Renovations

It's all in the planning. Home renovations always cost more money, take more time, and cause more aggravation than we anticipate. The end result, however, is almost always worth your painful efforts. Watch Irwin and Nicola, our Design2Share Q&A co-hosts, as they advise you about getting all your design specs in writing, help manage your expectations for how a remodeling job should turn out, demonstrate their favorite renovation tricks and tips, walk you through one of their remodeling successes, and discuss special details that can make your next remodeling job that much more satisfying. And don't miss their recommendation for greening up your next home renovation!

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Guest Rooms

Updated on November 15, 2009 by Design2Share

Updated on November 15, 2009 by Design2Share

Updated on November 15, 2009 by Design2Share

If we listen to the angel on our left shoulder, we definitely want to make guests feel welcome and stay with us in our apartment or house. But pay attention to the devil on our right shoulder, and we come up with designer Irwin Weiner's tip for keeping visitors from wearing out their welcomes. He and fellow designer Nicola Chernicoff pour themselves some wine, relax in a great toile-covered guest room, and share their advice for how to add fine hotel amenities to your guest room, why pillows can be a problem, how to experiment with color when decorating small rooms, the valuable no-wrinkle sheet tip, Nicola's advice for maximizing guest room sleeping comfort, and Irwin's unique design for squeezing ample bed space into a tiny guest room. And, of course, you'll get his devilish tip for unwelcoming house guests!

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Outdoor Spaces

Updated on March 15, 2010 by Design2Share

Updated on April 14, 2010 by Design2Share

It's a distinct home design trend today to set up "outdoor rooms." This podcast episode explores the huge movement to bring the indoors outside and to colonize lawns, gardens, and yards with additional living and entertaining space. Nicola and Irwin, our Design2Share Q&A co-hosts, offer their usual nuggets of wisdom and opinionated barbs as they tackle how to determine the function of different outdoor spaces, how to define outdoor rooms with a variety of landscaping and hardscaping materials, what furniture and features define today's outdoor spaces, how to accessorize the great outdoors, tips on when and where to shop for good outdoor buys, and the importance of outdoor lighting and other details. And there's even a tip on decorating with mosquito netting!

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Choosing Colors

Updated on November 15, 2009 by Design2Share

If you're looking for a magical color palette, forget about it. Everyone gets tired of the colors of their clothes, and some people weary of their hair color. That's only natural. So the bottom line is: decorating with color isn't rocket science. You're going to change it around frequently, so you might as well have fun with your color choices, and even risk choosing brave and bold schemes. In this Design2Share Q&A episode, Irwin and Nicola look at classic and monochromatic room schemes, ways to choose color schemes that inspire different moods (uplifting, dramatic, romantic, etc.), how to paint your home's architectural details, finding color inspiration from different countries, how to pick up on color trends, ways to use contrasting colors in a room, and a host of additional hints and tips surrounding decorating and color selection.

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