I’ve always liked this online shop – lots of great items from a wide variety of designers (Dard Hunter, Tiffany, Sullivan, William Morris, Laura Wilder, FLW and more) and vendors – but I think this recently-redrawn 1882 William Morris pattern is one of my favorite designs. I think it’d look especially nice on pillows on a sofa, or maybe a tablecloth. Beautiful!
One of the best things about moving into a new space is the opportunity to redefine yourself as you decorate your home. When decorating however there are a few mistakes that people commonly do that make their homes look cheap and out of date. Here are 8 home decor errors to avoid.
Pictures are such a large statement in your home, but many people commonly overlook their importance. Here are three major things to consider before you begin hanging things on your walls.
Believe it or not, the placement of your curtains can have a tremendous impact on the overall quality of your room. Many people make the mistake of placing their curtain rod too low and accidentally cramping the space around the window. Your windows are one of the main features in your home that will help your rooms appear larger than they actually are. To capitalize on this remember to always put your curtain rod about six inches above the window. This will help the window look larger and allow more light to come into the room.
Old and outdated light fixtures can make a home look cheap and uncared for. A simple and relatively cheap fix is to update the lights and make sure you have bright light bulbs. No one likes sitting in a low light yellow room unless the room is intentionally lit by a lamp.
Rugs in and of themselves do not instantly add class to your room. If the rug is the wrong shape or too small it actually gives the impression that you couldn’t afford the right rug for the room. You want your rug to touch all of the furniture in the space. This helps bring all the pieces together for one cohesive look. If your rug is too small, but you’re married to it you can always choose to layer rugs on the floor so you can still have that pulled together look. Another option is to opt out of the rug entirely.
A bathroom can really date a home. If you have a toilet seat cover or toilet rug you might want to get rid of that immediately. They have fallen in popularity largely due to how unsanitary they are. A bath mat is just fine so long as you place it in an appropriate spot, for example in front of the vanity. A quick swapping out of towel hooks and shower rods can bring up the overall look and quality of a bathroom in a matter of minutes.
This is a simple thing to keep in mind with your closet. If you have mismatching hangers, throw them away. It is only a few bucks to have a full set of matching hangers in your closet and it looks so much more organized and cared for than multiple styles of cheap hangers floating around.
A quick and simple way to give an old dresser, door, or table a facelift is to update their hardware. A quick search online or a trip to the store can have your home looking much nicer for just a few dollars. The swap is simple and the results are instantly noticeable.
When decorating, always keep in mind that less is usually more. This doesn’t mean you have to live the life of a minimalist, but you definitely don’t want a room to come across as cluttered. Try and keep similar things clustered together, whether that is on a shelf or a coffee table. Having things spread around gives the appearance of being too busy and will take attention away from the major statement pieces in your home.
Whether you’re renting or buying, good luck as you make your new house feel like home. Remember that there isn’t any rush. Take the time to make it look the way you want so you can feel comfortable and happy for years to come.
You find that your home is infested with bed bugs Winnipeg. There are products you can pick up at supermarkets and other venues. Do they actually work? The answer is yes, but with some qualifications. In fact, the results may be more of a waste of your time than a help. Here are some reasons why you should set the do-it-yourself approach aside and call a professional exterminator.
Many people are surprised at how many places bed bugs can infiltrate. In spite of the name, the bugs can end up in your closet, the carpeting and area rugs, and even furniture upholstery. While you may not be sure what needs to be treated and what’s safe, you can bet that an exterminator knows where to look and what to do. That’s one reason why that professional will be one of the most important of all Winnipeg's bed bug solutions.
Thing thing about over the counter bed bug products it that they can only accomplish so much. Some of them are effective, especially products designed to use when cleaning clothing that may be infested. Others leave much to be desired. Since you’re not sure how severe the infestation happens to be, it makes more sense to have bed bugs exterminators inspect the home, settle on the best mode of treatment, and then provide you with some advice on what sort of over the counter products would help with the laundry and similar tasks.
If you decide to go the DIY route for getting rid of bed bugs, be prepared to administer a series of treatments. They may have to be administered every few days for a few weeks. In the meantime, life around the home will be disrupted. Along with the inconvenience, you keep spending more and more money on those products. By the time you’re done, the amount spent may equal or even exceed what professional pest control treatments cost. Even sadder, they aren’t likely to produce the same results that a professional heat treatment would accomplish.
