Home & Garden

Any advice or guide on the interior design of a bathroom should be based around one simple concept: keep it simple. Rooms inside of a home should have functional aspects, and if one room is designed for very specific functions, it is the bathroom. There have always been many jokes about the “throne” of a home, but the honest fact is that creating a visibly appealing and comfortable bathroom will inspire positive feelings to its users.

Hardware choices should be the primary concern when designing a bathroom. Faucets and spigots, as well as tubs and toilets, produced in a variety of shapes and materials can centrepiece a design. Open showers are currently popular with the younger upwardly- mobile crowd, and claw-foot bathtubs are almost always considered to be classic and attractive. Evaluate privacy issues first; don’t put the toilet and tub too close together.

Is it a possibility to centre your bathroom around a favourite theme? The answer is most certainly “yes.” Keeping in mind that “less is more” while choosing a decoration pattern that will coordinate with the rest of the home will open many design possibilities. Finding a colour or pattern inspiration from simple or small artwork may be the first step toward creating a bathroom masterpiece.

When designing a bathroom’s tiling, take the time to shop around through different hardware, decoration and craft stores. The more expensive of the different types of tiles should have durability, aesthetic value, and a non-porous surface. It should be easily cleaned and sanitized, and it needs to install easily without any expensive or caustic glues or cements. Get creative also; all tile in bathrooms need not be made of porcelain.

After the design and production of a space-conscious and attractive bathroom have been completed, focus on decoration accessories to bring out personality and individualism. The bathroom is the most sacred room of any interior, and placing prized possessions on the walls or shelves is an interesting way to bless this special room. Use courageous ideas and do not be afraid to take chances, but above all: keep it simple.

Take a look around your own home. Is what youve been referring to as your time-honoured home decor really just old fashioned? If so, maybe its time for you to join the remodelling parade. The good news is: there are lots of easy, low cost ways to give your homes look a nice pick-me-up.

The bathroom is one of the most popular targets for home improvement. While any project involving plumbing tends to intimidate the average homeowner, there is a lot of new product technology designed with the do-it-yourself in mind.

One of the easiest and most cost efficient ways to spruce up a bathroom is to replace the faucets. Improvements like this have a huge impact on the functional and aesthetic value of the space. You can create an entirely new theme for your bathroom — such as contemporary, old world, or European — based on the design of your faucet, says Angie Coffman, director, Delta product marketing for Delta Faucet Company.

Before purchasing a new faucet, its a good idea to do some preliminary research. You may also want to consider a budget before beginning your search, as prices can vary widely. You will find that there are many different styles and designs in bathroom faucets. Consider ahead of time whether you want a single-handle or a double-handle faucet. Notice how the handles feel in the palm of your hand. Do you want something that is delicate or more heavy-duty? Explore different spout designs and finishes as well. Decide whether or not you want an escutcheon, the decorative plate beneath a faucet. An escutcheon will also cover extra holes that might be drilled in the sink.

Look for a faucet that installs easily — you may notice language like quick connect or no adjust, indicating that minimal tools are required. Pay close attention to the existing hole configuration on your sink. How many are there and how far apart are they? Do you need a single-hole, 4-inch centre-set, or a wall-mounted faucet? Your single-handle faucet may have three holes underneath, but you dont necessarily have to replace it with another single-handle. Theres a design, called a mini-widespread, which provides flexibility for customers who have a single-handle faucet, but are looking to switch to a double handle, widespread look. The Victorian Mini-widespread from Delta is an example of a faucet that offers intricate, old-world styling in a smaller sink setting.

Make a Lasting Improvement

Look for a design that wont soon be outdated and one that will complement the rest of your bathroom, one that will stand out without sticking out, according to Coffman. Keep in mind that you will probably be using this new faucet for years, so choose something that is durable, versatile, and a brand that is considered reliable.

