Your countertop is the most visible source of color in the kitchen. New countertops can help give the kitchen a new look and feel. It can revitalize an older kitchen and make it look brand new. For decorative purposes, granite and marble countertops can be your best options as they are incredibly durable. However, marble is not a good option if you intend to use it as food preparation as it easily gets stained. Your budget also plays a big part in the decision-making process since most of them can be a bit pricey. You also need to look for a good contractor who can help you with the installation.

Granite countertops are the best alternative for your countertop replacement. Aside from being good to look at as it can complement any kitchen design, it is also durable. They also come at very affordable prices with lifetime workmanship guarantee.

Photo: NguyenDai

Getting your own made to measure roller blinds couldn’t be easier. Firstly, you have to measure the windows to provide the manufacturer with your specification. This is a simple task that can be carried out with any standard ruler, or preferably a tape measure. The basic measurements required are the width and length of the window, nothing else. Out of the two, the most important measurement is the width. You can work around having blinds that are too long or too short, however if they’re too wide or too narrow then you’re going to have problems. It would be wise to double or even maybe triple check this measurement at least.

These blinds are a great way to add a subtle change to your room without giving it a total makeover. General roller blinds bought from a shop, whilst looking good and being extremely convenient, tend to bunch up at the bottom when rolled up due to their oversizing. On the other hand, a custom made to measure roller blind can hang perfectly in front of a window. This looks better for obvious reasons, and gives a home a nice polished edge.

As mentioned earlier, these blinds are also energy efficient for your home. When heat or cold reaches a window with generic sized blinds, the air is likely to be trapped between the window and the blinds which means that more heating or air conditioning will be required to regulate the temperature in the home. This problem is totally avoided with customised blinds.

Finally, these blinds are simply convenient to use purely because they are made exactly for the window they are furnishing. They sit in front of the window nicely and are extremely easy to move up and down. For these benefits, it’s worth perhaps paying a little more and waiting a few days longer to get yourself a perfect set of made to measure roller blinds.

Most of us spend a great deal of time on making sure that our living room, bedroom, bathroom, dining room and kitchen are in tip top condition and reflect our personal tastes, but sadly neglect the spare room or guest room, thinking it doesn’t matter as we rarely use it ourselves.

This can be a big mistake however, as it is of course the room in which you will put up your guests, and therefore the room that will leave them with their most lasting impression of your home!

Therefore, it makes sense to put as much time and thought into how you will decorate your guest room or spare room as you would with all the other rooms in your house.

But where to start?

A great tip if this particular room is only very small is to invest in an attractive sofa bed. Sofa beds are ideal for spare rooms as they provide your guests with a comfy place to sleep if they stay overnight, and fold up out of the way when not in use as a bed.

Take your time to browse a sofa sale and find something that will reflect your tastes and complement the colour schemes and the look of the rest of your home. You can find sofa beds in two or three seater versions so consider the available space and how many people you are likely to have staying overnight in the same room at one time.

With so many fabulous designs, materials, colours, patterns and shapes on offer these days, you’ll be spoilt for choice when selecting your new sofa bed. And getting this key piece of furniture right can make all the difference to an otherwise all-too-often neglected room.

Photo: j l t

If you have the luxury of working on the property whilst it is empty then doing remedial works such as re-wiring or plumbing are achieved more easily, and empty rooms are much easier to decorate too. One of the projects which you might tackle fairly early on in the process is the wood work such as skirting, architraves, doors and floors. Replacing interior doors with hardwood doors throughout will instantly lift the house to be something special, and matching that with new woodwork elsewhere gives every room a fresh new look. Repairing plaster and starting your interior design scheme from a blank canvas will have much the same effect.

Engineered wood flooring is a great option if you are going to tackle the work yourself. Easier to lay than solid wood boards, it will also react less to the influences of heat and humidity. In this way it is also an appropriate material for more rooms of the house and certain types can even be installed over under floor heating for the ultimate in comfort.

Renovation projects can go array if you try to do things in the wrong order so make sure you know what needs to be done at each stage. Tackle the house as a whole and benefit from the savings to be made by engaging trades once for the whole house rather than for each room individually. Enjoy it, and make your house a home!

Image: Wikicommons: Nieuw

The first thing to check is that your curtain pole is the right size for the window over which you are planning to install it; if it’s too small you won’t be able to draw the curtains across the whole window, whereas if it’s too big, it will look strange and out of proportion. Once you’re sure your curtain pole is the right size, you can go about putting it up. For this you’ll need a stepladder, a drill, an electrical stud finder, a pen (or pencil), and a tape measure.

The first step is to assemble the curtain pole. Do this before you ascend the ladder because it can be awkward to assemble and it’s not something you want to attempt at a height. Once it’s assembled, you can mark with your pen (or pencil) where the holes will be drilled. Using a spirit level at this step will ensure the curtain poles are installed straight.

When the position is marked, you’re nearly ready to drill your holes. It’s a good idea to use the electrical stud finder first to make sure there are no wires hidden in the wall; drilling into a live wire is not safe. Once the positions are marked and you’re sure you won’t hit any wires, you can drill the holes and screw the curtain pole mounts into the wall.

Attaching the curtain poles is usually as easy as sliding them into the mounts, and aside from reattaching the curtains to the poles, this is the final step. Now you can pack away your tools, sit back with a cup of tea, and enjoy your new window dressings.

Photo: Big Grey Mare

If you have a traditional style farm house you are likely to want to keep your furniture matching this rustic theme but you will still need up to date appliances, like a good Westinghouse fridge.