Time is of the essence when you’re trying to deal with a bed bug infestation. Those eggs hatch quickly, so the number of bugs is constantly on the rise. Since over the counter products are only addressing part of the problem, it will be some time before the infestation is truly a thing of the past. By contrast, professional bugs extermination using heat or other treatments kills eggs as well as adults. That effectively stops the progression of the problem and makes it easier to bring it under control sooner rather than later. If you notice an infestation in the home, don’t waste time trying to deal with the issue on your own. Call a professional and make arrangements for professional bed bugs treatment in Winnipeg. In the long run, you save money, avoid damage to furnishings, and avoid the itching and other problems that continual exposure to bed bugs create.
partnered post • cc-licensed image by the AFPMB
With so many different ways to make money, the choices can be overwhelming. Therefore, if you want to find the best fit for you in the business world, you need to identify a business idea that will not only pique your interest but also provide you with the income and profits that you expect to earn. Thankfully, there are some unique business investment ideas that can completely transform how you can make huge amounts of profits today. One of the most notable involves flipping houses. Before you begin to branch out in the area of flipping houses, it is important that you have a solid idea of how you are going to launch your strategy.
The strategy that you use to flip houses can make a significant difference in how successful your company will be. For instance, you may want to incorporate the Tortoise House Flipping strategy in starting out with your first profitable venture. The basics of this concept focus solely on deploying a flipping houses strategy that is considered to be slow but steady. With this concept, you will accomplish these 3 goals at a time and that is to make money relatively quickly first, offer the house of everyone’s dream, designing the appropriate plan that will legally help to avoid tax penalties.
Avoiding tax penalties is essential to making a large profit because there are traditionally taxes that can be associated directly with flipping various kinds of properties. As you get started with this plan, however, you should make sure that you have not quit your day job since you will need the extra income until your profitable ideas can be seen in the real world.
If you decide to start flipping properties for a living, you need to know that you can expect both pros and cons. Just like anything that you want to do, you may have lots of advantages but you cannot dismiss the fact that there are downsides too. Hence, for anyone who has their eyes set on getting, here are some of the more common pros along with the cons to flipping properties as an investment and profitability plan.
Pros to Flipping Houses:
Cons to Flipping Houses:
Once you have had an opportunity to completely renovate the home that you have purchased and have sold it, you should always be familiar with the tax liabilities associated with it. To find out more about the tax liabilities that will be connected to the purchase of this property and others, it is important that you contact a tax professional who knows how tax laws work in these situations.
partnered post • cc-licensed image by Jeff Turner
Organizing your garage can be a big job but once it’s done you’ll be amazed at how much more space and function your garage has. When your garage is organized it will be easy to find anything that you need from seasonal clothes to sport equipment and you might finally have room in the garage for your car again. Here are five garage organization tips from organization and design professionals that will help you get a handle on that garage clutter once and for all:
The best way to make use of all of the space in your garage is to hang everything that you can hang from the walls. Hanging racks can hold storage boxes as well as individual items so that you can hang things like holiday decorations or out of season clothing and get those things off of the floor. Construction measuring tools, ladders, rakes, and other yard equipment should be hung in specially designed organizers that hang on the wall. Bikes, skis, and other large sports equipment should also be hung up to maximize the space available.
The ceiling is a space that many homeowners overlook in the garage. But even if you have an automatic garage door opener there is space up there that you can use for storage. Cleverly designed storage units that are made to fit into the ceiling of a garage over an automatic garage door opener will give you lots of room to store boxes full of old things or seasonal decorations that you only need to access once a year.
Custom built hardwood plywood cabinets that are made to fit your unique garage will really increase the amount of storage in your garage. Some people might think that the cost of custom cabinets isn’t worth it because the cabinet will be in a garage but there is no way to put a price on proper organization. Custom built cabinets in the garage means that you can use the garage as a workspace, a hangout space, a building space, and in other ways. You will have the storage necessary to keep all of your hobby equipment organized and safely put away in the garage. Custom cabinets that are designed just for your garage will ensure that you are using every square inch of the garage that’s available for storage.
Once your cabinets are up you can organize your hobby space by putting in a custom workbench and a pegboard that can hold your tools. Hanging your tools and measuring wheels on the pegboard will safe space while keeping your tools easily accessible.
Hold a yard sale and get rid of all the items that you just don’t use. Sell those old bikes or the skis that never got used after the first winter. Old tennis racquets and tools can be sold too. Get rid of anything that you don’t absolutely need. Once that’s done take the items that are left and divide them into categories like hobby equipment, sports equipment, and so on. Organize each category and hang the items or put them away in the new storage solutions in the garage.
