home designs being designed and built currently have an emphasis on quality over the ‘quantity’ involved in the massive “McMansions”. The smaller homes have a much smaller carbon footprint, making them a wise choice for the environment as well. Hopefully we will continue to see this trend grow.

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Another Great moment from Home Improvement. The Man’s Closet! (pronounced WO-man)Copyright 2006 Futuramklax Inc.

Have you noticed that when you visit friends or family who live in another state, they may have homes designed and constructed in a much different way than yours? New homes especially tend to reflect design differences not only based on demographics but also on the regional weather, lifestyle and location (urban, suburban or rural).

Homes located in areas where the weather is extreme and tends to go from one end of the spectrum to the other, say from very cold winters to hot and humid summers, stucco construction may not hold up well. Homes constructed in such areas tend to do better with stone or brick exteriors and vinyl or composite siding which can be maintained easily and are resistant to rotting. If the home is located in an area prone to flooding or storms they may need to be constructed at an elevation above the flood zone and hurricane clips can be used to secure the roof to a solid structure so that it will not fly away or collapse in strong gusts of air.

Besides weather, another factor that makes a difference in the design and style of a construction is how the area’s homes have been traditionally designed. Regional preferences tend to play a strong role in influencing home owners’ preferences for a particular design.

Even floor plans may differ with respect to where homes are built. Some areas in the US like the mid-west and eastern regions, entertaining tends to be indoors and in a more formal setting than the rather casual indoor or outdoor variety in the west.  Weather could also play a part in this. In the east, south and mid-western areas of the US, many homes have distinct living rooms, dining rooms and kitchens. In some parts of Florida, the most dominant floor plan seems to be where kitchens open into family rooms and living room – dining room combinations are incorporated into the floor plan.

Indoor and outdoor living styles have also changed somewhat over the years. Homes constructed in seasonal weather areas used to have porches and patios which were screened in and became a sort of family room when the weather was good.  This is not usually done anymore because most homes have air conditioners, all over the country and not just in some areas. Now the screened or covered patio has become passé, and not really viewed as a necessity anymore.

Many new home traditionally included basements, but in some areas of the US such as the west coast, homes with basements are the exception and not the rule. Sometimes homeowners tend to construct garages instead of basements but homeowners who prefer basements just cannot seem to do without them because of the versatility that they offer – as a living space or for recreation and storage.

Whatever your design and construction preferences are, a new home offers you flexibility in terms of choice. You could either choose to use the regional favorite, or opt to stand out with a distinct design statement of your own.