Basic Tips When Choosing Hardwood Flooring
Timeless beauty, clean lines, strength and durability as well as the ease of cleaning and the classic look make hardwood flooring the perfect choice for your home.
No matter what your personal style is, there is a flooring choice for you because of the unlimited selection available. But before you rush out shopping for your hardwood flooring, keep these tips in mind.
Set a budget for yourself. Having a wide variety of flooring to choose from is great, but the downside is that it is easy to get overwhelmed quickly, and this makes you very susceptible to overspending. Remember to balance style with quality with your budget when you make your final choice.
Tip #1
You will be wise to match the room with your choice of flooring, whether hardwood or otherwise. For example, do not try to put hardwood flooring in a bathroom, due to the high levels of moisture a bathroom receives.
Tip #2
Different areas of the house demand different types of wood. For example, wood floors that have very light or very dark finishes typically do not fare well in the kitchen.
Tip #3
Choose a hardwood flooring that has an appropriate finish to match your lifestyle. A sitting room that is seldom used will let you get away with a lighter finish. However a hallway or living room will get continual traffic and requires a choice that offers a tougher finish that can stand up to a lot of wear and tear.
Tip #4
Consider installation – doing it yourself or having a professional installer do it for you? Many people successfully install their own flooring, but only after they have done their homework. It is often easer to hire a professional, but do you due diligence when selecting a hardwood flooring installer. You will want to be absolutely sure that it will be installed correctly.
Tip #5
Choosing the color and style of the floor can be the fun part. Choose a hardwood that fits your personal taste and your lifestyle. The comparatively high cost of the flooring and installation demands choosing a wood that will not go out of style quickly.
The Best Tips for Fireplace Efficiency
The fireplace has long been the favorite spot to gather in the American home. A place for warmth, the fireplace adds ambience, sparking memories that are to be treasured. With all the benefits that a fireplace can bring, there are some major downsides that if not addressed can cause a love for the fireplace to wane.
With soaring energy costs, the chief negative of having a fireplace has to be its inefficiency. When there is a fire burning, the fireplace does indeed radiate warmth in its general vicinity, but it also creates a convection current that can actually pull conditioned air out of the room and up the chimney causing your furnace to work overtime. When the fire is not burning, the fireplace has a damper which is supposed to block inside air from escaping and outside air from invading. The problem is that the damper is usually made of metal (this type of damper technology hasn’t changed in over 100 years!) and has no seal, which means that the damper is incredibly inefficient.
Your home has a dirty little secret – the fireplace that is designed to warm your house is actually doing the opposite and costing you hundreds of dollars in energy costs. Don’t fret – with a little investment of time and money, you can turn that inefficient fireplace into a powerhouse heater that will reduce your energy bills and add even more charm to your existing fireplace.
The following is a list of 4 things that you can do yourself to drastically reduce the heating costs associated with the inefficiency of your fireplace.
- Top Sealing Dampers replace the fireplace throat damper and are installed at the top of the chimney. The top sealing damper has a seal that acts like a storm door keeping the expensive conditioned air inside the house and the outside air – outside. This principle works year round, whether you’re heating or cooling your house. This product can be purchased online and is easily installed by either a homeowner or a handyman.
- fireback is a cast iron plate that is placed at the back of your fireplace. Its purpose is to protect the back wall from fire damage and it usually features a design that adds to the homes decor. The fireback improves the fireplaces efficiency by absorbing the heat from the fire and radiating the heat back into the room.
- A Fireplace Heater pulls fresh air from the room, circulates it through a chamber that is heated by the fire and then blows the heated air back into the room. These heaters are closed systems so no smoke from the fireplace is invading the home. Depending on which kind you purchase, these heaters can make a significant difference in your homes temperature, even heating a full room on its own. Specific fireplace heaters can be installed with fireplace glass doors which will kick your cost savings up another notch.
- Fireplace Glass Doors will likely carry the largest investment, but you can reduce some of that cost by doing some of the work yourself. There are a number of fireplace doors that can be purchased online and come with easy to install instructions. The fireplace glass door creates a barrier between the living space and the chimney, thus reducing the area that your furnace will have to heat. This alone is a good reason to install these doors, but it’s not the only reason. Fireplace glass doors offer another level of safety for the home by protecting children and pets from the fire. If you have a wood burning fireplace you will want to purchase the screen mesh that is designed to go with the fireplace glass doors. This will allow you to have the doors open while the fire is burning and still have your home protected from sparks and embers. Fireplace glass doors are now being manufactured with modern designs and really add beauty and charm to the fireplace.