Once the garage is organized you will be able to keep it organized easily and you will have easy access to all of the things that you might need, like your child’s winter coat or a special tool that you need when you’re working on the car. Take back your garage and tame the clutter by getting organized.
partnered post by Corey Tyner of Phoenix Fast Sell Home Buyers • client image
image: wind cowls provide passive ventilation and heat recovery
With climate change on the rise, finding ways to provide us with energy that is renewable, efficient and kind on the environment is becoming more important by the day. However, heat ventilation systems are there to help, by making sure that we get the most out of our heating systems. They do this by utilising the heat from the stale air extracted from our homes and combining it with fresh air that enters via ventilation systems. Today, we will be having a look at the different types of heat recovery systems available to you.
Thermal wheels are usually the biggest out of all the ventilation systems. They’re thought to be the most efficient when it comes to air recovery. These systems consist of two big wheels which have a honeycomb arrangement. One half draws out the stale air, whilst the other half draws in outdoor air. Energy that comes from the stale air is passed on to the incoming air, which heats up the fresh air. The speed of the wheel rotation, plus all of the energy that is transferred, can be regulated to increase or decrease the air temperature of air fed back inside the building.
This type of heat recovery system, that can be provided by companies like BPC Ireland, is more common than its thermal wheel competitor. This is because plate heat technology can be utilised on a lesser scale. It is made up of a box that has a range of parallel plates that have been made from plastic or metal, and this allows extracted air to pass the air coming into the building. The passing air transfers energy and heats it up. The plates separate the air stream and don’t touch. How conductive and thick the individual plates are, are key factors in how efficient any system is.
Heat pumps harness heat from one area and pass it to another. The way they operate is similar to that of a refrigeration unit. Heat pumps can be used to heat or cool air. There is an array of different types available. They all draw in heat from the air outdoors as well as the ground, which requires a network of pipes.
Air handling systems can have a run around coil introduced to them. A circuit of pumped pipes connects the two coils together. To charge the unit, water is used and the supply air coil has heat transferred to it from the heat picked up from the exhaust pipes. This type of heat recovery system is only used if the two air systems aren’t near enough to each other for a more efficient system.
This kind of technology requires the least maintenance, but can only be used when air handling is done in an individual system. A tube system with a refrigerant (that extracts heat from exhaust air to pass on to the fresh air), is used. Evaporation from vertical pipes is used, due to them being more efficient compared to horizontal pipes.
As you can see, there are a variety of heat ventilation systems available. The one that works best for your home will be dependent on a number of factors. Making sure you do your research before you purchase a system is essential, so it would be wise to contact a professional and possibly get a few quotes.
partnered post • cc-licensed image by Tom Chance
It doesn’t matter what people say, bigger is always better. Particularly when it comes to living room spaces, this couldn’t be truer.
Unfortunately, most of us don't have unlimited pockets. Or, we don’t have any more land to extend our existing living room into.
It means that we’re left with two options; either move home or try and trick others’ eyes into thinking that this room is larger than it actually is.
Suffice to say, it is the latter which we will be focussing on today, as we look at some easy living room hacks to make this space look a lot bigger than it really is.
spread the light
One of the easiest ways to trick the eye is through the use of light. A big mistake made by homeowners with a small living room is to just have one central light, hanging from the ceiling.
Instead of this, try and opt for several. Some of these might be on the wall, while you might have more than one on the ceiling as well. It might require for you to find a drywall repair service in Jersey to patch over some of the old fittings, but the results are completely worthwhile.
the art of contrast
Another really effective way to make the room look bigger is simply by painting it. The golden rule is to not use any “medium” shades. In other words, you have to opt for light or dark colours.
The reason behind this is simple; you need to create contrast. This creates the illusion of depth, which is all you need.
go from head to toe with curtains
It might not be the style that suits some rooms in your house, but when it comes to a small living room you need to make an exception. This comes in the form of curtains that stretch from floor to ceiling. It might seem as though you are hiding some parts of the room, but it just makes the eye move upwards and it’s this effect which can again make the room seem a lot bigger than it really is.
In a similar vein, if you are really against the idea of long drapes, consider putting shelving or other furniture high on your wall. This has a similar effect – the room suddenly looks bigger as furniture is placed in varied positions.
make a big statement with furniture
We’ve just touched upon furniture, but if you are looking to make the biggest impact the rule of less is more couldn't be more true.
While you might think you are doing the right thing by having lots of little pieces of furniture, this can just make a small room look cluttered. Instead, turn to a feature piece - one that will draw all eyes to it. In doing this, you not only eliminate clutter, but you also detract attention from the fact that your room is smaller than you would like.
partnered post • cc-licensed image by Peter Hess
From Architectural Digest:
Welcome to the Ennis House, one of the Los Angeles Hills' most legendary homes. At $23M, this Mayan revival Frank Lloyd Wright house has been featured in movies like 'Blade Runner' and is full of furniture designed by Wright himself. Join real estate agent Rayni Williams as she takes you on a tour of the entire house.