Decorating my home

Not all old house, but many of them have a fireplace. Exposed, or marginalized, thought of as the center of the house, or just as an utility, if you have a fireplace in your home you can consider yourself lucky.

Usually they blend in the decor quite well without redecorating, but when they do not, you can refresh them to match exactly your interior design concept.

To illustrate what we mean, take a look at this example:

Photo source: This Old House http://bit.ly/2AoJqDF

An Outmoded Fireplace Gets an Upgrade

If this gets you thinking about what you can do with the one in your house, here a couple of more examples and ideas:

15 Ways to Refresh Your Fireplace on Any Budget

We would really like to know if you have a fireplace and what it looks like. Leave a photo in a comment and maybe we can suggest some easy DIY ideas for a new look!

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Photo source: Geograph.org.uk http://bit.ly/2BBwZmg

Property guru Sarah Beeny is urging prospective sellers to get their houses market ready and up for sale ahead of the Christmas rush for a potential festive purchase.

Sarah Beeny property expert and presenter of popular Channel 4 television shows, including Property Ladder and Double Your House for Half the Money, says the figures don’t lie – the festive period is one of the busiest times of the year for house hunting.

With so many people having time off over the Christmas holidays, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s an upsurge in interest at this time of year. On Christmas Day in 2014, Rightmove recorded over a million house-hunters visiting the website. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense considering the amount of people that have new mobiles or tablets for Christmas presents and spend the day browsing the web. However, it’s worth noting that those searching on Christmas Day were actually serious about buying as over 10,000 people took time out from their turkey sandwiches to actually email agents on Christmas Day.

On Boxing Day it got even busier, with page views jumping to over 25 million – up 21% on 2012 – and views peaked on New Year’s Day, with over 38 million page views recorded.

Sarah Beeny says: People often think December’s a quiet time in the property market calendar and hold off selling until January, but these stats show that putting your house up for sale ahead of the festivities can pay dividends.

People who are looking to move have more time to search for properties and research the market over the festive period, so it is a great time to sell. You will get a head start on anyone not ready to make the most of the increased activity and generate mass interest in your property.

Most people think that this is a quiet time of year, but vendors who list their properties in late November and December get a significant amount of buyer interest over the festive period. People viewing properties in these months tend to be the serious ones, including people that need to buy for a particular reason, such as starting a new job in the New Year.

With an extended period of time off work and an iPad in hand, potential buyers’ search will have already started before the New Year. Presumably some buyers need a distraction from family get-togethers!

As a result, it is clear that marketing your property before Christmas can give you a real head-start, and expose your property to significant numbers of active buyers searching during the festive period.

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Photo source: Ktchn Mag http://bit.ly/2n5fTde

Kitchens might seem like the least customizable space in your house, but with a little bit of perspective… a kitchen can be a work of art.

We found some of the most impressive kitchen designs in an article on ktchnmag.com. They made a collection with stunning design they came across in 2017 for this common place inside a home.

Stunning Kitchens of 2017 [GALLERY]

Now, we know we cannot read an article without having some great ideas at the end for our house… What would you change and what idea would you borrow from the 2017 kitchen collection?!

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Photo source: Elle Decorations UK http://bit.ly/2iPriZq

Raising the value of the house can be done in many ways. You can start re-shaping it, creating more useful space, refurbishing, changing the design, and maybe even adding some technological improvements (smarthomes).

A clean-cut way to add value inside the home is choosing valuable antiques. Special decorating objects that blend in the design, old elements from an old house that can be reused and kept for their high value, furniture from antique shops…

It will give you some headaches when it comes to the general design of the house, but with a very critical eye and some rightfully chosen antiques, your house is going to be… precious!

Lifestyle: Antiques shopping in the UK

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Thinking about renewing the flooring in your small flat or your spacious house? Ever considered bamboo? 

Photo source: ThisOldHouse http://bit.ly/2l7iyCi

It looks great inside and the material (although not new) is one of the new entries in the commonly used materials for constructions and renovating.

We found a great article on ThisOldHouse.com about how to use bamboo for usual flooring for interior designing. There are, as for any other material, pros & cons.

Pros:
• A fast-renewing resource, bamboo is ready to harvest in 5 to 6 years, about one-tenth the time it takes red oak to mature. New stalks regrow from the same plant.
• Generally less expensive than a common hardwood by about $1 per square foot, and even cheaper in comparison with an exotic species.
• Extremely durable, a quality bamboo floor can last decades with care and minimal exposure to grit, high heels, and pets’ nails.

Cons:
• It can scratch, even with a factory finish, just as wood does; use doormats inside and protective pads with furniture.
• All bamboo is not the same, and it can be hard to sort through the quality claims. Plus, the different types (see below) make apples-to-apples comparisons a challenge.
• Off-gassing can occur with lesser-quality flooring made with adhesives containing urea-formaldehyde.

Read the full article for a clear image and all the implications.

All About Bamboo Flooring

More on how magical bamboo can be in Elora Hardy’s inspiring talk on TED.com.

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Photo source: Flickr http://bit.ly/2yXUUOG

When you’ve got a small kitchen, the hard part is getting used to it. Once you make peace with the thought that you will never have the entire space you need, you can learn to manage a small kitchen.

However, what we recommend is that – once in a while – you clean all the space up and get rid of all the useless stuff that just crowds up the room.

Moreover, there are tricks of making use of space that you don’t consider usable at first sight. Read the article below and tell us what you improved in your kitchen

How to Make Space in a Small Kitchen

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Caliente is the Spanish word for ‘hot’, but also the new Benjamin Moore color for 2018.

It is definitely stronger than the shades the famous paint producer got us used to in the last years. However, it is a good way to spice up a house exterior or to give some attitude to a boring interior.

Read the full story of the Benjamin Moore colour for 2018 in this article on Architectural Digest.

Photo source: Pinterest http://bit.ly/2fZwHMB

To put it in a context, Caliente is a special type of red.

The 2018 trends do not stop here, for what Benjamin Moore is concerned. You can find the entire suggested pallet for any type of redecoration you have in mind for next year right here.

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Wallpaper is a versatile decorating element that can fit all spaces, large of small. One of the primal benefits it that it fills up an open space or it can make an open plan flat come together as one.

Photo source: Freshome http://bit.ly/2wL1mEa

For most of you, just the word ‘wallpaper’ might bring up memories of your grandmother’s house, but keep your minds (and eyes!) open for the new wallpaper trends that started this year.

We are talking about:

Photo source: Pinterest http://bit.ly/2fZwHMB

Small spaces can also benefit from some extra color or shape brought easily with some wallpaper design. Use pieces of a wallpaper design that blends in or comes out of the general design by:

  • putting wallpaper behind shelves;
  • hanging it into frames;
  • cover your book display;
  • give your small tables a creative face.

Inspired by this great article on Freshome:

Wallpaper is Back!

These Are the 2017 Wallpaper Trends You Need to Check Out

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Photo source: HouseBeautiful http://bit.ly/2x5uXY3

We all can find very good excuses for not creating out little garden. If you can find a way to grow vegetable and plants even in your balcony, then you can have your garden anywhere.

 

HouseBeautiful.co.uk made a list of top 5 excuses and brought arguments against each and every one of them. We already told you that space is not an issue when it comes to domestic gardening and there are plenty of solutions for this problem. Let’s see the solution to the following problems like “I don’t have enough time” or “The plants aren’t going to get enough sun”.

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