Tag: home improvement

Little Kitchen Design Tricks That Increase Your Home Value

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

If there is one room you should improve it’s the kitchen, now being called the heart of the home. But you don’t want to spend a fortune designing your entire kitchen just to sell it on again, and understandably. Why not give it a low-cost make-over, creating a new feel and look without having the builders move in on you for months.

Let There Be Light

And I don’t just mean electric ones. If your windows are old-fashioned and the glass sits stained within a shabby frame, replace them with brand new ones that give the room all the light it can take, without having to knock down the walls. New lights can also transform your kitchen, if they’re old-fashioned or class terribly with the room, but this isn’t always necessary.

Go Green

It’s hard to get away from the green trend, with everything eco-friendly and organic these days. But somehow the kitchen accommodates the great outdoors perfectly, whatever your home’s style, and a larger standing plant or simply a smaller vase or two of greenery will give your kitchen that fresh modern feel.

Image by home space

Paint the Town

…Or just your kitchen. Slap on a light colour like a light cream to make it feel more roomy and light. Don’t be afraid of bright colours though, they’re one of the big kitchen design trends at the moment, but if you do stick to one smaller wall, or your smaller appliances like a stylish red kettle and keep it simple. If the colour you set your heart on unfortunately doesn’t match the cupboards, don’t shy away from painting those too and giving them a good thorough clean. They’ll look like new.

Get Coordinated

Making your kitchen match consistently throughout the space can come down to making sure all the appliances coordinate. If your oven and fridge are sleek stainless steel and your microwave and dishwasher are a tacky white plastic, swap them. They’re not always hugely pricy to replace and can be installed for you to save you the hassle, but it’ll bring the room together nicely.

Stay Seated

With the kitchen becoming a social hub and the room everyone gravitates to at gatherings, lots of seating is crucial. Whether that be a nicely co-ordinated sofa to make the room more social, or bar stools if your kitchen is smaller, seating adds a relaxing element to the room, giving buyers the ability to picture themselves using it in a variety of ways.

Free the Floor

The rustic, retro look has made a triumphant yet comforting come-back in the designer home, and with that come the floorboards. You may associate floor boards with dust, bugs and the endless splinters as time goes on, but a coat of varnish or some new planks will change that perception and give the house a stylishly vintage feel.

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A Guide to Loft Insulation

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Getting your loft insulated is one of the best measures you can take to safeguard your home against energy inefficiency. But, it can be confusing deciding what type of insulation to go for and understanding the benefits to your home. For a guide to what loft insulation entails, read on.

Why get loft insulation?

Loft insulation will cost you money, but it’s worth the investment, and after a number of years you end up recouping the money spent with the savings you made. How does it work?  Basically, loft insulation stops heat from escaping out of your roof. During wintertime, when you need the heat most, a loft that hasn’t been insulated can lose up to a quarter of its heat from the roof. By getting your loft insulated, it will have a positive impact on your energy bills, and the environment. You could save over 700g of carbon dioxide annually from getting your loft insulated.

In the summer, when you don’t want the heat entering your home, the insulation acts like a barrier trapping the sun’s energy from coming through the roof, thus keeping your home nice and cool – just when you want it most.

Once you’ve got your loft insulated, it should last you around 40 years, so the inconvenience of installation is nothing compared to how long you’ll benefit for.

Types of insulation

There are different types of insulation, so you’ll need to choose the type that works best for your home and is within your budget. You can either get bulk insulation, which contain fibres that trap small pockets of air, such as glasswool or rockwool. You could also choose reflective insulation, which reduces infrared radiant heat transfer from a hot surface to a cooler one, and includes foil products. Or, you could choose composite materials, which are a combination of bulk and reflective.

The type of roof you have, and who is going to install it, are often deciding factors when it comes to choosing insulation.

The process of insulating your loft

A straightforward, easy-to-access loft, with regular joists and free from condensation issues is easy to insulate, and can even be done as your own DIY project, which will save further costs. Rolls of mineral wool can easily be laid between the joists, then at right angles covering the joists so it meets the required depth.

Some people who use their loft as living space decide to insulate the loft roof instead of the floor by fixing insulation boards between the roof rafters.

Lofts that are hard to access are more likely to need the expertise of a professional. In this instance, specialist equipment is used to blow the insulation material into the loft.

If you have a flat roof, then insulation is normally added to the top of the roof’s weatherproof layer. Again, this is normally a job for a professional.

Any pipes or water tanks will also need insulating so that they don’t freeze up. Don’t forget about the hatch as well.

