Home Design: February 2014

Home Improvement Magazines - Exciting Source Of Decorating Ideas

Everywhere you look, in every single grocery stores with magazines and in every news agents stand, there are many home improvement magazines.

The magazines are available for many projects and to give many ideas to those who are thinking about doing something more to their home. Those magazines are used as a guidance to get the most out of a person's budget among other factors that need to come into consideration while redecorating your home or improving it.

Home improvement magazines are not only filled with outstanding ideas for redecorating and restyling of the home but showcase wonderful products and stores that have the kinds of things a person is interested in redecorating in. These items can be a bit pricey but well worth taking a look at.

When people redecorate or improve on their home, they are doing it because they want a home they love to live in. They see their home as a special dwelling that needs to be shared with the world. No doubt, home improvement makes all this happen, easily and affordably.

How do you choose a home improvement magazine? The best way to do is to find one that is of your taste. Should you be the arts and crafts type, choose a magazine that has helpful tips that can encourage and build upon your ideas for the home improvement. For females, there are more feminine magazines like home styling.

These give plenty of ideas and have designs that are on the cutting edge which can make your neighbors jealous by having the prettiest house on the block. You can take the time to spice up your home, being the envy of friends and neighbors.

When you settle on a magazine, be sure to flip through it to be sure it has the style you want. Of course, you can buy several magazines and get many ideas, then mix them together and find one that works for your home, causing it to stand out for the better in your neighborhood.

There are many ways to get home improvement and decoration ideas. Using magazines that offer a pictorial view can help you settle on what you do like and what you don't.

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7 Questions to Ask an Interior Designer Before Hiring Them

Before you hire an interior designer to help decorate or redesign a room in your home it is important that you know something about the person who is providing you their professional advice. Do you like their style? Do they listen to your design ideas as well? Do they have experience with a portfolio of past jobs that you can look at and study? There are several questions you can ask a professional designer but following are 7 of the most important questions or things to know before hiring an interior designer for your next project.

1. In today's digital world, there's a never-ending supply of before and after photos. Ask to view their web site before you meet.

2. While a designer should be able to create the home you're dreaming of, some designers specialize in certain design styles. Ask what their favorite design style is and make sure your tastes are compatible.

3. Referrals, referrals, referrals! Talk to clients who've actually worked with the designer. Rather than just making a phone call, ask if you can see the client's home with or without the designer. Most happy clients would gladly show you their successful project. If visiting in person isn't an option, at least ask the client about their overall job satisfaction. Would they use the designer again? What did they like most and least about working with the designer?

4. If you can't tour a client's home, the designer's home is the next best thing. If a tour cannot be provided ask them to look at their portfolio of work either online or a physical book of images.

5. Ask the designer how they charge for their services. Many designers charge a percentage of the total costs. Given supplier discounts to the trade, the discounts usually pay the client back for all and often more than the designer's fee, saving the client money.

6. Time line. Get an idea about when the work would begin and be completed by. Make sure that goals and budget are clearly defined.

7. Are you compatible with the designer? This is a person you'll spend a fair amount of time with. While they don't have to become your best friend, it's important that you consider this person to be a good listener, reliable, knowledgeable and professional.

If the interior designer you are considering hiring meets all your requirements then you have a good match. Keeping this list of questions handy will be helpful in your search and may even save you money by hiring the right designer for the job.

A Few Home Improvement Ideas to Increase Your Home's Value

Would you like to increase the market value of your home? A few home improvement projects will offer a return when you sell your home, but many home improvement projects will not provide much of a return on your home improvement investment. Pick your home improvement projects wisely and if you do take out a loan to complete your project, do your homework first and be sure that you have a good chance to recover the cost of the project when you decide to sell your home.

Kitchen remodeling is a great way to add value to your home. Upgrading your appliances, replacing door and cabinet handles and painting walls can add new life to your kitchen plus add value to your home. Kitchens sell a home, so remodeling a kitchen should be a first choice for a home improvement project. Sometimes doing it yourself can save money, but consider hiring a professional for the large jobs. The top five kitchen remodeling projects which are recommended by Realtors are painting, cabinet refacing, new counter tops, new floors and a modern cook top range.

A bathroom remodel is second only to kitchen remodeling in terms of getting the most return on your home improvement investment. A bathroom remodel can often mean making the most of your current space, by upgrading fixtures, flooring and lighting. A few inexpensive ways to make your existing bathroom more beautiful and appealing include upgrading your cabinets, counter tops, sinks, tile or your tub and shower. However, if you do decide to add a new bathroom, it is going to increase the value of your home.

Kitchens and bathroom remodeling are both excellent choices when you want to increase the value of your home. Kitchen and bathroom remodeling projects are the best at recouping their cost and adding to the resale value of your house. The average return on a bathroom or kitchen remodel is 100-105%.

