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Informative Articles

Home Improvement Magazine
In every newsagent in every street there are several home improvement magazines to choose from. These magazines are available for all different sorts of home improvements. You can improve your home in anyway that you like, these magazines...

Location, Location, ... - Not!
LOCATION, LOCATION, ... - NOT! Untold Secrets of Buying and Selling Real Estate Owning a home can truly be satisfying. However, with the financial pressures of today's world, getting good value is crucial. These days I am much savvier about...

Remodeling For Resale Value
Home owners who remodel their homes or make improvements to their property naturally hope to recoup any costs when it comes time to refinance or put their home up for sale. However, when it comes to financing and the real estate market, some...

Using A Hardwood Floor Sander
Refinishing your hardwood floors yourself can be time consuming and a bit scary at first but well worth it in the long run. It can cost a bundle to hire a professional to refinish your floors for you, but if you have the time, you can do...

What to Know Before Signing a Home Improvement Contract
It is important to be a very careful consumer when it comes to home improvement contractors. For instance, I had a case where my client, an elderly and blind woman, signed a contract and paid $30,000.00 to a home improvement company that disappeared...

 
Home Improvements – The Fun Stuff


Planning home improvements necessarily involves addressing numerous practical matters. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the fun stuff!
The Fun Stuff
The first thing to plan for in home improvements is the practical stuff. The second thing you need to talk to family members about is the fun stuff.
Most people have colors they like and colors they don’t like. They have things that interest them and things that don’t. Get your family to talk to you about those things. Each person’s bedroom, or bedroom area, should reflect his or her taste and interests.
A boy who likes green, football, and backpacking can easily have a sage green (it “reads” as more neutral than many shades of green if re-sale of your home is a concern) room with cream woodwork, cream interior shutters, and cream ceiling. Framed football posters and wilderness scenes might be pleasant. Bedding with a rustic motif (rows of stylized pine trees?) from L.L. Bean or Plow and Hearth would work right in. Add a touch or two of a bright color like red or yellow.
Does he need a desk in his room? A chest of drawers? A bookcase? Would he enjoy having a bulletin board? Even if they’re small, most rooms need at least three lamps so that illumination is general and even. The shades are usually best in warm, neutral colors. (Light coming through green shades tends to make people look sick.) Lamp shades should be level and the seams should be toward the wall so they’re not visible. When the bottom edge of most lamp shades in a room are the same height from the floor, the room tends to look serene and cohesive.
Hanging pictures usually look best if the bottom edges of the frames are the same height from the floor and level with each other, too. There are


exceptions to this and every generalization of course. A grouping of pictures can have the bottom tier follow the “rule” while all of the other pictures are higher. A picture over a fireplace often looks good higher than the other pictures in the room.
Pictures usually look best when they have a relationship to furniture or an architectural feature. Pictures centered over a chest, bed, bookcase, or fireplace are good examples. Pictures don’t tend to look good if they’re scattered willy-nilly around a room, or if they’re up near the ceiling (unless they’re part of a grouping), or if the height at which they’re hung varies wildly with no rhyme nor reason.
A girl who loves pink, the ballet, and swimming can have woodwork the same cream as her brother’s while her walls are a soft pink (a pink with a hint of yellow in it tends to go well with cream), and her art work reflects her interests. If she loves to read, make sure she has a good reading lamp near her bed, or near a comfortable chair, or both.
A cream colored dust ruffle with widely spaced pink stripes and a quilted plaid coverlet in pink, green, yellow, and blue on a cream background might look nice. Add cream fabric window shades with large pink polka dots and I’ll bet she’ll smile.
The bigger point is to simply have fun with some of your home improvements. There is no need to look exclusively at practical matters.

About The Author

Raynor James is with http://www.fsboamerica.org - FSBO homes for sale by owner. Visit our "sell my home" page at http://www.fsboamerica.org/seller.cfm to sell your own home yourself with a free 1 month listing.