Our Top Tips: Play It Smart When You Renovate Your Home

Irwin Weiner ASID - Our regular readers know that Jay and I are renovating our country home's kitchen and the back-entry laundry, powder room, and mudroom areas. We've been thinking a lot about how homeowners need to have their eyes wide open to the realities of renovating, as it's oftentimes an unnatural act and an extreme intrusion upon your family's home life. Here are Design2Share's top tips for renovating your home, should you want to tackle something fresh and updated during the new year.

• Protect yourself by hiring experienced, reliable, and highly-skilled professionals for any home renovation project. Personal recommendations from family, friends, and neighbors are best (“They did great work on my addition!”). There are many experienced and reliable contractors working in your community—highly skilled professionals who do business the right way.

• If you're hiring a contractor to do construction, renovation, or repair work on your home, avoid paying cash "under the table" for your job. You’ll likely not get a better deal.

• You need a warranty from the professionals you hire, meaning some kind of recourse for poor workmanship.

• You have the added risk of liability if an injury takes place on your property when you hire non-insured workers for your home projects. You’re better off hiring fully insured and bonded individuals and firms.

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3 Furniture Stripping Tips and Design2Share's DIY Rules

Irwin Weiner ASID - If you're Ron Hazelton, home handyman and DIY expert, purchasing and restoring an antique dresser from a flea market is an easy-peasy snap. But you or I may have a few problems with project details. After all, in the do-it-yourself world, it's important to learn shortcuts and best practices. I found one of Ron's great, short-and-sweet tips videos on how to get stripper out of small details and recessed areas. He demonstrates three different ways to remove stripper "gunk" from hard-to-reach places, and I must say ... he makes me want to go out and find an antique door this weekend so I can try out one of his techniques. And one of them really does involve kitty litter!

The DIY rules here at Design2Share are simple: If you can have fun and enjoy a home remodeling or redecorating project - or in this case, furniture refinishing and restoration - and you can do it within a weekend or a short series of weekends or weekdays, then KNOCK YOURSELF OUT and tackle that do-it-yourself project. We wouldn't dream of stopping you. But if you won't enjoy the process, if there's a remote possibility that the project will drive you and yours nuts, and if the task at hand is too complex, then it's not a do-it-yourself assignment.

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Sunny California Ranch House Restoration Magic

Irwin Weiner ASID - Coming from South Africa to the United States, I enjoy homes that celebrate the sun, and there was hardly a more ardent sun worshipper than architect Cliff May, considered to be the Father of the California Ranch House. My next house will definitely be ranch style - you can do so much in updating a ranch home. Look at the proof in today's featured video; master architect/land planner Barry Berkus, worked on the restoration of a Cliff May home north of Santa Barbara, and you'll see a celebration of sun, light, and air.

I'm sure that at one time, the heavy timbers and natural woven materials on the ceiling were

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When This Old House Becomes This New Teardown

Irwin Weiner ASID - We're in the process of selling our house in Bucks County, PA after 8 wonderful years of living there. We took a modest 1900 farmhouse and took a year to gut the original core house and refashion it into a more spacious, updated space. The house has since been published in shelter magazines, and we've made wonderful memories there. It will be sad to move on, but we love Bucks County and will look for something else in the area.  

But this time, our inclination is to look for a complete teardown. It's more expensive to remodel and renovate This Old House than it is to build from scratch, and many homeowners haven't figured that out yet. It's costly in daily lifestyle to live in the midst of remodeling - not to mention the mess everywhere - but it's oftentimes better to look for a great lot on a choice piece of land and a hovel that you can simply tear down and start over with. That's basically what the couple in today's featured video did: they left the outer facade, but blew away the rest of the house and made it fit their vision.

Think of the practicalities of eliminating an old-fashioned living room, focusing on adding more open space in a great room adjacent to dining and kitchen areas. Think of a brand-new master bedroom suite, with spacious walk-in closets and spa-like en suite bathrooms. You can recycle old materials into your new design, go greener and energy-efficient with your building materials, appliances, and heating and cooling systems. You're not hemmed in by the old, and you can run amok for $170/square foot of finished space - or more - yes, you can spend much more, but control yourself, and save room in your budget to hire a good interior designer!

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Update on May 10, 2011 by Design2Share

Super King Size Leather Beds: We just found a great collection of sleek leather bed designs. They add sophistication, whether your bedroom decor is traditional or modern. 

Featured Project: DIY Painted Headboard

 

Now is the perfect time to think about freshening up your interior space. With a splash of color here and a new piece of furniture there, it's easy to redecorate. Here's a quick, budget-conscious DIY design idea to help get you started.

Paint Your Own Headboard

Chances are if you if you purchased your bed frame as part of a bedroom set, the headboard is already included. If you don't want to put forth the extra cash, especially after paying for a pricey mattress, no problem! Painted headboards are a great way to add a pop of color to your bedroom.

Step 1: Measure the width of the head of your bed and mark it with blue painter's tape from floor to ceiling. Now, choose your color based on your desired color scheme. You obviously don't want it to be the same shade as your walls, but it should complement that color.

Step 2: Once you have your color, paint the wall, staying within the blue painters tape. Once the paint dries, if you choose to do so, you can detail with paint or with some removable wall decals from a company like Blik. For as little as $40, Blik makes easily removable wall decals in fun shapes like bookshelves, chandeliers, birds, etc. If this sounds like too much work, don't worry and leave your wall a solid color.

Step 3: Simply position your bed up against the painted wall, prop up some decorative Euro pillows in coordinating colors and patterns, and you have yourself a headboard. You might want to take this opportunity to invest in a new comforter or duvet in fun, light, spring colors. You'd be surprised at what a little bit of paint and some new bedding can do for your space!

Contemporary vanities and more at Decor Planet for your bathroom needs.