Adding Your Personal Style Signature to Your Home Plans

Have you ever walked into someone’s house and thought, “I wish my house felt this homey?” From a small home plan to a large home plan, you can recreate this sense of comfort and ease within your own home with these easy suggestions.

The rich and famous might pay top dollar for luxury home designs from top designers to create a quiet, homey living space, but you don’t have to. To get started, take out some of your favorite photos albums. That great black and white photograph of the mountains that you took at Yellowstone National Park last summer might look great enlarged over the fireplace. Personal artwork is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to personalize a home. With the increase of online photo services, photo enlargements can be done for a small cost. Buy a frame and put it together yourself for additional savings.

What are your pastimes and hobbies? What do you enjoy doing together as a family? Let your home reflect your collective passions. If you live in near water, you might have incorporated lake home plans in your home design. You might opt to design a living room table from old wood found around your property, or take that old canoe and turn it into a planter in the garden.

Get out the family heirlooms gathering dust in the closet and clean them off. A sterling silver pitcher might seem outdated for your taste, but after a cleaning with silver polish it might make a great flower vase for the dining room table.

Do you have a killer record collection, love to read, or find inspiration in your old art history books from college? Bring your love of reading, music and art into your main living area. A bookshelf neatly arranged with your favorite books adds an instant zap of warmth to any room. Frame a few of your most-loved record albums and hang them on the wall. Stack up all of those heavy art books that you’ve bought over the years at one end of the sofa and cover the top book with a piece of glass. Now you’ve created a custom end table and removed clutter.

After incorporating more of your tastes and interests into the interior design of your home, count the number of white walls in your home. If you’re still counting as you read this, it’s time to add some much-needed color. Start with one accent wall in the main room of your house and let your imagination take you from there.

Kitchen Planning and Design

Uncertain where to invest your hard earned dollars? If your kitchen or bath are in need of some TLC, then this would be a good place to start. Why? because the ROI (return on investment) of an average kitchen remodel can be as high as 100%!

What does this mean to you?

It means that for every dollar you spend, the value of your home increases by the same amount. If you own a home valued at $450,000 and you spend 45,000 on a kitchen remodel, your home is now valued at $495,000!

This is good for resale, or taking out a new loan, using your home as collateral. The one pitfall is spending too much on your remodel. It would not be wise to install a $100,000 dollar kitchen in a $175,000 dollar home.

So how much should I spend on a Kitchen remodel?

That depends on your budget, and finances, but the average kitchen remodel on Long Island, New York, accounts for about 8% to 15% of the value of your home. In other parts of the country its about 10% to 20%.

One thing is for sure though, only intelligent planning will keep your project on time and on budget.

Where do I start?
Proper research is essential — it can sometimes be confusing, but this is the only way to ask intelligent questions. After you have looked in all of the dream home magazines, and you know if you want to move walls, consult a few contractors that specialize in kitchens and baths.. A good contractor will educate you on the remodel process and product choices. A not so good contractor will leave you confused and give you the “hard sell”.”

Intelligent planning will keep your project on time and on budget

Did You Know?

1. The average cost of a kitchen Remodel is 8% to 15% of the value of your home.

2. The cost of your cabinets accounts for about 50% of your remodel.

3. The average kitchen remodel takes 4 to 6 weeks for completion.

4. Kitchen cabinets can take 4 to 8 weeks until delivery.

Make sure that the contractor has pictures and references from past jobs. Ask to speak to his last completed customer. A good contractor should have no problem with these requests. Always check for current license and insurance. and most of all, if you are not comfortable with the contractor, no matter what the price, do not hire him! This person and his crew will become part of your extended family for the next few weeks, like it or not. Your gut instinct is usually right.

Don’t wait too long to choose your appliances

How much does a refrigerator cost? Thats easy– about five or six hundred bucks. Or is it five or six thousand?

How wide is the fridge? Are we venting the microwave through the wall? Is the stove electric or gas?

How would you like to have to figure all of this out, and have to purchase these products in one weekend? Sounds ridiculous, right? But thats the way most people shop for their appliances. As in any work place design, we start with the essential tools, and design the kitchen around them– Yes its exciting to choose cabinet colors, but we start with the appliances to keep on time and on budget. How can we possibly order the over refrigerator cabinet if we don t know the size of the fridge?

Lighting design 101

Is lighting really that important? You Betcha! When you go to look at your kitchen cabinets on display, look up at the design of the lights in the show room. They are highly focused lights designed to compliment and bring out the colors of the cabinets. without these lights, the cabinets tend to look more drab and obscure. Dosen’t it make sense to show off your kitchen cabinets at your home in the same manner? Lights used to work under are called task lighting, Lights used to light the whole room are called ambient lighting Lights used to show off something are accent lights, and decorative lights are just for show– its that simple. Try to implement a combination of these for the best results.

All in all a kitchen remodel is like a long journey. With proper planning, a good guide with you, and a clear, common goal will leave you with the satisfaction that you not only improved your home, but that at the end of your journey you evolved your living space into a warm place that your family loves to gather. For the years ahead and for future generations.

My Outdoor Fireplace Plan and Design Experience

I recently finished installing an outdoor fireplace in the back patio of my home. It turned into a long project because I decided to do much of the work on my own and use my own design. Since I’m more of a “do it yourself” type of person, I ended up spending considerably more money and time then necessary. Also, if you do decide to install your own outdoor fireplace make sure you are aware and follow the local codes for your area. After all the most important features lies in the safety of the design.

I purchased the fireplace plans and used masonry brick for the entire fireplace. One thing about outdoor fireplaces is you need a long chimney to help keep the smoke away from your dwelling area. This can be costly because of all the brick you need to build the tall chimney.

If you are interested in an outdoor fireplace for your home one way to save time and money is to buy a pre-engineered fireplace system. Fire Rock Manufacturing Inc. provide the raw materials available in a kit so you can install the fireplace fairly easily. After installing the fireplace you can enhance the appearance of the outdoor fireplace with finishing materials such as marble, stone, tile, or stucco.

For the inexperienced fireplace installer I recommend ordering a pre-engineered outdoor fireplace kit because if the outdoor fireplace is not designed properly, smoke can potentially pour out of the front of the fireplace. A fireplace needs to be able to create a partial vacuum in the firebox which causes the smoke to rise up and out of the chimney.