If you’re handy, all of these suggestions are easy to accomplish. In addition, all of the products, while difficult to find locally, can easily be purchased online. If you’re concerned about high energy costs but you want to keep your fireplace, then it’s time to plug up the holes in your monthly energy budget by plugging up the holes in your fireplace.
The Best Bathrooms Design
If you decided to start renovation of your bathroom, naturally there is a question, how to choose the modern and comfortable design of a room. Usually such plans include the selection of general style, articles of interior of bathrooms, as well as finishing materials and lighting devices. In addition, you can plan the process of heating and water-supply systems mounting. Planning of a room is always carried out in accordance with the customer’s desire.
Speaking about the design of a bathroom, it is impossible to forget such important detail as furniture. Now most often the interior of bathrooms includes the following objects: cupboards-columns, special dressers, cupboards with a bar and wall cupboards. There are also plenty of furniture sets where cupboards are combined with mirrors. You can often find such names in price-lists as a mirror with a cupboard, a mirror cupboard, a mirror with two cupboards and a mirror shelf. It is ideal for small space. MDF is considered to be the best material for furniture in a bathroom. It is specially developed for over damped rooms.
As for a bath, it is possible to do with a classic one, or to choose a corner one, or even to substitute a usual “bed” by a shower cabin. Anyway, usually the selection of bathroom interior depends on customer’s financial situation or size of a room.
Nowadays the most fashionable bathroom finishing styles are considered to be classical, country, retro and ethnic ones. You would better leave bathroom renovation and selection of basic “architectural style” to the specialists from designer studios. Here we give only general recommendations.
Brutalism includes the use of one-color black, white or grey tiles. In this case the furniture should be massive, with sharp forms, purposefully creating the feeling of rudeness. Horizontal lines from a natural stone prevail in classical style furniture. Their color and picture should harmonize with tiles as much as possible. The use of marble table tops combined with light furniture tones is considered to be the most popular in large rooms.
Country style helps to rest and relax better. It includes the use of woven furniture from moisture proof materials, and the color of tiles is usually different tints of green or with a decorative pattern in the form of branches and leaves. The woven furniture set and green walls imitate an arbor and summer park round it. Light brown tiles and furniture from a dark tree with the elements of screw-thread are considered to be characteristic features of retro style. A mirror in a simple wooden frame also helps to create the atmosphere of old times.
Ethnic style gives excellent chance to wake up your fantasy. It will help you to imagine yourself on a rocky island visiting mysterious native people. Tree and natural stone are basic materials at room finishing. They are usually rudely trimmed, to give an impression of wild tribe art work. The color of tree and stone is usually natural, preferably of dark saturated tints of brown and grey.
We will say in conclusion, that although a bathroom design is in a great deal a business of the specialists, a customer should not stay away from this process. In fact it is exactly his task to choose the range of colours of a room, the desired units of furniture and sanitary equipment.
Popular Kitchen Designs
If you are looking to install a new kitchen into your home then you will find that there is a bewildering choice of free kitchen design ideas you could choose from to feed your own design plans. Together with the bathroom the kitchen is the most important room in the house to get right in design terms. Aside from the hall the kitchen receives the highest amount of foot traffic in the home.
Most people spend a lot of time in the kitchen, especially families and if something is not right it will bug you every time you look at it. I recommend you spend considerable time looking for free kitchen design ideas before you approach a kitchen design store. That way you will have a much more focused idea of what you are looking for and are more likely to encourage the salesperson to offer you a special deal. They will see you as a serious prospect who has spent time creating a strong vision and knows what they require.
Design ideas can be found in many places such as house and home magazines, kitchen showrooms, diy stores, kitchen web sites and friends’ houses. You should be able to formulate at least two or three design ideas using these methods. In the meantime here is a list of 5 popular kitchen styles that you can investigate to get you started:
Country Style: This style is also called early american or colonial and creates a lovely quaint farm kitchen look. Typically the kitchen will feature open shelves, pot racks and a general feeling of being well lived in, accented by the various color schemes of the cabinetry.
