Restoration | High End Looks, Low End Budget

Designing Your Home on a Budget

Designing does not have to be trivial, in fact for most, this is a relaxing and rewarding way to make your home what you want it to be. There are many things you can do to decorate on a dime, and most of the supplies are things you already own. This is a nice way to get a proje

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ct started and feel confident that the items you need to make the project its best is sitting right in your home.

Basics to Have Around

There are always some basic tools to have around for any project that requires a DIY touch. Here is a following list to make your life easier:

Staple gun. This is the perfect uphulstry fix for many projects. This is also a great tool for those no sew curtian or frames.
Hot glue. Again, for no sew projects that need a little flair, use hot glue to either seal or to attach a pretty accessory to make your project perfect.
Screw drivers. These are key to any project as they are necessary for removing things like switch plates, pictures, or even to take apart or assemble new items.

Having the basic tools accessible for you will make starting any project the best that it can be. If you require more tools or supplies, make sure you have investigated this before starting any project. There is nothing worse than realizing you need something right when you are in a pickle. Planning makes these types of projects fun and easy.

Filed Under: Budget Decoration, Restoration Tagged With: Do it yourself, Hot-melt adhesive, Shopping

Limited Budget; Beautiful Decor

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Did you know that it is possible to have an incredibly good-looking interior design for you house even on a limited budget.

Great décor is often a sign of well-developed taste rather than a boatload of money. With that in mind, let’s examine a great style for comfort and beauty that is also easy on the pocketbook.

One of the most dazzling looks for homes, or even shops, is an eclectic decor called “Shabby Chic”.

Shabby Chic is a style that developed from the romanticism of the Victorian Age and somehow became mixed with the Bohemian qualities of French artisans from the age of Impressionism. The style is noted for its worn, yet arty look that seems to reflect strength of taste rather than fashion. A Shabby Chic look is often filled with feminine and romantic items in dominant colors of white and pale pastels.

A lovely Shabby Chic décor can be developed from garage sale items and second hand stores, if the buyer knows what to look for. Many things from old wood furniture to glass bowls to tins can be found, if you train your eye and learn to spot desirable items. You will be surprised at the wonderful pieces that most people bypass.

Another nice thing about Shabby Chic is that most wood items can look worn or even be painted. Professional decorators, who are going for that worn Shabby Chic look, often buy new wood items and then “distress” them so they will look old and worn.

Learning to refurbish furniture and accessories is not only rewarding, these skills can also help you have the prettiest home on the block.

Filed Under: Budget Decoration, Restoration Tagged With: Impressionism, Interior design, Shabby chic

Saving Can Be Fashionable

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When you live in the same apartment or house for an extended period of time, it’s easy to get tired of your surroundings. Changing the look and feel of your home doesn’t have to break the bank, yet significant improvements can be made during your budget decorating journey. Here are some tips on how to still be fashionable while saving money!

Painting is the first step. There is nothing that will change the look and feel of a room more than a coat of paint. If you’ve been dealing with tan or white for what seems an eternity, mix it up with something maroon, forest green, or even a decorative orange. Cost of a gallon of paint? Under $20.

Add plants, paintings, or pictures to your home. There is something about a living, breathing plant in your home that just spices everything up. Buy them small and you can get three or four potted plants for around $25. With advances in digital photography, the cost of printing family photos is significantly cheaper than it used to be. Shop for decorative planters with a splash of color, or picture frames that add substance to your personal style, by visiting sites like http://www.offers.com.

Refurbish used furniture. Sometimes you don’t need new items, you just need to give the ones you have a facelift. Putting a cloth cover over your kitchen chairs or your favorite living-room chair is inexpensive and can completely change the look of a room. Summertime is a great time to canvas the neighborhood during those infamous garage sales. Sometimes another man’s trash can be an absolute treasure, and saving money truly can be fashionable.

Filed Under: Budget Decoration, Restoration

Where to Find DIY Information

If you are one who is interested in doing everything yourself, such as your home remodeling, home restoration, and other various interesting tasks, you will be glad to know that there are a number of places where you can find DIY information. There are 3 places where you can find it quite easily.

1. Look On the Internet. One place where you can certainly find DIY information is on the Internet. The Internet is jam packed with just about anything that you ever wanted to know. All you have to do is type your query in the search engines, and you will find page after page of results that will provide you with DIY information. Then, you will need to look through the various pages, until you find a guide that explains the tasks clear enough to you.

