Solar Power Panels on Your Roof - It's in Your Home's Future

Irwin Weiner ASID - This election year is bringing lots of talk about Dirty Energy and providing new Clean Energy jobs for United States citizens. I looked into Danny Kennedy and his new business, Sungevity. The former Greenpeace activist is now actively calling on all homeowners to Solar-Up your home. His company has the software to estimate how effective a specific number of solar panels will be to power your home, and with a US Bank homeowners loan, you can install solar panels on your roof for roughly half the cost of materials and labor, enjoy the energy savings "off the dirty energy grid," and pay back your energy loan in easy installments.

Go to Amazon and learn more about Danny Kennedy's new book, Rooftop Revolution.

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features. 

Renova Thinks Toilet Paper Can Be Sexy

Irwin Weiner ASID - I'm rarely at a loss for words - but have you seen Renova's black toilet paper? Black? It actually makes sense as a fashion statement. The European consumer goods brand moves its paper products into the decor category with a colorful statement. Why not toilet paper in colors to match the decor of your bath or powder room? Why decorate and accessorize, but leave the white roll to make its usual ho-hum statement? As Renova says in the following video, "Why not?" They know we're having fun with the whole color concept. Toilet paper as a sexy fashion statement - puhleeze! Still, I think I want some rolls for my own home. Click here to purchase....
 

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features. 

Manhattan Actress Arden Myrin Wants You to Take Her Home!

Irwin Weiner ASID - I'm addicted now to SPACEStv. They're a YouTube channel devoted to interior design videos. I wanted to share one of their vids with you - NYC/LA actress Arden Myrin is a comic, sassy presence on the interior design video scene and she asks complete strangers to "Take Me Home," picking folks off the streets and taking potluck that she'll get a tour of a great private living space.

Her Russian Roulette street gamble pays off in spades in today's featured video as she encounters, Jeff, a well-to-do Upper West Side Manhattan ... bricklayer? His tricked-out apartment is filled with gadgets and goodies, particularly in the multiple-showerhead master bathroom, Crestron control center, and light-up agate countertops in the kitchen. 

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features. 

Still Time to Visit the 2012 Hampton Designer Showhouse

Irwin Weiner ASID - Showhouses are fun to visit. Come on, admit it! Each room is a POP of color, a DARING experiment, something FRESH, and GLAMOUR up to the gills. Unlike your home or mine, a showhouse is meant to be theatrical, with each room's design team trying to visually and viscerally hit you between the eyes. And best of all, showhomes are meant to be specatator sports: "Oh, I love that bed." "Isn't that hideous?!" "We could do that in our home." "What were they thinking?" "Wow!"

As a showhouse veteran, I can tell you that designers put their hearts and soul into staging a good show (and it costs designers a great deal of time and money as well), all to raise funds through sponsorships and ticket and merchandise sales for good causes. So please do attend the 2012 Hampton Designer Showhouse this year - running through Labor Day Weekend - and enjoy today's featured video house tour of the 2011 home.

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.