Great Kitchen Renovation on a Tight Budget
The very first component that most homeowners think about when planning for a kitchen renovation is the kitchen countertop. This is the heart of the kitchen. Without a great looking countertop, no kitchen is complete. I would suggest you take a look at concrete countertops. This is a new and emerging style of countertop. It is made of designer colored concrete and only second to granite in terms of toughness. It will give your kitchen a very unique and stylish theme.
The next most important thing is the kitchen cabinets. Make sure that the color and theme of your kitchen cabinets and your concrete counter top has a single theme. I would suggest buying prefabricated kitchen cabinets then hire a carpenter to alter it to match your kitchen theme because building a kitchen cabinet set from scratch is very costly and time consuming. This will only require us to spend for paint, cabinet handles and miscellaneous materials to match the cabinet with our theme.
Lastly, we need to select matching tiles to complete our great looking kitchen. For this purpose, it is better to use large sixty by sixty ceramic tiles for the floor and smaller ceramic tiles around the kitchen sink and countertop. This way, it would be easier to clean the larger tiles for any spills and stains in the future. Use small tiles sparingly and only in tight spaces around the countertop corners because they will be harder to clean than large tiles.
For the walls, I would suggest using a wallpaper instead of paint because oil evaporating from our cooking will stick to the walls and it will be next to impossible to remove them without damaging the wall surface. With a wall paper, you can just rip it off your wall and replace it anytime it becomes dirty.…
Great Ways to Shop at a Kitchen Store
If you love your kitchen, you could probably wander through a kitchen store for days. In your mind, you’ll be trying out tile, countertops, and cabinets in your own kitchen, preparing for yet another remodel. This isn’t always a healthy or smart way to shop, though, especially if you ever want to actually get that remodel done. Before you head to the kitchen store the next time around, try one of these shopping methods to help you complete your trip more quickly and get to the remodeling part even faster.
On some trips, you really do just need to look around. This is true if you’re getting ready to do a kitchen remodel but aren’t quite sure what you want to do. In this case, take a notebook. If the store manager will let you, take a camera to snap some pictures, as well. If you’re going to paint your kitchen, grab some paint chips from the hardware store to take along, as well. On this trip, all you’re doing is gathering ideas and taking notes on the colors, textures, and particular items that you like best. Make sure you’re descriptive enough that you can actually remember what you were looking at when you wrote down your notes!
Once you know what you need, it’s time to start making lists before your next trip to the kitchen store. If you’re like a lot of people, your remodel will go in stages. You’ll probably head to the store more than a couple of times during a full remodeling session. Think through all the things you need to do and the order in which you need to do them. If, for instance, you’re painting your cabinets and replacing countertops, you’ll probably need to rip out the old countertops and then paint the cabinets before replacing the countertops again.
Either way, at this point, you should be going into the kitchen store armed with a detailed list of everything you need. Write down measurements, quantities, and as much other information as you can. This way, you get just what you need, and you don’t have to come back to the store when you aren’t ready to be back there quite yet. This will make the remodeling process work more quickly so that you can get your kitchen function and beautiful before you know it.…
Eight Crucial Aspects of a Great Bathroom
It is usually one of the first rooms we see when we get up in the morning, and one of the last rooms we see before we go to bed at night. The bathroom is one of the, if not the most, sacred rooms in our home. It is surely among the most private rooms in the home. So to take in consideration the bathroom is such a much used room, it makes sense to equip it with the most up to date fixtures and lighting you can install. Here are ten suggestions on how to make your bathroom as inviting as possible:
1. Create an entrance transition. Not counting the master bath, most bathrooms will serve several users and need to be placed in a location that is central to those users. You can create a space outside the door, such as an alcove off of the hallway that can give some privacy from your main room and high traffic areas.
2. Give the bathroom room like proportions. Many usual bathrooms are really just hallways with the fixtures that line one side of the hallway. It is hard to make a comfy room out of that shape.
3. Install a beautiful window. Bringing natural light and a nice view of the outside is very important. Think about it this way, when we go into the bathroom in the morning, most of us look out the window, that is to see how the weather is doing and provides us with a somewhat look at how the day might progress weather wise.
4. From the least intimate places to the most intimate places. This basically means that in the residential design of the bathroom, keep in mind the most intimate place should be the farthest from the door.
5. Position your shower to have a “borrowed view”. In a small space such as a bathroom, sometimes it is difficult to get a decent view to the outside from each area. A shower is a nice example since you can position the shower to give you the view that you want or need.
6. Paying attention to the vertical and horizontal dimensions is critical to have a people friendly bathroom. Certain minimum clearances around bathroom fixtures are required by every building code. You want your family and guests to have enough room to wash their hands for example without bumping into other walls and so forth.
7. Having water resistant finishes are another aspect that needs to be taken into account for. The last thing you want is for your bathroom to have a leakage problem due to poor workmanship or a poor choice in picking the correct water resistant materials to install in your bathroom.
8. Picking out and installing fixtures that really work and will last the test of time, you need to make sure that you are really getting your money’s worth. Having the peace of mind of having these fixtures installed in your bathroom will keep your bathroom looking and performing in top notch performance.…
Great Bathroom Lighting Tips
When many people are planning a bathroom remodel the most overlooked part of the project is the way the new bathroom will be lit. Yet good lighting is essential if the new bathroom is going to be as functional and attractive as possible. The new sink, toilet and luxury spa shower are all great but, if you cannot see to put your make up on in the morning, the remodeled bathroom will end up annoying you as much as the old one did.
Ideally there should be more than one kind of lighting in the bathroom. Task lighting is essential. Mirrors should be well lit but not with a light that is too artificial or glaring. Vertical fixtures or sconces mounted on either side of the mirror are best for makeup and shaving. Be sure to position sconces to shed equal amounts of light on both sides of the face, and use “natural light” bulbs to impart a less artificial looking glow.
For ambient lighting pendant lamps, recessed ceiling lights or even a small chandelier can all work well in the bathroom. If your remodeled bathroom is going to include one of the wonderful garden bathtubs that are so popular these days why not a chandelier with dimmer switch so that you can soak your cares away in ultimate luxury.
One area that is often not lit – but should be – is the shower. Light the shower’s interior with waterproof fixtures. The light does not have to be too bright but you will appreciate the difference right away.…