Thinking about a Home Makeover for Your New Year's Resolution?

If you're thinking about major home makover projects, you won't want to pay for expensive upgrades using your credit cards. Credit card debt can ruin your happiness, even in a perfect home!

We're offering a free credit help Teleseminar January 7, 2006. Although the Teleseminar will help people with credit problems, the main focus is on how to build credit for home financing. This will help you if you want to refinance your home to pay for your home makeover.

Also, get home makeover tips and spend less money for the designer's look:

FREE Interior Design Teleseminar: Home Makeover Help!

Joy to you in 2006!

Jeanette Fisher



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Dramatic Powder Room Makeovers

Develop you personal home interior design skills without committing to a huge project. Your guest bathroom, or powder room, presents a great place to start with your home makeover. This small room takes less money and effort to decorate than your larger rooms.

Because guests view this little space privately, visitors take more time to notice the interior design details. For this reason, you want to showcase great design to make a good impression. Also, hospitality shines in a well-appointed guest bath where it takes just a couple of splurges on extravagant fixtures to make a huge impact that your guests will remember. Company may not remember your living room walls because they're focusing on the people in the space, but they will remember your powder room.

What if you don't have a powder room and guests use your children's bathroom?

Children appreciate being treated as adults and don't need a childish bathroom. Don't use juvenile-patterned wallpaper or accessories.

Keep bathtub toys in the bathtub (in one of those plastic-coated wire baskets) and hang a ceiling to floor curtain in front of the bathtub. This curtain can be hung in front of the normal plastic liner from the ceiling. For small bathrooms, where the daylight comes in over the bathtub, use white or another light-emitting fabric. A curtain made of soft gauze or cotton does double duty: it softens the space with fabric while masking the bathtub, which is not a guest-bath feature.

Powder Room Basics

To finish any proper powder room, you need a great sink, faucet, and cabinet with a large mirror, plus the toilet. If you're working on a budget, look for sinks on sale at a warehouse store or at Habitat for Humanity’s thrift store, ReStore. Don't buy a poorly constructed cabinet; look for an antique dresser or buffet that spans the wall space.

Dramatic powder rooms emphasize remarkable mirrors. You may be tempted to keep the ugly wall-mounted medicine cabinet, but if you truly want an impressive guest bath, hang a spectacular mirror instead.

Store toothbrushes and other necessities in the cabinet below and move medicines to the kitchen, out or reach of children.

If you need to replace the toilet, which only needs to be functional because the other details will outshine it, look for a toilet which blends in with your home's style.

Powder Room Makeover Tips

Besides the bathroom fixtures, your flooring, walls, and ceiling offer the most economical home makeover opportunities. Because of the small area, you can use large ceramic tiles that mimic stone, marble, or even wood. Also, linoleum comes in a multitude of interesting patterns and has the benefit of being warmer to bare feet than tile.

The area that makes the greatest interior design impact, the walls and ceiling, give the best place to have fun with your home makeover. Decorative paint finishes, like subtle layering of glazes, add the designer’s touch without the expense. Choose colors that harmonize with the rest of your home to reinforce your color theme. Use color psychology to make your powder room present a cooling oasis or a warming shelter.

Use an essential oil diffuser to help your powder room smell as good as it looks. Avoid unnatural sprays that cause irritation to those with sensitivities.

The final interior design detail, exquisite lighting, doesn't need to kill your budget. Perhaps your dining chandelier would make a better statement in your bathroom than it does in your dining room. If you life in a climate with high humidity and hot summers, a ceiling fan helps keep the room cool. Look for a fan with lights that point upward. Lights shining down on you in a small space feel over-powering. Also, use wall sconces on either side of the vanity mirror instead of the usual builder’s light fixture above the mirror.

Finishing touches, guest towels, hard soaps, and lotions make your guests and yourself feel pampered. Choose generous, thick, and soft hand towels to add softness to an otherwise hard surface space.

Because people feel more comfortable in smaller bathrooms which offer privacy, a guest bathroom offers the perfect place to practice your design skills. Splurge a little on lavish wall finishes and guest towels to showcase your home's interior design.

Copyright © 2006 Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author's information with live links only.)

Free Interior Design Teleseminar: Home Makeover Help! Jeanette Fisher helps homemakers transform their homes with five easy steps. Free Design Psychology ebook and information at http://www.joytothehome.com/

Ornate Tin Ceilings

(The author of the article below has beautiful examples of her family's work on her website, Heritage Ceilings.)

Thinking About Buying Ornate Tin Ceiling Tiles?
By Jean Morrison

Use Aluminium Instead Of Tin

An aluminum alloy has now been created to especially suit these beautiful art metal ceilings. Aluminum is a corrosion resistant, durable product which doesn't rust, unlike steel which is used by some manufactures of pressed tin. The panels are still widely known as pressed tin even though they are not made from tin.

