Improve Your Home and Garden
From the category archives:
by Katherine Lagomarsino on August 31, 2010
After Canadian actor-turned-designer Jody Racicot moved with his wife into an empty new home, he built her a dresser and promised her it would be better than anything they could afford to buy. To both of their surprise, he did just that, and suddenly the actor had a second career as a modern furniture designer. [...]
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by Bryan Hollis on August 30, 2010
Not everyone has the budget for an interior designer. Fine Designs by Coco wants to change this. The firm is expanding its business to help renters and homeowners create new and unique affordable home design using an email service they hope will be a revolutionary way to give a home a facelift. The service works [...]
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by Krissi Maarx on August 5, 2010
If you love to relax outdoors but prefer the look and comforts of indoor living areas, try combining the best of both worlds by decorating your patio with stylish outdoor area rugs. Forget about those drab, uninteresting rugs that cost a fortune and require high maintenance. You can add brilliant color and coziness to your favorite [...]
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by Paul George on July 28, 2010
When you want shine, glitter, light and pizazz–or a mural-sized portrait of you and the family dog–in your home design, consider etched glass blocks. Homeowners provide a custom image, or choose one from a selection of more than 25 standard images, which can be etched into clear or colored glass blocks. After installation, the blocks create a focal point for any room [...]
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by Kat on July 25, 2010
I can remember it vividly. I was about 10 years old and repeatedly rode my bicycle up to the neighborhood Ben Franklin 5 and Dime store to buy stained glass, paint by numbers, mosaic kits. I loved creating art. That was the childhood memory that flashed in my brain when I met artist Rick Hecht [...]
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by Katherine Lagomarsino on July 17, 2010
We’ve all seen the shows on the HGTV Network. A family is trying to sell their cluttered, dark and very personalized home for months with no bites from prospective buyers. Then, like a knight riding in on a white horse, the real estate staging expert arrives with neutral paint and fresh flowers in tow. Out go [...]
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by Katherine Lagomarsino on July 8, 2010
While the drama unfolding on the soccer field in Johannesburg, South Africa, has captivated a largely male audience, many so-called World Cup widows are in anything but mourning with the temporary loss of their husbands and boyfriends to nonstop televised soccer matches. Instead, World Cup widows all over the world have been using their new-found free [...]
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by Dee Baugher on July 7, 2010
Did you know that leftover household paint makes up the largest component of materials collected at local hazardous waste collection programs? And that an estimated 10% of the 750+ million gallons of architectural paint produced each year is wasted and must be disposed of? Isn’t there an environmentally friendly way to handle all this paint? Alison [...]
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by Bryan Hollis on June 30, 2010
For centuries, Turkish towels have been the gold standard of luxury in the bath. What makes them so luxurious is that they’re made from organic cotton. Havlu Towels are fair trade goods manufactured in Turkey with the added advantage of being green because they contain only 100% certified organic cotton. Since the demand for organic cotton towels [...]
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by Lori Feldman on June 20, 2010
Let’s say you have a home improvement contractor who you truly love. You could look up “fine workmanship” in the homeowners bible and there would be a picture of your guy. He shows up when he’s supposed to, his answers to all your questions make sense, and his jobs are always fairly priced. What’s not [...]
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by Lisbeth Tanz on June 6, 2010
The Joinery takes sustainability one-step further: their shop is 100% fueled by wind power and uses Smart Energy to reduce greenhouse gasses.
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by Roxanne Todd on May 4, 2010
Do you want your house stand out from the rest on the block? Consider adding manufactured veneer stone or bricks to your walls, floors, kitchen counters or bar fronts for a unique look that showcases your home’s individuality. Jennie Walker from Eagle Stone & Brick in Red Bud, IL, says their manufactured veneer stone products come with [...]
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by Lisbeth Tanz on April 11, 2010
Has this ever happened to you? You have the perfect spot for a beautiful furniture piece. You can see it there, imagine using it and enjoying the compliments of friends and relatives as to your decorating savvy. The only problem? You can’t find exactly what you envision. Some pieces come close, but not close enough [...]
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by Lisbeth Tanz on March 21, 2010
I have to admit that when I first read the name of this company Flip Flop Flower Pot, I wondered how they could possibly piece together flip flops to make a flowerpot worthy of holding a plant. Boy, was I strolling down the wrong path! The idea behind the Flip Flop Flower Pot is its [...]
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by Doreen Coleman on March 1, 2010
I’m not crazy about using green in my home. My favorite color is brown, because it is warm, and almost neutral, which means I can switch out accent colors as I please. Our brown carpet also conveniently matches the dog, but that’s another article. I recently learned, however, that I could go green while keeping [...]
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by Lisbeth Tanz on February 14, 2010
Quartz Countertops – Sinks need to sit on or in something and the newest trend in countertops is quartz. This natural stone look surface is perfect in kitchens because it’s non-porous – cooking debris and bacteria can’t soak in making quartz totally food safe. Quartz is also easy to maintain, unlike granite, which requires sealing, [...]
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by Cary Baumann ASID on January 20, 2010
My mother deliberated endlessly between harvest gold and avocado green when selecting the appliance color for our new home. Those were the current color trends–burnt orange was as well-but it had already been eliminated by my father. He hated the other two less, but equally, that is why my mother got to choose. My father [...]
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by Cary Baumann ASID on January 14, 2010
A&E and HGTV still haven’t called, nor have their cameras ever appeared at one of the many properties I “flipped” or rehabbed. I’ve been at it longer than these stations have existed: buying foreclosed and distressed properties fixing them up, staging them and selling the property for a profit. It did surprise me that someone [...]
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by Lisbeth Tanz on December 18, 2009
I don’t live in Portland, Oregon, but the more I talk with businesses, there, I think I seriously need to reconsider my living arrangements. Take the Mirador Community Store, for example. This place is a veritable Heaven on Earth for anyone even just a tiny bit green-minded. This place is the brainchild of Lynn and [...]
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by Lori Feldman on November 30, 2009
With unemployment at its highest point this year, many of us know at least one family affected by layoffs, disappearing bonuses or – my favorite euphemism – furlough days. Many who are still employed are nonetheless nervous about the future of their own jobs and have begun investigating top home-based business opportunities. Beth Leeper, a [...]
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