Installing high quality products in a bathroom will result in a high return on your home remodelling investment. That is why it is important to choose a faucet that offers long-lasting, worry-free performance. You want to look for things like solid brass construction and a company that offers a lifetime limited warranty, along with customer support, in case you have questions while installing the faucet yourself.

Now that you are ready to give your bathroom the facelift it has been waiting for, have a few tools handy for the installation. A pair of adjustable pliers, along with an Allen wrench and basin wrench, will probably be necessary. Also pick up some silicone or caulk, and Teflon tape. Always double check the instructions on your faucet for any other tools or supplies needed.

If you are looking for additional support, try consulting your local home improvement store. Or, check out manufacturer Web sites, such as deltafaucet, for installation tips. As you join the millions of Americans remodelling their homes this year, choose your projects wisely and remember that even seemingly small changes, like a bathroom fixture upgrade, can add value to your home.

At times, home improvement can be a very big task especially when your home is decades old. You will have to do a lot of things to bring it in sync with modern requirements and trends.

How to start your home improvement task is a very common question asked by the beginners. For effective home improvement, you should plan a specific programme of work that might continue over a long period of time, with expenditure being gradually incurred. Alternatively, you can go all out but in that case you need to have an adequate budget.

If you have a scarcity of funds, you can approach your local building society or bank or a private online lender. Any information in regarding online loans can be gathered from the Internet. You can also contact your financial advisor for the same. A home improvement plan is a first requisite to proceed. Thereafter, you can draw a budget on that basis, assessing your financial requirements. Any deficit in the budget has to be met, preferably with secured homeowner loans. These loans are economical and easily available. You can afford to borrow a big loan amount if you decide to have secured homeowner loans because the rate of interest is low in this case.

Specifically, home improvement loans are also available. These loans can be secured as well as unsecured. You can decide it on the basis of your requirement. Once you have the required funds, you can proceed to choose the right builder or contractor for the work to be done. Ask your friends or take the help of some professional organisation in this regard. You can find a lot of information on the Internet regarding this.

Secured home improvement loans can get you up to £250,000 but you should be careful with your repayments. Any default or missed repayments can pose a difficult for you – the lender may initiate repossession proceeding against you. So, avoid such a situation by paying your instalments regularly.

You should make improvements works on your home through a loan that comes with lower rate of interest and low costs attached with it. Only such a loan will be less burden some for enhancing your home value. And if you are looking for a smaller amount then opt for Unsecured Home Improvement Loans, which you can find in plenty in the loan market place. Through these loans you are able to do variety of works like buying a set of furniture, equipping your kitchen with latest technology, enlarging space of the rooms etc.

Under these loans, you can borrow smaller funds ranging from £ 5000 to £25000, depending on your income and repayment ability. Prior to approving the loan, the lender will check your monthly earnings and the amount you can repay easily towards the loan installments.

These are short term loans, involving repayment duration of 5 to 15 years. so, while you complete home improvement works and enhance your home value, you are out of the loan within few years.

But a disadvantage is that you shall have to pay interest at higher rate on these loans as lenders want to cover the risks. But thanks to growing competition in the loan business you have the options of finding a loan with comparatively lower rate, especially if your credit history is excellent or good.

Those homeowners, whose credit history is blemished one with late payments, arrears, defaults, CCJs, they are also able to borrow money under these loans as per their repayment ability. But interest rate will be hiked for them.

For taking unsecured home improvement loans at competitive rate of interest and less additional costs, prefer taking it from online lenders. But take their rate quotes for a fruitful comparison. Repay the loan in time for repairing your credit rating and for avoiding any debts.

With the high costs of fuel today, it pays to save energy and money on home improvement projects where you can. To help with your budgets, here are three awesome products in the marketplace to check out.

1) Hurricane Socks

We always use a number of measures to get rid of dirt and dust from our house. However, it becomes quite difficult to prevent accumulation dirt once the rainy season and hurricane season starts. To prevent water from coming into your house, hurricane socks can help. Made from high quality water absorbing material, hurricane socks are usually 3 inches by 3 – to 4-feet long cylinders of polypropylene packed in strong nylon.

