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Transform Your Room Into The Greatest Place Even With An Extension

by Trish



Everybody always has one special room in the house where they love to spend all their time. If you love watching sports then it’s probably the living room. Cooking fanatics never seem to be out of the kitchen. But everyone always wants more. They want bigger. It’s just who we are. Once you have had something for a certain amount of time it gets boring. Mom wants all those big fancy appliances in her kitchen. The ones you can’t fit in at the moment and probably won’t use anyway. Dad wants somewhere more than a tiny corner of the living room to work.


Why don’t you just admit it. You need more room in the house. And the last thing you probably want to do is move to a different neighborhood. You don’t need to. Not if you add an extension onto the side of your house. Apart from the hassle of getting planning permission it’s quite a smooth process. As long as you use a reputable company they can have it finished quite quick. It will cost you a bit money, but just imagine all the things you could do with it. Let’s have a look now at a few things you might be interested in.

Have your very own office space

The trouble with working from home is that it’s hard to get anything done if you don’t have your own office. It’s unfortunate if you don’t have any free rooms in the house. You have to work where there will always be people around. Maybe you are scared of leaving stuff on your tiny desk in case someone moves it and you have a heart attack. That all changes when you have somewhere to call your own. You get more done and the business improves drastically. That’s why an extension onto your living room would be great.

Entertaining guests

Everyone loves to entertain guests in their home. It’s a great way to socialize with friends when you become older, because it’s just not the same hitting the bars anymore. You need somewhere to feed people and have a good drink. If you only have a small dining room then it can be a problem. It can get a bit squashed when you try and fit everyone around a small table. If you add an extension onto the dining room that all changes. You finally have somewhere that’s perfect for entertaining and your social life definitely improves.

Keep the kids happy

It is really annoying when you want to relax in the living room and the whole place is a tip because the kids have left their toys lying around. A solution could be adding an extension to the living room to turn into a playroom. Somewhere dedicated to the kids where they can keep all their toys. You will have a lot of space and the living room will be much nicer. You can have a partition so the kids can play in their room and you can play in yours. And they are right next door so it’s always easy to keep an eye on them.

Give your kitchen a Michelin Star

If anyone in the household likes to cook then you would love an extension onto the kitchen. Just imagine all those wonderful appliances you can install. You’d have room for anything you wanted and would have the space to leave it lying out. Turn your kitchen into Starbucks by having an amazing coffee machine. The kind that makes coffee so good you think you’re in heaven. Add a stone baked oven and make better pizzas than Domino’s. The possibilities are endless.

Julia Watson often blogs and provides suggestions on various home improvement techniques. She is the proud owner of lean to conservatories – a firm excelling in providing instant price comparision quotes.

Filed Under: Home Improvement, Renovating Tagged With: den, expand, extension, house, Kitchen, living room, renovate, special room, time

The Ins and Outs of Hiring a Kitchen Designer

by Trish

According to recent trends, more people are deciding to stay in their homes and explore kitchen-remodeling options. Often do-it-yourselfers undertake this project, but many folks are interested in learning about using the services of kitchen designers for professional results.

Scope of the Project

Homeowners that are handy with tools and have the skills and time for remodeling may decide to tackle smaller jobs for themselves. However, if the remodeling job requires major modifications to the kitchen, you may need the services of a professional kitchen designer with the necessary skills.

Large kitchen projects are often benefitted by using designers that know how to utilize every square foot of kitchen space efficiently. Experienced designers specialize in kitchen remodeling and stay current on new trends while offering their experience and services.

Benefits of Hiring Kitchen Designers

Professional kitchen designers are trained and ready to take on the smallest to the most complicated of kitchen remodeling jobs. Often homeowners create a vivid picture of the features they want without understanding the physical space requirements in addition to the plumbing and electrical needs involved in the remodeling process. Kitchen designers take in all aspects of the job.

Kitchen designers can spot problem areas and alert homeowners of new options for resolving problems. They can also discuss improvements and enhancements while recommending energy saving products and desirable kitchen concepts.

The Role of Kitchen Designers

The role of a kitchen designer is to listen to the homeowners wishes for remodeling their kitchen. The designer may discuss specific types of hardware, cabinetry, trendy new flooring, designer stoves, lighting alternatives and other enhancements that could be included in the remodeling job.

After discussing remodeling ideas, the kitchen designer takes detailed measurements and draws up plans. It is common for homeowners and designers to visit showrooms and view catalogs for the final selection of cabinetry, tile, countertops and appliances.

Finalized plans are then submitted for bids to several contractors to perform the work. Some designers may continue to act as a project manager during the installation phase with contractors.

Hiring Designers

Check the qualifications of kitchen designers before hiring. Ask each designer you are considering about his or her experience, education, qualifications and skills.