Increasing the curb appeal of your home is one of the simplest and inexpensive ways to increase the value of your home. Applying a fresh coat of paint can make the inside of your home appear more appealing to potential buyers, which could mean a quicker sale. Neutral colors are a good choice when you are preparing your house to sell. Neutral colors will blend in good with a variety of other colors and can make a room look more open and appear larger.

Your roof is one of the first impressions people have of a home. With proper maintenance, a high quality roof should last a very long time. A new roof won't add a lot of value to your home, but it will help prevent the types of repairs that can result from water leaking in from your roof.

If your carpeting or vinyl flooring is beginning to show signs of wear this can adversely affect the appearance of the whole room and detract from the value. So replace the carpeting in rooms where the wear is severe to help increase your homes value. Often, a good carpet cleaning is all that is needed.

Naturally, you can only make the home improvements that your budget will allow. But many of these suggestions that I have discussed are not very expensive . All of them however will enhance the appearance and add value to most homes.

Remember that with any home improvement project moderation is the key. Don't go overboard. Focus on improving two or three areas in your home which need the most work.

Tips For Cherishing Interior Designs For Your Baby

The new arrival of a baby brings a thankfulness time and joy into the lives of the parents. It also pops you with a question in your mind that where would the baby be? Once you decide on the place the next point to be considered would be furniture and color scheme. Some important points do need to be kept in mind before you start making all your choices for the newly arrived ones bedroom.

To start off, baby's gender does have an influence on the scheme of the color to be used in the room and this can't be determined straight away and hence neutral colors should be applied or the purchasing the items for painting the walls should further be prolonged. Don't wait too long if you intend to have the room painted. Ensure that you have the toxic fumes out of the room before bringing the baby home and start using the nursery. One of the important elements to be considered while planning the interiors for nurseries would be their safety. Remember this whenever you plan to make any choice concerned with your design.

For these newly born ones, the classic approach of pink for the girls and for the boys to be blue is not the current trend in the interior designing these days. Pink is always related with girls and blue with boys however, strictly following these is no longer mandatory. A suggestive mixture of these colors is the fundamental for designs that are contemporary. There is no cause for us to confine the different colors used in the nursery colors scheme to be based on the traditional ones. Having an exposure to the color in a nursery would the baby's first experience with the environment and it is also been confirmed that this helps in the development of the baby by the scientists and doctors.

One of well-known and still popular interior designs for the newly born nurseries would be the method of stenciling. Many of the nearby craft stores would have the stencils designs of different sizes that you can use to create a mid-level or a ceiling-level borders around the nursery of the baby. If you are more enthusiastic about this then, you can definitely look out for more complex design themes for the nursery by purchasing them from the stores or online but, this would need more time and the end-result would be very astonishingly impressive. If you have time for more work, then have your own patterns on the stencils by sketching these first on the mat board and then scissoring these with a knife.

After deciding upon the walls, the next point of interest would be the furniture to be moved into the room. Don't use heirloom furniture if you already have for the baby's nursery. Use this only for the purpose of display and buy a new one. This is for two reasons, baby furniture manufactured before 60's wasn't adhering to the safety regulations. The philosophy of not getting the similar make would hold good for cars and not the same with the baby furniture. Even the furniture being good, there are high chances for it break or get damaged while using it. The best solution in this case would be to have these passed on to your child and have a completely new set of furniture for nurseries interior design.

After the major decisions pertaining to the furniture are made that would satisfy to the new born baby's needs, do remember to have enough space in the room for the parents to sit on sleepless nights. Don't try buying a new traditional and not practical item for the nursery but consider the different options of having the hard wooden, long backed rocker. Another alternative choice would be big and comfortable recliner. You would definitely appreciate this when you getup at early hours in the morning and see how do you feel after a sleep in the rocker.

Items can surely make the nursery's interior design come along in a usable and wonderful way. Don't go with the visual feature of the item for a nursery prior to considering its usefulness. You would very soon appreciate the practical items like changing tables, diaper holdings than the stuffed or ceramic tiles. Stuffed animals do bring another point of consideration which is safety. Make sure not to buy items that have small pieces or parts and on which a baby can easily choke on.

After having all the usable and necessary things bought for the baby's room, next to plan is to invest on decorative items that can be treasured in the future. After all, all this would be cherished and remembered or the rest of your life.

Home Improvement On A Budget

Home improvement projects do not have to be taxing on the wallet. The key to approaching home improvement from a money saving standpoint is to take your time and do the majority of the work yourself. If you're looking for a way to spruce up your home without draining your bank, here are some great suggestions.

Take classes to learn tips and tricks for home improvement that you can do yourself. Many home improvement stores routinely offer classes that break down the steps in an easy manner than can quickly be learned by the most novice of weekend warriors. The classes are focused on teaching you how to do many projects yourself and show you just how simple it is to do the many basics of home improvement.

Do the work yourself. One of the biggest expenses in any home improvement project is wages. So instead of hiring an outside company to complete the easier tasks, do as much of the work as possible yourself. You will be surprised how much of your home improvement budget will be saved with a little elbow grease.