You can place these hurricane socks at the bottom of the doors and windows to prevent possible water dripping and leaking. And surprisingly, these water absorbent socks are able to soak one-gallon water. That means you can change a single hurricane sock after couple of days; simply wring it out, let it air dry and use it – over and over and over again. Crack those tough wet jobs with easy-to-use, economical hurricane socks.

2) Abzorb Mats

Sometimes even after taking all major precautions to keep the house clean, floors – especially the garage and kitchen floors – become dirty and greasy. But don’t worry! An easy solution is to use Abzorb Mats, made of top quality absorbing polypropylene, backed with high quality epoxy resin.

Abzorb Mats:

• Keep you garage cleaner and safer from slipping accidents on greasy spots.

• Prevent damage to not only flooring (wood, concrete and others) but also walls, cabinets other areas.

• Absorb gallons of water, and when the water evaporates from the mat, you can use them over and over and over again.

• Are easy to use and clean, and last for years.

• Also come in rolls for easy cutting with scissors or other sharp tool.

Available in multiple sizes and affordable price ranges, Abzorb Mats can be used inside your garage, home (under pet dishes, in children’s rooms, under kitchen appliances, etc) and other areas as well as; for example, outside on decks under grills.

3) Draft Stoppers

Along with house cleaning, keeping your home warm is also important, especially during winter season. A central heating system and / or living room fireplace combo is excellent for this purpose, available in local home improvement stores and online.

Note, though, that even if you have your systems and fireplaces in place and running, you need to try hard to prevent possible heat loss, since severe heat loss may overload the systems resulting in overuse of electricity, not to mention excessive energy bills. A simple way to avoid this is to block gaps responsible for heat loss with quality draft stoppers.

A well graded draft stopper is made using finely ground corn cob filled in a cylindrical polypropylene bag, easy to shape as you’d like, and place accordingly. These draft stoppers are long lasting, economical and tough on heat loss.

So give it a try – nothing to lose – - save energy and money with any or all of these 3 nifty home improvement products.

From a requester. COPYRIGHT 2010 FTN.

Gauging your success

How does one gauge the success of a do it yourself home improvement project? What level of expectations should we have upon their completion?

For a good many people, evaluation of a DIY home improvement project is out of the question. There is a general misconception that once a DIY project is done, it’s done. No need to further evaluate whether the project was really a success or not. The need to evaluate the success of a DIY project has two main goals:

• Establish whether the project had been executed according to plan.

• Establish whether you’re improving as compared to previous different projects that you have done before.

The criteria

1. Cost- how does one evaluate the true cost of a DIY project? Start with the basic raw materials. A central blueprint for any DIY project should have a list of the materials for the completion of a project. If the cost of the finished product and the projected cost of the project do not match, then this should be avoided in the future. A disparity of 25% from the actual cost can be acceptable.

The point of a DIY home improvement project is to basically save money. Saving money entails sticking to a budget- which has already been computed to be cheaper than actually hiring or buying finished goods.

In some rare instances, central plans have wrong computations- this is fine, as long as effort is given to remedy this problem in the future.

2. Finished product- whether you’re replacing floor boards or making a rocking chair, one particular consideration would be the finished product itself. Simply put, does it look good?

Of course, do not expect that a hand-made cabinet made with spare wood found in the garage can look as attractive as the ones you buy from a furniture store or a factory outlet. But at least, the finished product should look decent, in combination with other pieces of furniture in your home.

This criterion is especially important when you plan to make large-scale DIY home improvement projects, such as replacing walls or parts of the roof. Once you’re done, indeed, you’re done.

3. Timeframe- one thing should be made clear when we talk about DIY home improvement project timeframe: time does count. This issu can be discounted if you have a lot of free time in your hand: for instance, summer vacation or the like. But if you’re doing the DIY project on weekends, you have to make sure that you’re completing the phases of the project on time.