Value

Not only will adding or improving your loft insulation decrease your energy bills and contribute to helping the environment, it will also increase the value of your home. Any measures that are taken to increase the green factor of a home are appealing additions that buyers will appreciate. These could be the selling points that make your home stand out over another.

 

 

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Sometimes We All Need A ‘New’ Home: Updating Your Living Space

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Having a beautifully decorated home that is not only a representation of our likes, memories, and dreams is comforting. It’s one of the best ways to express who we are and where we’ve been. While the environment created in a business is commonly thought to be much more important than the inside of a home, guidelines can be used interchangeably. Your workspace can directly interfere with the atmosphere of your home and vice versa.

Create a New or Updated Fervor

Trying to show your guests what you care about most? Does it not feel like your current setup at home is showing off what you like, what you enjoy, what you’re proud of? If this sounds like the case then it may be time to make some changes. Walk into each area as though you are an impartial party (or have someone else do this for you). What things do you notice first? What do you feel when you view each room? How is the comfort? Is there enough seating? Be completely honest with yourself and take notes if you need to. This will definitely help you figure out where you could use a bit of work. Jumping into the project blind isn’t going to get you very far. If you want your entire home to express what you want it to, this is one of the best ways to go about accomplishing that.

Take a Close Look at Room Functionality

An area can be beautifully decorated and ‘perfect’ in your eyes, but without the right amount of functionality in the mix, the room can end up feeling like a complete disaster. Don’t worry if your room isn’t feeling right because anything is fixable. Figure out which things bug you the most and what items are in a place that you would like to keep. Draw various plans out on graph paper if need be in order to figure out exactly where you need a bit more walking room, a light so you can read more comfortably at night or that new television you’ve been trying to find space for.

Ever been in someone else’s kitchen for the first time and tried to help them with dishes? While it may not be the most stress-evoking situation, it isn’t the easiest thing to get done, either. Without proper functionality and organization, these types of things are common. It’s going to take you much longer to get the things done that you need to on a daily basis. The more ‘together’ a room is, the easier life is going to be. A clean and easy-to-use space means much more productivity. When there is a flow to each room of your home, getting what you need done is going to be a breeze.

Don’t Forget About Electronics

While making sure the colors of your room are just right, the placement of certain objects, decorations and so forth, if your computer is a mess, this could cause problems in other aspects of your life. Let’s say, for example, that you work from home. If everything in your life is set up just the way you envision it, but your computer files, documents, photos, and spreadsheets are complicated and confusing to you then this may be something to change, as well. Something as simple as a calming wallpaper that gets you in your ‘work mode’ or having your most important folders ‘pinned’ to your taskbar can make a huge impact. Time is money and our time is also priceless. The less time you spend trying to find things, the more relaxed you’ll be and more free time you are going to have for your family, your friends and your favorite activities.

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6 Tech Gadgets to Liven Up Your Bathroom

Posted on by Jenny Zamora
high tech bathroom

When all’s said and done, the bathroom isn’t the most exciting room of the house to be in. Once you’ve performed your daily ablutions there’s little reason to make return visits – or is there?

This is the 21st century, the age of technology, gadgets and gizmos, after all. Nothing and nobody is safe from a techy makeover, and that includes the bathroom.

So while you’ve got the latest apps on your phone and the largest plasma TV screen mounted on your living room wall, now you can marvel and delight in the cornucopia of practical gadgets, and items those boffins have wracked their brains to come up with to make your visit to the bathroom a more up-to-date and fun one.

Here are six innovative extras that would sit quite nicely alongside your bath mats and wall lighting…

TV Mirror

From Eastenders to X Factor there’s no denying  we’re a nation of tele addicts, so for those who find it difficult to drag themselves away from the gogglebox, the Eclipse TV Monitor could be answer to all your terrestrial dreams.

It embeds an LCD TV behind a two-way bathroom mirror so you can relax in the tub with your favourite show. When the TV is off you can’t see it at all, leaving you go about your merry way shaving or brushing your teeth without the mortifying early morning horror of Daybreak’s Aled Jones gurning at you.

high tech shower

Techie Taps

Turning the tap on isn’t the most arduous of tasks, but for the more indolent bathroom users there’s the ‘intelligent tap’, which uses facial recognition to adjust the flow and heat of the water as necessary.  It also has a touchscreen so you can access your emails.

Top Teeth

When it comes to your daily bathroom ablutions, oral hygiene is top of the list, so next time you want to add some sparkle and shine to those molars you might want to reach for the Oral B Professional Care Smart Series 5000. It has a smart guide that contains an itinerary for brushing times and pressure, as well as a few gnasher-based top tips.