Ask kitchen designers for references. References from previous customers can offer a wealth of information about the qualifications and services provided by the designer.

When interviewing designers, you should obtain a price quote in addition to an estimate for completing the kitchen design plan.

Before hiring kitchen designers, you should confirm whether they are creating the design plans in addition to overseeing the contractors as well. Some designers take responsibility for designing kitchen plans, while others stay involved through the entire project.

Cost of Designer Services

In some cases, people may shy away from working with kitchen designers fearing the costs associated with their services. However, in reality there are many reputable kitchen designers with affordable prices ranging from five to 10 percent of the total project cost.

Each designer may set his or her own prices accordingly. Some kitchen designers may charge a minimum fee based on the project size or others charge hourly. High-end designers may charge $150/hour and the low-end of the spectrum could be $40 to $50 an hour.

Hiring a talented kitchen designer and paying for services, may far outweigh the costs you incur with poor planning, mistakes and poor quality construction. Save time, money and frustration by consulting with a kitchen designer to receive expert services.

Image by Arizona Prestige, and licensed through Creative Commons.

Bath & Kitchen Studio stocks beautiful vitreous china sinks and other kitchen fixtures at some of the lowest prices you will find anywhere. Visit www.bathandkitchenstudio.com and start saving on your kitchen remodel.

Filed Under: Home Improvement, Kitchen Tagged With: designer, homeowners, job, Kitchen, kitchen designer, project, remodeling, trends

Going Green: Renovations That Won’t Cost the Earth

by Trish

Must it always be a choice between what you want and what’s good for you? Being environmentally-conscious can be hard sometimes, but it doesn’t have to come down to living with a home that is aesthetically shocking. By using sustainable materials and smart energy-saving techniques, you can effectively spruce up your home and lessen the environmental impact it has on the earth.

Outside the Home

The key here is insulation. By properly insulating your house, you can greatly reduce your energy requirements, which helps to save you money as well as reducing your carbon footprint. Obviously the optimum solution is to hire an energy expert when you’re designing your home so you can install the correct level of building shell insulation, but if your property has already been built you can still talk to the experts to find out what can be applied.

There are multitudes of energy-saving options and many of them are also eco-friendly, involving long-wearing or natural materials being installed in your house. Cool roofs, double-glazed windows, and radiant barriers can all reduce solar heat transfer, while double-glazed windows, partitioned rooms and sealed doors will help to keep a house warm in colder climates.

Inside the Home

It’s natural to be a little apprehensive about applying sustainable principles to your home. After all, green is great, but not if the chair collapses underneath you! It might reassure you to know that sustainable materials can be some of the most durable and hard-wearing substances in the world. They’re also much more inclined to feel natural and lend elegance to the room.

One of the quickest ways to change the feel of a room is to change your window dressing. The correct form of blinds or curtains can assist with energy-saving measures, and there’s a large range of colours and materials available so you can brighten even the dullest of rooms.

Great materials to think about include natural wood, bamboo, marble and stone. Your floor and furniture should be the right mix of durable and recyclable and if possible, you should think about purchasing your pieces second-hand. There’s a great community of interior designers out there who love to adapt recycled materials like old tyres and whiskey barrels into quirky furnishings.

You might also consider purchasing modular furniture, that is, furniture which can be transformed by moving parts and used for more than one purpose. There are incredible designs that function as couches, beds, bookshelves, ottomans, tables and more – all with the one set. Purchasing this kind of furniture means you reduce the overall number of pieces you require. Combine this with buying modular furniture made of 100% recycled and recyclable material and you’re onto an eco-friendly winner!

Finally, when you’re thinking about interior accessories, you should consider the fact that these will be discarded more readily and more often than furniture. Invest in one or two pieces made from a strong material like marble or stone, and the rest can be comprised of materials like clay vases, wicker, river rocks and branches. Get creative and lend a touch of the wilderness to your living room!

Kate Lee is a freelance writer who specialises in environmentally-friendly solutions for the home. In her spare time, she writes for Susan-Hopkins.com as well as various renovation websites.

Filed Under: Living Green, Renovating Tagged With: blinds, choice, cost, eco friendly, energy saving, energy savings, environmentally conscious, going green, home, insulation, renovations, sustainable

Top (Smaller) Ways You Can Switch To Alternative Power

by Trish

Switching to an alternative power source is the number one way to reduce your carbon emissions and to help your finances at the same time. This way you will be able to stop relying on energy companies to supply your energy and you’ll thus be able to drastically reduce your energy bills as a result. In a perfect world if you could get all your energy from entirely renewable sources then you would of course be able to completely forget about energy bills and live in a world of free energy.

Unfortunately this isn’t something that most of us will ever be able to experience – we are simply too reliant on large amounts of energy for daily living and we lack the space and funds that would be necessary in order to install roofs full of solar panels.