Kitchen
The kitchen really is the heart of a country home.  It is somewhere that neighbours will spend a lot of their time and the agent who comes to sell your livestock.  People really do tend to go visit neighbours and friends more often in the country and spend a lot of time sitting in the kitchen or on the veranda having cups of tea and a few freshly baked scones.  When designing your kitchen for your farm house you want a welcoming atmosphere as well as a functional kitchen.  To make your kitchen easy to work in you need to have your fridge, your stove and your bench within easy reach of each other.  Having stools along the bench is a good idea as people can sit and chat to you while you are cooking or doing other things.

Casual living area
You need a room in your house where it is ok if the furniture gets a little messed up.  If you or your partner work out on your farm then it is more than likely you are going to get dirty.  You may want to have a ‘dirt room’ in your house, where basically you remove any really dirty clothing before you enter the house and then head straight for the shower, but sometimes this is just not that practical.  Having a more casual living area is a good idea in any farm house.  If you have an older lounge put this one in this living area and save the good one for the more formal end of the house.  You will probably find that most of the family will spend the majority of time in this room anyway, particularly if this is where the television is.  This type of space is also good for young children as they have a habit of putting sticky fingers on furniture and spilling things on the carpet.

Design
For the rest of your house you can gain inspiration from one of the many interior decorating magazines that are specifically targeted at country homes.  If you are fortunate to have a home with a wide veranda that is an older style home then you could go for a more provincial style of furniture.  Floral patterns suit this type of home, along with stripes and more old fashioned furniture.  You can even buy taps and sinks called a Farm house style which are perfect for your new farm house.  Your style of home will also depend on whether you want to make it more formal or if you want that country cottage look.

Photo: mccun934

Planning the lighting of your foyer and the entire house you should think of such a thing as art of shadow. In most homes lighting is used for practical purposes. It is used in dark places where we may need it inside and outside. It can be also used to underline this or that beautiful place of your house.

There are a lot of designs and examples that you may choose nowadays for your home and Hubbardton Forge Lighting is not the last in this long list. Correctly used lighting is the key for the beauty of your home from inside and outside. You can do anything with the help of correct lighting: visually increase space, underline different features etc. And Hubbardton Forge Chandeliers are the best assistants for you with that.

The same thing is with outdoor lighting. You may not only illuminate a sidewalk, but decorate the façade of your house with lights as well. Hubbardton Forge Outdoor Lighting is the best for such decoration.

Photo: pnt103

It sounds like common sense but insurance is not always at the forefront of our minds when we are knee deep in project plans, and it is easy to assume that the building company with the great reputation for a good job well done have got all their paperwork in place.

Well imagine the scene: renovations and home repair are underway, the electricians are re-wiring so the smoke alarms are disconnected and one of the guys on site leaves a cigarette burning next to a pile of wood shavings which came off your beautiful new solid oak interior doors. Do I hear a sharp intake of breath? Believe me, this is not a scenario that you want under any circumstances but least of all if you then find out afterwards that you are inadequately covered or not insured at all. Total nightmare.

I am not suggesting that this is the kind of situation which will happen very often, and certainly it would have to be someone pretty careless, and well actually pretty stupid to even smoke a cigarette on a building site. It is a graphic visualisation of what could easily happen to any of us though and hopefully will make you consider your insurance position in more detail in future. Undertaking building, renovation and redecoration work in our home is an exciting time and the last thing you want is a disaster on your hands which spoils all your hard work.

Don’t be afraid to ask the questions you want answered to protect yourself; you don’t want to regret not doing so at a later date…

Photo: Erin!

If you have just installed new kitchen units for example, did you go ahead and hang up your old tea towels in amongst all that sleek finery? If you are hanging your head in embarrassment then fear not, it is a quick problem to fix and won’t cost you a fortune either. In fact it is quite a nice job – selecting new linens and maybe oven gloves and even an apron to match! I have even seen whole collections which go right through to cake tins and storage jars, making it really easy to co-ordinate the whole room.

It’s not just kitchens either; in the bedroom did you pull out your old duvet set and make that new bed up without even thinking about it? Or put those white/grey towels on that fancy new heated towel rail in your state of the art bathroom? Shame on you! It is easy to overlook these kinds of items but something to watch out for, and in the grand scheme of things it is not going to make much difference to your decorating budget.

My other bugbear is the exterior finishes that some people seem blind to: I have seen houses entirely repainted at great expense, and then someone has thoughtlessly left a dead tree in a planter by the front door – why would you not notice that?! I guess what I am trying to say is don’t lose sight of the smaller things because you are so busy focussing on the bigger picture. Your house will thank you, and so will your neighbours!

Flipping this train of thought around I began to consider ditching the fitted look altogether, and going for a free standing kitchen design with individual pieces of furniture taking the place of a row of little boxes, so charmingly known as ‘carcasses’. The thought of ripping out these bad boys has got my interest piqued immediately. Will this work in my home? I don’t know, but I really think that I would like to find out.

Once this decision is made I find myself in an exciting world of choice which I didn’t even know was out there. Answers to questions like ‘will I lose out on space for kitchen worktops?’ and ‘what about my appliances?’ are answered by a quick internet search, and I am beginning to see that for a lot of people designing a free standing kitchen is really the only option. The emphasis seems to be on the quality of finish and materials, and imagine being able to take your kitchen with you when you move house – how novel! What a marvelous shopping opportunity I have stumbled upon inadvertently.

The more my mind moves in this direction the more I think I will have to de-fit the whole of my house! Beware bathroom, I’m coming to get you, and those floor to ceiling wardrobes better watch out too… crazy? I don’t think so – just purposeful and sold on a great style idea.