Contemporary: This style has clean and simple lines. Cabinets are usually futuristic in look with no carvings or particularly ornate features. The emphasis is on style and practical sophistication.
Shaker: This is a simple and utilitarian style that features flat panel doors, wooden countertops and brass hardware.
French Country: These are warm inviting kitchens full of wood and soft colors. Natural materials feature strongly as do large furniture pieces with ornate carvings.
Arts and Crafts: This is becoming a popular style and features glass doors and natural wood tones that are finished in a matte sheen. This style can be very artistic.
Finally, take into account the themes you have used in other rooms to ensure that the kitchen design you finally choose fits well into your overall scheme. I hope that our free kitchen design ideas help you to get a good start in your project.
How To Complete a Successful Ceramic Tile Installation
If laying ceramic tiles is totally new to you, “5 Steps to complete a successful ceramic tile installation” is a set of basic but important tips that you will help you avoid making costly mistakes on your next bathroom or ceramic tile installation.
- Plan which Tile
- Shop around if you want to save
- Prepare the surface for a long lasting job
- Lay the tiles
- Finishing touches
Plan which Tile
This step is often underestimated and sometimes even forgotten (can you believe it?). Planning your ceramic tile installation from A to Z is probably one of the most important steps for a smooth, easy going and problem free bathroom tile installation.
Some things to take in account are;
- Suitability of the tile
- Pattern /colour of the tile
- Size of the tile
- Size of the area to be tiled. (This is important data that will be vital to know how much tile, grout, etc, you have to buy)
- Adhesive, mortar or grout to suit your needs
Not all ceramic tile installations are the same, different tiling installations may require different mortar or grout. DO NOT feel shy about asking the suppliers for advice or help in calculating how much you need. They will gladly help you, as they are likely to make a sale.
Shop around if you want to save
This isn’t as difficult as the first step, however when the budget is tight it can be tricky to find the right tile for the ceramic tile installation you want. You are going to have to make some compromises and so don’t get carried away by the beauty of some of the ceramic tiles. Prices can vary a lot between different tiles, so some end up rather expensive for only a few square metres.
Always shop around, it has never been easier. Just sit in front of the computer and use the Internet. Use local directories to find the suppliers close to you and pay them a visit.
Before making your final decision always check the chosen tile under different lights as the results can be surprisingly different.
Prepare the surface for a long lasting job before laying the ceramic tiles
The surface to be tiled (floor, wall or any other) will often need to be prepared, this can include work like filling, levelling, smoothing, priming and sometimes water proofing.
The right preparation will be directly affect the lifespan of the ceramic tile installation. Unless you want to be tiling again soon, you want to get this right from the start.
This is probably the most important point to ensure a long lasting tiling job. Don’t rush it.
Laying the ceramic tiles safely
The technique of laying ceramic tiles is not especially difficult. It only takes a little bit of practice before anyone can easily master it. Clearing the room to be tiled before starting will help you to do the job safer and easier. Don’t forget to wear your safety goggles when cutting or chipping tiles.
Laying ceramic tiles can also be a bit messy, if you don’t want dust all over the house we suggest sealing the room you want to tile whenever possible. A large piece of plastic tacked to the door frame will do the job quite well.
Try not to allow any adhesive to get on your skin and never forget to read the manufacturers directions before even opening the tin. If some ends up on you, just clean it with water as soon as possible. Even though tile adhesives aren’t usually abrasive, if you leave it for some time it may cause an allergic reaction. Use a spirit level to help you with the depth & level of the tiles and spacers to maintain an even distance between them.
The finishing touches
Once the tile adhesive or mortar has cured (dried) and the tiles are firm and even, you can start with the finishing touches. You’ll have to fill the spaces between tiles with grout making sure you don’t leave any gaps as these cause damp problems, in a shower for example. The technique is very simple, use a rubber faced trowel to spread the grout and a cotton cloth to clean the excess grout from the tiles afterwards.
There are many different types of grouts; you’ll have to choose the right one depending on the surface and chosen tile.
Now that you have your ceramic tiles laid down, you only need to take care of them, usually manufacturers provide information on taking care of their tiles and only minimal effort is required. Most household cleaning products will do the job well, if some particular stain is stubborn, there are many commercial stain removers, just make sure you use the right product for the right tile. You are now closer to discovering how satisfying it can be handling a tile installation yourself; just follow these 5 steps to get the best result.