That said though there are still ways that we can enjoy switching to alternative power sources without spending a fortune or destroying our homes and though some of these require barely any real work on our part or any expense they can still make a difference for the planet while at the same time saving us a lot of money. Here are some suggestions.

Solar Panels

Switching entirely to solar power might be a big undertaking but this doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. Even if you can’t go entirely solar powered, there is no reason you can’t install just a few solar panels on your roof and still cut your emissions in half.

Geothermal Heat Pumps

This takes a lot of work to install in that you need to dig up a large portion of your garden, but it’s still more attainable for many of us that switching completely to solar power. Here you have pipes added underneath your property so that the warmth of the ground around them heats up the water flowing through. This then will be enough to warm a swimming pool for instance, or perhaps even your radiators and so your home without costing you anything each time.

Solar Thermal Panels

Solar panels in the sense that you put on your roof are actually called ‘solar voltaic’ panels. Meanwhile solar thermal panels exist to heat water in a similar way to geothermal pumps just on a smaller scale. For heating a pool or something this is a great option.

Solar Power Lights

While you might not have the funds to install solar panels on your roof, smaller solar panels come in all kinds of household items and appliances. For instance why not switch to solar power calculators rather than using batteries? Or use solar powered garden lights to light up your garden?

Solar Powered Phone Chargers

You might not think that using solar powered lights will make much difference particularly when you could just forego garden lighting altogether. A more effective way you can switch to solar power in this case then is to use it for powering your phone and other devices. Solar powered chargers allow you to do this which means you can take less of a toll on your monthly electricity bill.

Hybrid Cars

If you can’t afford to go full electric or don’t think there’s currently enough of an infrastructure there to warrant the purchase of a Roadster or a S Model, then why not compromise with a hybrid car that will help you to use a lot less fuel without affecting the experience of driving for you.

Thomas Stew often writes informative posts on green living and environment. According to him, solar power is capable enough to overcome the existing energy crises.

Filed Under: Living Green Tagged With: alternative power, bills, carbon emissions, energy, finances, free energy, geothermal heat pumps, heat water, hybrid car, reduce, renewable resources, solar lights, solar panels, solar phone charger, solar thermal panels, switch

Top Ways To Display Your Photographs Around The Home

by Trish

Photographs are some of the most personal items we can use to decorate the home, and are a completely unique decoration that can help to show visitors who we are and what’s important to us as well. No home then is really complete without a few photographs then, but this doesn’t have to mean just putting images into square frames – there are many ways to display photography that are more creative and more interesting and that will provide a more interactive or creative look. Here we will look at some of them.

Frame 16 - Ornate Gold

Creative Photo Frames

Of course manufacturers and designers realise the demand for more creative and interesting photo frames which is why it’s possible to find all kinds of more interesting ways to display your pictures. These include photo frames that allow you to decide images on the sides of a cube (which can then be rotated), that show your images in tiered layers, or that allow the images to hang and sway.

If you want to get really creative with your photo frames, then you can even get more creative still and start making your own. There are a vast number of ways you can do this from working with wood and other materials to carve them into the shapes you need, to using 3D modelling and 3D printing to have complex designs created for you on demand.

80collage

Collages

The only downside of using photo frames is that they aren’t particularly efficient in term of the amount of space they take up and the number of pictures they allow you to display. If you really want to display a large number of pictures then one of the best ways to do so is by creating a collage whereby you can cut out multiple different images and then put them together by tying together a theme or just using a layout that will look great.

Embedding Them in Other Items

You can also use all kinds of other things as photo frames without that being the main purpose. For instance a placemat can easily make a great photo frame as can a coaster – and you can buy ones online that are specifically designed for this purpose. Alternatively clock faces, bottled drinks and even mouse mats can also provide great canvases for your photos.

Fall (painting and poem)

Canvases

If you have a particular image that you are especially proud of and you want to display well, then using canvases and mounting them is a great way to turn your memories into works of art. If you want to really make this look artistic meanwhile, then you can use this strategy with a series of similar side by side images that show movement, or by splitting one image across three or more thin canvases.

Using the Computer

Digital technology also allows for many more ways to display photos in unique and interesting ways. Of course photos make great backgrounds for computers, phones, tablets and other devices, but you can also buy specific digital photo frames that will enable you to have a slideshow of images you like rather than having to choose just one to display. Using the computer it’s also possible to edit your pictures using photo editing software and to this way make them look more stylish and more suited to the room they’re going to be used in.

Matthew Davison is a successful interior decorator who also maintains the website GrantElevators.com.au.

Filed Under: Home Improvement, Photography Tagged With: canvases, collages, computer, cube, digital, display, embedding, home, photo frames, photographys, placemat, unique

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