2. Watch TV. Depending on what it is you need to do, there are certain TV stations that will provide a great wealth of DIY information. You can learn anything from how to fix a pipe to learning how to bake a cake. On these TV stations, the sky is the limit, and all guides are very well detailed.

3. You Can Purchase Books. There are a number of well written books on the market that will provide you with any DIY information that you need to know. You can purchase these books at your local bookstore or online. Many of these books are relatively affordable.

Once you get your hands on the DIY information that you need to know, you can then get started on learning your new tasks. How wonderful it feels to grasp a new skill and take matters into your own hands.

Filed Under: DIY, Restoration Tagged With: books, Do it yourself, Recreation

3 Simple Decorating Tips for the Bathroom

Spring is coming. And with the coming of spring, there are also new beginnings. One thing that people may do to bring in the spring is to change the look and feel of their homes. These individuals do this by either completely remodeling their homes altogether or making some small changes that will change the look and feel of the homes completely. One room that can be remodeled easily with the implementation of some simple decorating tips is the bathroom. If you want to change the look and feel of your bathroom this spring, you will find these 3 bathroom decorating tips to be useful to you.

1. Come Up With a Theme. When decorating your bathroom, it is essential that you come up with a theme. Some common bathroom themes are frogs, flowers, the sea, and stars. Make sure the theme that you choose will match what is already in your bathroom, since you do want to keep it simple.

2. Purchase Items Related to Your Theme. Once you have decided on the theme that you will use, you need to purchase items that relate to your theme. These items can be things, such as throw rugs, shower curtains, soaps, hand towels, candles, bathtub mats, and soap dishes. Department stores, dollar stores, Wal-Mart, Target, and various online stores will sell these items.

3. Decorate Your Bathroom Accordingly. Now that you have decided on your theme and have purchase all of your items that relate to your theme, it is time to decorate your bathroom accordingly. You may need to make changes, until you feel happy with the finished product.

When you implement these 3 simple bathroom decorating tips, you will feel happy with the outcome. Not to mention, you will bring in the spring by providing a new look and feel for your bathroom. It does not take a whole lot of money and time.

Filed Under: Budget Decoration, Restoration Tagged With: Bathroom, Shower, Wal-Mart

The Importance of a Budget

Few people take time to make up a budget for all of their expenses. Making a budget is not a priority in the lives of many individuals. As a matter of fact, numerous people feel that making a budget is an absolute waste of time. If you are one of those individuals who does not feel that making a budget is important, it will do you some for you to learn about the importance of a budget.

One reason that having a budget is important is because it will enable you to keep your expenses organized. When your expenses are out of order, you feel like life is chaotic. Not to mention, you are not sure where your money is going. When you have a budget, on the other hand, you know where all of your money is going, and you can keep track of all of your expenses. Life runs a bit smoothly with this organization.

Another reason that having a budget is important is because it will enable you to save more of your money. When you’re spending is planned and especially if you put saving into your budget, your savings account will grow.

Making up a budget will enable you to know what to expect. With a budget, there is no chance for uneasy feelings or unpredictability. Having a budget will enable you to have control of your life.

Now that you have learned about the importance of making up a budget, it will do you some good to make one for yourself. When you do, you will notice how different and good life will feel. You will notice that you have less stress. You will notice how your life is very well organized. You will notice how you have more money to do things with. And you will wonder why in the world you did not make your budget up sooner.

Filed Under: Budget Decoration, Restoration Tagged With: Budget, Money, Savings account

Home Improvement Help

There are many times when you walk through your house and the ideas start flying about what you’d like to do to improve the space. You may be thinking of knocking down a wall to open up a room, putting on a deck, building a shed, or adding on a new room. No matter how big or small your dreams are, there is home improvement help out there to help you make your dreams come true.

Your local library is a great resource for home improvement projects. You can go there and browse tons of books on the subject. Find designs and plans for the specific project you are working on, all for free. Take the book home with you to use as you complete your project. Then, simply return the book when you are done. Not only are you saving money by not buying the book yourself, but you are stopping clutter from entering your home because you can give the book back to the library when you are finished.

Another great way to get some home improvement help is to go online. The Internet is chock full of resources on anything you can imagine and even things you can’t. What is good about researching home improvement projects online is that you are in the comfort of your own home, and you can go at your own pace. If you find something you like, you can print it out, without having to take an entire book with you.

Besides free plans and project information, the Internet will also provide a lot of free tools, like material estimators and measurement conversion charts. These are all handy tools to have when doing both large and small projects.