Enlist the help of family and friends. Let them know that you really need their help for a limited amount of time. You'll be amazed at how many people will help you if you take the time to explain why you need the help. They might think that there's nothing they can do to help you, but having an extra hand to move furniture, or fix holes in the wall before you paint, can make all the difference in the world. Let them know that even small things are helpful.

Know when a project is too big for you. If you want to tile your kitchen floor, include how much it will cost you to buy and rent the necessary supplies before you begin your project. If you can do it without renting expensive equipment, the cost will stay within your home improvement budget. If you need to rent a tile cutter for a few weeks, it may be cheaper to hire someone else to do the work for you.

When trying to complete home improvement projects on a budget, money matters. Save money by learning how to complete the basic steps yourself, ask for help when you need it and hire an outside contractor when the overhead costs are just not within the home improvement budget.

Great Ideas For Urban Apartment Interior Design

Interior decorating has often been a tricky subject for renters. How much effort does one want to go through to improve a space that one doesn't actually own? Luckily, most interior decorating concerns non-structural work that focuses on color and furniture layout. Still, renter decorators tend to seek quicker, cheaper solutions to their decoration challenges than their home owner counterparts. In big cities where rents are high and space is at a premium, this difference is even more pronounced. In fact, the hipper the neighborhood, the more creative you have to be.

Get it off the ground:

It's an unforgiving rule of nature: the more fashionable the neighborhood, the higher the rent and the smaller the space. If you were to put the furniture from a one bedroom apartment from Des Moines Iowa into a one bedroom apartment in the West Village, chances are you wouldn't be able to take a step without bumping into something. New city arrivals quickly learn to mount bookshelves on the wall whenever possible and minimize the amount of four legged furniture items that take up precious floor space. Urban furniture stores address this with décor designed for this purpose. Even if you can't afford a swanky thin, modular bookshelf, they are fairly easy to build on your own. One friend of mine faced with budget and space restrictions came up with the imaginative idea of building bookshelves that hang on a series of 30 degree angles; creating a zig zag effect that made me wonder why it had never been done before, as they say "Necessity is the mother of invention". Even beds can be wall mounted, designed to swing down from the wall when needed. The classic Murphy bed is a good example.

Using Mirrors:

Many small restaurants employ the technique of using mirrors to make their space appear larger. Mirrors reflect light and, as a result, double the perception of depth in a given room. Mirrors are available in a broad variety of shapes, sizes and frames. Pick out a mirror design that works best for your given wall space. You can even get a pair of mirrors and mount them opposite one another for compounded reflections that create an even larger perception of space. Remember, in the world of interior design, perception is nine tenths reality.

Two Spaces In One:

A great tip for addressing the storage problems of a small space is to elevate the bed. Once elevated, the space beneath the bed can become an ideal storage area. The higher your ceiling, the more elevation (and thus storage) you can get away with. Another great small apartment item is the travel trunk. Get a large trunk, put it by a window, throw a few pillows on it, and presto, you've got window seating area with a little touch of adventure.

Home Improvements and Taxes - What You Should Know

Home improvements can mean tax savings when you sell. This requires some consultation with a professional, but can result in a tidy sum being saved on your taxes.

You can't usually claim property improvements on your taxes on a yearly basis, but when you sell your house, these improvements can mean tax deductions. You have to know what is considered a repair and what is an improvement. Rental property that you own is subject to tax deductions as well - repairs and improvements can be deducted as a business expense. Keeping track of all financial records and receipts can result in a significant tax reduction the year you sell a property.

A repair is considered something that maintains your home's value, like painting, replacing a cracked window pane and other minor repairs. An improvement is something that materially improves your home's value. Completely replacing your window with a new, energy-efficient one is a definite improvement. A garage is an improvement. A pool or hottub is an improvement. While most repairs don't qualify as improvement, simultaneous improvement and repair may qualify, so replacing a malfunctioning toilet while you remodel the bathroom may well mean savings.

Consulting a professional is the best idea. Good pros to approach are your tax consultant or an IRS representative. These people can point you to resources that you can use to find more about property improvement claims. The IRS website at irs.gov also has some good information for the home

Tax credits reduce tax itself, whereas tax deductions reduce the amount of income upon which tax is payable. Either way, it means savings, but it also means that you should educate yourself on both, so you have a better idea of just what you are paying and what kind of money you're saving.

Energy tax credits can also take a chunk out of your taxes. Installing energy-efficient appliances and energy saving devices like solar panels may mean a tax break for you. Improvements that are directly related to a medical condition may also qualify for a tax break.

Keeping track of all expenses, receipts and other information about home purchase, maintenance, repairs and improvements. Find out about your state's definition of what repairs vs. improvements are to get the best idea of what you can claim. Ask a tax professional for advice. You may be able to claim more than you think.

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