Tools needed: a battery operated screwdriver, screwdriver bits (Phillips and standard), hex head driver, tape measure, and scissors. Although no special tools are usually required when installing window treatments, it is suggested that you use a battery operated screwdriver or drill to make the job easier. First, un-package your treatment carefully and do NOT use a razor blade or knife to open the boxes. It is very easy to cut a string or the blind by doing this. Take care when removing the treatment from the box that it was shipped in; some treatments are more delicate than others. Remove all of the packing that was used in shipping, again taking care to do so. Place the treatment at the window that it will be installed; this helps if there are several treatments for different windows as not to get them mixed up. Then place all mounting hardware at the windows that are having treatments installed on them. Make sure you have the proper tools for the job, as screws and hardware will vary. Read more…

Are you STILL thinking about painting your walls with color?

Many people are afraid to make the leap from ‘builder’s beige’ to a more daring color choice. What holds you back? Are you afraid the color will be too strong? Not match your furniture? Or you’ll become tired of it and have to start over again?

While you’re debating the work involved you are missing out on one of the basic elements of design that can change the entire look of your room for under $50. Your tired furniture can become new again and a mismatched room can have designer flare! So, how do you choose the right color? Read more…

If you’re not sure where to start or how best to tackle updatingyour child’s bedroom, you’re not alone. In a lot of families, thebaby nursery takes a lot of planning and decorating time butthere’s often less thought and energy put into decorating thesame child’s room as they grow older.

It’s common for baby toys and furniture like diaper disposals,pull toys and cribs to get removed, but other things oftenstay around for quite a bit longer than the growing child might wish. For instance a wall paper border with prints moresuitable for your baby or young child’s room, may not be asenjoyed by your now older child (or teen?!). Read more…

When it comes to decorating your home, forget about the empty, lifeless rooms you see in interior design magazines and books. Instead, you should concentrate on designing all of the rooms in your home as backdrops for the people who will be living in those spaces. Here are a few simple techniques for designing dynamic spaces:

Don’t be afraid to leave some empty spaces in your rooms. Empty space allows for breathing room and lets the most important items in the room shine — the people who live there!

Avoid large patterns in your fabrics and wallpapers. As a general rule, use no designs larger than your palm, because they will interfere with the appearance of people in the room. Using smaller patterns on walls and furniture will mean that friends and family won’t have to compete with bold patterns for attention. Read more…

The widening net of world trade appeared to be the reason the 45th Salone Internazionale del Mobile, an international furniture fair held in the outskirts of Milan, hosted a near-record 2,500 exhibitors from 37 countries this month. It was a New Age trade caravan, and with it came a hybrid international aesthetic that even the Italians, who were 90 percent of the exhibitors, embraced.

At the new fairgrounds and buildings in Rho-Pero, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, in showrooms within the city, at private parties leading up to opening day, and at off-site events in the grungy Tortona design district during I Saloni, spectators got a clear view of what’s to come in furniture, kitchen and bath design stores this fall. Read more…

America’s furniture makers are scaling down the size of their products in response to young home buyers moving into older, smaller city houses and condominiums, an industry analyst said yesterday at the opening of the International Home Furnishings Market.

“They’re not going to be able to use king-sized beds, said W.W. “Jerry” Epperson Jr., a furnishings-industry analyst based in Richmond, Va.

He said virtually every retailer exhibiting at the market is selling the lines of smaller furnishings.
More than 2,500 exhibitors from around the world are showcasing residential furnishings at the annual spring market in High Point. Buyers from furniture retailers are surveying what’s new in products displayed across 12 million square feet of exhibit space in 188 buildings. Those products could end up in store showrooms by fall, the prime season for spending on home decor. In all, 70,000 buyers and others in the industry are expected to attend the furniture market, which ends Wednesday. Read more…

Bringing the colour and brilliance of flowers into your home or business, Mosaic Flowers offer an eye catching decoration with a difference. Modelled on true living forms, these mosaics bring a warming and colourful addition to any area.

This is samples for flower mosaic:

Deliberately not geared to folks who occupy spacious family homes with sprawling back yards, DV, Vancouver’s recent Interior Design & Urban Living Expo at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, was aimed squarely at space-squeezed city dwellers. Even sofas that seemed sized only for condos whose ads coyly price them “in the 700,000s and up” were invariably sectionals that you could break up and position at will. What did come across consistently at this mega-exhibit was that, hey, even those of us who live in the heart of the concrete city want reminders around us of the nature we escape to on weekends. Read more…

Your home is your castle, and the last thing you need is for your son’s stereo or your daughter’s phone to sound like an army of knights crashing through on their way to battle. Noise comes from sound waves, which are vibrations in the air that are generated by any physical action. If you can break, interrupt, alter or otherwise change the flow of those waves, you can change the amount of transmitted noise.

WALL CONSTRUCTION A MAJOR KEY TO QUIET

If you are building or remodeling, you have a lot of opportunities to impact noise transmission that are not available to you after the house is complete. Perhaps the most important consideration is the interior walls. The typical wall is simply a sandwich of drywall sheets over wood studs. Since drywall is a solid, relatively thin material, it does little to break the sound waves, and the air that is trapped in the wall cavities between the sheets does nothing to stop sound transmission.

One obvious solution is to install insulation in the walls between rooms, which will absorb some of those sound waves and greatly deaden the noise transmission. While any insulation is better then none, your best bet is to specify sound-deadening insulation instead of the more common thermal insulation, typically found in attics and exterior walls. Heavier and denser, this type of insulation is specifically designed for this application. Read more…

KP in the Army and in summer camp involves peeling potatoes – even for the family dinner. The choice of potato this Sunday was the gold, possibly Yukon Gold, potato. Unfortunately, as I peeled, I had to take a deep slice from around most of each potato. The reason was the green skin.

My composter will appreciate this, but economically, it was a huge waste to have to cut so much away. When I grew potatoes, I learned not to allow them to poke out of the ground into the light. They were to stay covered to prevent green skin that creates a poisonous alkaloid.

For the first time, I am growing potatoes at home in Florida. I had six potatoes start to sprout in the pantry, so I decided I’d plant them in a hole, reserving the soil to the side. Two days later I found that some night creature had dug them up. They were scattered all around the garden and even to the side of the house where I found them in a few weeks after they had sprouted. If they survive, the potatoes certainly will not win any prizes, as the varmint didn’t put them in a hole and cover them. Read more…