Think About The Design In Your Ceiling Panels And whether They Will Suit The Measurements Of your Room

With a little forethought you can create a "tin" ceiling that exudes the "Wow Factor". The "Wow Factor" is the reaction you will receive when your visitors look at your new ceiling for the first time. To get that factor you need to spend a little time thinking about how the ceiling panels will fit your particular room. If the repeat pattern you have chosen measures two feet by two feet, will you need to trim all the outside panels in order for them to fit the dimensions of your room? If this would be the case then you need to re-think your plans.

You have two choices: choose a small all-over style which will look perfectly fine if trimmed to fit the room or you can use a border panel around the outside of your room and have the larger designs in the centre of the ceiling. Most of the larger designs require a border or filler strip around the edge, otherwise they don't look so elegant when installed. Border or filler panels most usually have a small pattern on them which complements the larger main panels in the centre of the ceiling. If you require a border around your main panels then it will be worth consulting an expert to find out how wide the border should be. It is easy to upset the balance of your ceiling by having a border that is too wide or conversely too narrow. Ask your supplier for help on this topic.

Is Crown Cornice Needed?

There is now a delightful range of crown cornice moldings made from aluminum. These come in a variety of sizes to suit various ceiling heights. Crown cornices need to be mitred in the corners of the room and there are now various accessories to suit the individual cornices. These accessories are very handy as they hide the mitred cut edges which can sometimes be a little rough for those home handymen who have little experience in mitring. An alternative to metal crown cornices are timber moldings. Plaster cornices should not be used with metal ceilings.

Can You Install Your Tin Ceilings Yourself?

The easiest way to install pressed tin is to firstly fix building ply to the old ceiling or walls and then nail the tin to the ply. Timber battens can be used but building ply makes the job much easier. It is best to remove existing cornice before the ply is fixed to the ceiling.
Most reputable ceiling suppliers will offer detailed fitting instructions. If you lack experience in this area, you may prefer to employ someone with building experience. However, most metal ceilings are fitted by their owners. Tacking nails should be used initially until you are satisfied you have everything in its final position. Tacking nails are quite long and must only be partly nailed in so that they can be removed easily with pliers. When you are satisfied that everything is in the right spot then you can remove the tacking nails and finish the job off with small nails. Details of which nails to use should be in the manufacturers fitting instructions.

Painting your Metal Panels

Painting an ornate, aluminum ceiling in fine detail is easy because it is painted before it gets fixed to the ceiling. Most aluminum paneling is sold with etch primer already on it so it is immediately ready to paint. You can use one colour over the whole ceiling, you can add just a touch of colour on the moldings or you can can paint every detail in various shades of paint. The patterns in aluminum ceilings are more deeply pressed than other types of ceilings so they create lovely shadows themselves just from electric light or from natural daylight. Accordingly most people use one colour of paint over the whole ceiling. It is strongly recommended that pale shades of paint be used. Darker colours can be appealing in theory but in practice they can often give a heavy oppressive feel to a room. Oil based paints are recommended. If the nails are still visible you can dob each one with a little paint.

About The Author

Jean Morrison is owner of Heritage Ceilings, a unique ceiling decoration business dedicated to bringing beautiful ceilings back into our public buildings and homes.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/Expert Jean Morrison

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Happy New Year!

Spring Cleaning for Your New Year Already? Time to take down that ugly wallpaper!

Tips for Stripping Wallpaper: How to Get Rid of Ugly Wallpaper!

I broke my promise to myself and stripped wallpaper again. While stripping the wallpaper, I realized that many homemakers get wrong advice for this horrendous task. After years of experience on over 30 houses (including one 6,000 square foot Victorian with layers of painted-over wallpaper!), I offer my tried and best tips to strip wallpaper:

1. Use a clothes steamer or rent a professional steamer.

2. Soak a large section of the wall.

3. Run a "Paper Tiger" scoring tool across the damp section.

4. Steam the section again.

5. Spray the section with fabric softener and hot water.

6. Score the section with the paper tiger again.

7. Steam again.

8. Remove any curling edges (sometimes large areas peel off).

9. Scrape with a six inch sheetrock blade or a plastic scrapper if you have a heavy hand. Take care not to scratch the walls.

10. Repeat the above steps on the section until most of the wallpaper and sticky glue scrapes off easily.

11. Scrub with hot water, TSP, and a sponge with a scratchy surface.

Cautions: Use the Paper Tiger gingerly so you don't scratch or gouge the walls. Use gloves with the harsh chemical TSP.

Don't live with ugly wallpaper any longer!

P. S. Please email me if you have any additional tips on stripping wallpaper that would help others!

Copyright © Jeanette J. Fisher.


Jeanette Fisher loves to help home makers create homes for glorious living. She teaches five easy steps to makeover your home for happiness. For free ebook on Design Psychology go to http://www.joytothehome.com