Lastly, ask one of your buddies who may be experienced in carpentry or home improvement projects. Better yet, invite a few friends over, fire up the grill and take out the beer and have a home improvement project party!

Filed Under: Budget Decoration, Restoration Tagged With: Home improvement

Minimalist design as a cheap lifestyle

It may seem like a silly notion, but reducing the amount of clutter and stuff filling the nooks and crannies of your abode can be the quickest and longest lasting cure for money shortages.

Let’s face it; there are some things we can not go without. We aren’t going to get rid of the refrigerator and the television and internet are probably here to stay.

However, do we really need a cabinet in the corner of the dining room to hold the collection of milk glass butterdishes we’ve fished out of antique stores across America?

Or how about the storage shed out back. That was meant to hold the lawnmower and now it’s stacked with the totes full of comic books and electronics chords. And we are probably going to consider purchasing something in the near future which will end up hidden amidst the rest of the detritus.

Instead of this cycle take one easy step towards a new philosophy on usage and needs versus wants. Inspect each room in your home and consider its use. If it’s a bedroom, should it also have a table? If you need that table to hold stuff you never use, could that space be more effective left empty?

There is a prevailing philosophy in the world that a cluttered existence without can lead to a cluttered reality within. So having to slowly open the drawers in order to prevent a cascade of nick-knacks might be gradually leading to a more stressful existence. Clear the top off those furniture items. Get rid of the ones you don’t use.

Likewise when you are choosing new furniture items, try to reuse something that old or choose something that will last. It’s the same philosophy behind using a metal razor instead of a disposable, in that it reduces the amount of waste and wasted energy in the world.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Restoration Tagged With: Dining room, Furniture

Setting the mood lighting

Sometimes the biggest and best change anyone can make in a room is to improve or update the lighting. From taking down the old outdated hanging lamp with the chained chord reaching through the dining room, to installing a ceiling fan and light combination in the bedroom the lighting is always an important factor.

And changing a light fixture doesn’t have to be a complicated process. All lights work on the same principal of electric current and switches and are going to be hooked up in essentially the same manor.

The hardest part is often picking out which light fixture for which specific room. A good rule to remember inside the home is that indirect lighting and diffused lighting are often considered the most soothing. While in the workroom you might way a dozen banks of fluorescent bulbs, that’s not the best choice for the living room.

The most common way to diffuse or redirect light is throught he use of a shade. An opaque shade, or one where there is little to no light coming through is going to cast light in one or two directions typically. The relfection of that light off of the walls and ceilings is what lights the area.

A semi-opaque shade will let more of the light shine in all directions and will in general be brighter. The same is true for ceiling fixtures. In large rooms it’s often a good idea to allow the bulbs to shine directly into the room and then use a rheostat or dimmer switch to change the level of the lighting. A common method for using this type of setup is to install a series of recessed lights in the ceiling and have them all attached to dimmers.

Finally consider what level of watts per bulb is best for the purpose of the room.

Filed Under: Restoration Tagged With: Light

Simple rules for laying floor tile

One of the most durable floor coverings out there is ceramic tile. Not only is it tough to damage and highly stain resistant, thanks to new manufacturing methods tile can come in nearly any shape, pattern or color imaginable.

When looking at purchasing, refurbishing or updating a home or a piece of investment real estate, ceramic flooring can be a good option if you are willing to do the work. A lot of the cost of any flooring is in the labor and tile is no different.

A lot of home improvement stores like Lowes and Home Depot will have a pallet or two of a matching type of tile at any given time that is marked down to a reasonable price. Something around $1 per square foot, so about a $1 per tile is a really reasonable price.

And that’s for simple ceramic tile, not granite or marble. For those types of floor tile you are going to spend easily four to ten times as much, and that’s still considered a really good price.

But back to the ceramic there is usually an item that’s going out or was a special order which never went out. Just keep your eyes open.

When it comes to laying small rooms, start in the first, most easily noticeable corner and wall a person will see when walking into the room. Use that as a starting point for laying out your pattern.

Always make sure you have a nice, even subfloor which is appropriate for the bonding agent you will choose. Clean the floor, and then mark your pattern with a chalk line. You can spray the chalk line with hair spray to keep it from wiping away.

Finally use spacers in between each tile, facing in all four directions. If you follow your lines and take your time the payoff of a nice tile floor is definitely worth the work.

Filed Under: Restoration Tagged With: Floor, Tile