Apps The Way To Do It

For those techies who truly are inseparable from their iPod and the glories of its multifaceted applications, how about the Stocco Matre touchscreen mirror? It has a specially designed, integrated touch panel that lets you access your music and any other features you want.

Handily for a bathroom accessory, it also has a built-in barometer, lighting controls, and, if things are getting a little too steamy in there, a mirror de-fogger.

TV in bathroom

Down The Pan

Whether it’s a number one or number two, some of us are still embarrassed by Mother Nature’s inevitable sounds from a bladder release or bowel transit. Step forward the iPhone Eco-Oto app which plays the inimitable gurgles of a flushing toilet from 30 to 120 seconds!

Head Lights

Create your own multi-coloured illuminations with a shower head fitted with colour-changing LED lights that tell you the water temperature – green for cold, blue for warm, and red for hot. And once the water’s to a temperature of your liking you can adjust the colour to suit your mood (if there’s such a thing as a green, blue or red mood, that is). An ingenious use of bathroom lighting if ever there was one.

I’m sure if you had any of these accessories in your bathroom you’d have to be dragged kicking and screaming from your early morning preparations!

Have you got any ingenious techie gadgets in your bathroom?

Estelle Page is an interior designer who is always looking for ways to combine inventiveness and practicality!

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Nocturnal Sky in Your Bedroom: Solutions from $2 to $300

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

night sky

Falling asleep under a star-filled sky is no longer an exclusivity reserved for those warm midsummer nights, when so many of us like to stay awake deep into the night to lie at the back of our garden and stargaze.

With technologies (and this interior design trend) advancing, you can easily replicate whole galaxies in your bedroom at a price that suits your wallet, ranging from just a couple of bucks to several hundreds for a more deluxe effect. Here are the five most common choices:

 

1) Glow-in-the-Dark Stars (from $2)

If you’re looking for the cheapest and least painful of solutions (especially if you aren’t sure if you want to commit to staring into the Galaxy for the rest of your days), phosphorescent wall decals of stars, planets, saucers and crescent moons are probably your best bet.

Easily applicable and removable, they come as stickers or plastic glow-in-the-dark shapes with sticky pads. They vary in style and colour and will have zero effect on your energy bill. You won’t have to worry about switching the lights off either – kids love them, especially those who can’t sleep without a nightlight!

 

2) Glow-in-the-Dark Ceiling Paint (from $3)

If you find glow-in-the-dark stickers too childish for your age but you’re quite confident about your artistic abilities, you may as well make a custom pattern for your bedroom’s nocturnal sky with glow-in-the-dark ceiling paint.

It’s used just like normal acrylic, although spray paint is also available for those who prefer stencilling to replicate the whole universe right above your bed.

 

3) Hire an Artist (variable)

Believe it or not, because nocturnal sky replicas are so much in demand these days there are a bunch of artists making their living painting galaxy murals on people’s bedrooms ceilings! They use glow in the dark paint too, but if you art skills aren’t all that it might be worth paying out for someone else to do the work for you.

 

4) Night Sky Projectors ($10 to over $100)

Night sky projectors are also quite varied in price, depending on how realistic you want the whole stargazing experience to be. While the cheapest options come in the tackiest pinks and neon greens, if you’re happy to invest a little more you may as well find a projector that matches your chrome wall lights, too.

Besides being prettier to look at, the more advanced ones offer a number of exciting features, such as several speed settings, shooting star functions, changeable slides and even Northern and Southern hemisphere perspectives. Some of them can even be programmed to switch themselves off, making sure no energy is wasted after you’ve finally drifted off to sleep.

 

5) Fibre Optics Star Ceiling Kits (From $300)

The most expensive yet probably the most aesthetically pleasing, optical fibre is a great way to bring the night sky into your bedroom. Slightly thicker than a human hair, the fibres concentrate the light into tiny spots at the end of each strand, giving the “stars” more of a natural twinkle and glow.

Using fibre with bare ends will make the stars appear sharper and brighter; however, the light they emit can also be diffused through lenses, giving a larger star effect.

As they’re becoming increasingly popular, sets of these are widely available online, however they do also require a lot of DIY and you have to have access to space above the ceiling. A popular complement to these is National Geographic’s “Moon in My Room” – a 3D model of the Moon, designed to be mounted on a bedroom wall. It can be switched between the twelve phases for a truly realistic night sky!

Would you ever install any of these in your bedroom?

Estelle Page is a blogger and an interior designer who decided not all presents should go under a tree, and surprised her younger offspring this Christmas with a newly refurbished bedroom – complete with indoor night sky! 

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