The reason for this criterion is that time is money when you think about it. If you spend three months creating a cabinet no bigger than a child’s table, then there is definitely something wrong with the project. Laziness should be eliminated in the picture- you can’t simply reason that you’ve been lazy. What would be the function of timeframe then?

Timeframe can vary from project to project. Try your best by sticking to a limited timeframe; indeed this will have its reward in later DIY projects. You can call it GOAL Setting.

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!

You open up a phone book or even the local newspaper, there are tons of advertisements for contractors. Each contractor specializes in certain parts of the home. They can be electricians, designers, engineers, interior designers, plumbers and even joiners. They each have a specific home improvement skill and each one can not do without another.

If you want to do some home improvement which involves removing chunks and adding to it, it’s best in this case to turn to someone with that particular skill. Should this be a new bathroom installation or replacing the old bathroom with fresh ideas, let someone else do the project.

While many suspect all contractors are expensive, this is not always the case. It is possible to look around and find an expensive, yet very experienced contractor. You would pay for labor and materials. The best way to find someone like this is to ask around in your neighborhood, friends and family to see who they would recommend and why. Most people will go with a recommended contractor.

How about if you want to restyle your home? You do not have to do this alone either. There are home interior consultants that are willing to lend their expertise to those who want to refurnish their home to a look they want. It can get quite expensive despite the fact that they are consultants, you have to pay for the materials and the hours they work to tell you what fabrics will work and what others won’t. So on, so forth. This is really not feasible for most people because of the money issue.

Contractors in home improvement are great when looking to get huge modifications done. They should be listed with a governing body, have all the licenses with terms and conditions.

Should it be a small job you are looking to get done, see if a family member or friend can help you. That or you can attempt and do it yourself. You should not have to shell out for the whole thing.

No matter the size of the job, it is important that the person you choose to do your work has got certificates for you to see and the much needed materials that you like before they start on a job. Should they be half way into before you inspect it, you still must pay them for what they did do.

The cost of Home improvement can be extremely high but by following a few simple guidelines you can help to reduce the expense and save your self a fortune. Budgeting is a crucial element in the overall plan when it comes to home improvement projects as many people find themselves constantly spending more money even though the project is just about done! Always try and invest as much of your home improvement budget as you can on materials though but don’t be foolish with the money, materials follow the law of “you get what you pay for!” In other words, good home improvement materials are never cheap and cheap home improvement materials are never good.

Budgeting is essential for any home improvement project, always budget a little extra for any unforeseen cost that may come up above what you are willing to spend that way if something was more work than was thought then you are prepared for it. If you don’t have a budget then you will keep on spending and keep on forgetting where all the money is going and before you know it you are 30% over budget and nowhere near completion. It is always the little things that come back to bite you in the backside, little things like wallpaper expenditure and tiling are usually always underestimated so make sure you are not part of the norm.

Home improvement costs can be easily cut down by making sure you only buy what you need, there is no point purchasing something that you’re never going to use. That would just be silly and wasting money! This can be eliminated by proper planning and being sure of your measurements for the project upfront. Material costs are a very significant part of the total overall expense, if not the most significant in any home improvement project. Basically, you need to budget enough money to get the job done, you cant get anything for free these days but you can minimize the likelihood of going over your allotted budget by a great deal by proper planning!

If you are going to use a contractor be sure to get several estimates, labor costs vary tremendously from contractor to contractor so don’t just go with the first estimate you get. For example, cost per square foot for building a house can range from $65 to $100 just for basic expenses not counting upgrades!

When all is said and done you don’t have to have the Trump Palace. You don’t have to opt for the most expensive materials in existence like gold plated faucets and imported marble, just buy quality products and make sure that the completed project is what you wanted it to be for you and your family whether you do the job yourself or you hire it out.