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Before and After: Small Space Redo [by home2u]

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 08:20:26 +1530

Home Makeover & Decorating Ideas:: Before and After: Small Space Redo

Living Room Before

Tip #1: Clean Up and Clean Out To start your small space redesign, get rid of what is not a necessity. This will help you get the room down to the basics.

Living Room After

Tip #2: Streamline Bulky Products From a design perspective, technology can often take up a great deal of room, especially in a small space. The Philips Ambilight FlatTV shown here is one smart way to streamline a room's look.

Bedroom Before

Tip #3: Bring in Natural Light Another key element to a room is lighting. To bring in more natural lighting, consider removing bulky or dated window treatments. Changing out lighting fixtures can also help brighten up the room.

Bedroom After

Tip #4: Use Color The background of any room is color. Painting a room is the most dramatic and inexpensive way to change the look of the room, large or small. Particularly in a small space, you shouldn't be afraid to work with color, even dark colors.

Bathroom Before

Tip #5: Create a Look Book Collect inspiring ideas from rooms in magazines, catalogs, notes from TV shows, movies, etc. When it comes time to make decisions, you'll have a creative direction at your fingertips.

Bathroom After

Tip #6: Determine a Theme If you don't know what your style is, determine a theme for the room. Themes help simplify your styling needs, such as a beach house theme, New York loft, or perhaps a country cottage.

Patio Before

Tip #7: Rearrange Your Space Rework and rearrange what you currently have in a space. Whether it's a living room or patio, aim to create different inviting spaces.

Patio After

Tip #8: Accentuate and Accessorize Don't feel compelled to buy all new stuff for a different look. Redesigning can be as simple as focusing your budget on buying accessories such as throw pillows, plants, and candles.

Making a Guest Room Inviting [by home2u]

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:17:48 +1530

Home Makeover & Decorating Ideas:: Making a Guest Room Inviting

A bedroom gets cozier when you turn the bed into the centerpiece.

Before

The Challenge: To play up the bed as the focal point and to create better balance in the furniture arrangement. With no art on the walls and no headboard to accent the bed, the room feels a little spartan, in spite of its sun-drenched Provencal color scheme.

See below for our "After" photo and read how these challenges were solved.

The Solution: Emphasize the bed as the room's centerpiece with a do-it yourself headboard.

After

The Specifics:

Make a headboard using an accordion-style bamboo garden trellis from a garden shop or home center. Painted to look like antique bamboo, it adds pattern and texture to the wall and echoes the wood of the desk.

Place the slant-top desk flat against the wall instead of angling it across the corner. This makes better use of wall space and provides a base for a casual display.

Add instant art that requires no commitment (no nails in the wall) by propping a large square of pressed tin against the wall. The tin creates another level to move the eye around the space and serves as a background for potted plants that add life to the room.

Introduce color contrast with a bed skirt that picks up the note of blue in the pillows. The blue skirt reinforces the pillows as a cooling counterpoint to the warm yellows in the room.

Move the chair to the window to take advantage of natural light for reading. It's also in position for using at the desk when the drop front is opened.

Before and After [by home2u]

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:50:12 +1530

Home Makeover & Decorating Ideas:: Before and After

Before and After: Ranch Style Updated

1950s ranch houses offer a lot of convenience but often feature plain rooms. Here's how to play up the appealing character of these homes.

before

The Challenge: To lighten and refresh a 1958 ranch house with color, and to rearrange furnishings for better balance and function. The furniture hugs the walls in the living room; the pieces are out of scale with the space and with each other, and the mix of styles is not successful. Two main walls in the living area are brown wood paneling; the walls and the avocado-green wall-to-wall carpeting make the house feel dark and dated. In the dining room, the table and chairs float in the middle of a large space.

See below for our "After" photo and read how these challenges were solved.

The Solution: Paint the walls and change the flooring. Then arrange furniture in new, more intimate groupings, adding a few pieces that are in better scale with the major upholstered pieces.

After

The Specifics:

Start with color for punch. Because the homeowner collects mid-century modern furniture and accessories and loved the extra-long sofa, the designer chose greenish gold, chocolate, and red for the new color scheme. These hues are rooted in the 1950s but still have a contemporary edge. The paneling is painted greenish gold, and the tongue-and-groove paneled ceiling and beams are painted light-reflecting white.

Rip up the carpet. If time and budget don't allow for hardwood floors to be installed, try a hardboard product (such as Masonite), which is brown and comes in 4 x 8-foot sheets with a beveled edge. Glue the sheets directly to the subflooring, using a polymer adhesive; then apply three coats of polyurethane with a large paint pad. The results look like stained concrete that has been scored, so it's clean and contemporary, yet warm. It's also economical: Covering the entire living and dining area cost only $200.

Freshen the brick fireplace with paint. A warm red works with the colors in the living room as well as in the dining room.

Break up the long living room by creating spaces within the space. The long sofa moved from in front of the windows to the end wall, where it anchors a conversational grouping. The upholstered red armchairs frame it at each end, and a pair of new wooden armchairs faces the sofa across an ebony Nelson bench that serves as a coffee table. This grouping is now the first thing you see when you come into the room, and it provides an inviting destination that draws visitors in.

How To Create A Cozy Space [by jamie2]

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:16:49 +1530

Home Makeover & Decorating Ideas:: How To Create A Cozy Space

Using Directed Lighting will add shadows - this is good ! Shadows block out areas and draw you more visually into the room. Directed lighting is exactly what it sounds like - light that you can direct where it lands. Examples are table lamps, and standing lamps with down cast shades which create the shadows. Be sure to use warm varieties of incandescent lighting instead of florescent or halogen.

Re: Clean It and Clear It [by jamie2]

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:12:08 +1530

Home Makeover & Decorating Ideas:: Clean It and Clear It

Cover Your Walls

This is generally one of the most asked questions we receive from our readers. The options are wide and creative by using the obvious methods..paint or by thinking outside the box and using other materials such as fabric on the walls or draping it from 3M removable hooks, adhesive decals, shoji screens or removable wallpaper.

Time: 1 - 5 hours

Lay an Area Rug

Once you have chosen color coordinating rugs for your space, this process is the fastest to implement!

Time: 2 minutes