Do It Yourself: the Perfect Finishing Touches

Making a house a home is all about adding the personal touches, the little things that show off what makes you, well, you. Anyone can go out and buy all kinds of things for a new house or as part of decorating a room in your current home to give it a new lease of life, but that still doesn’t necessarily show off your own personal taste and passion.

A lot of homeowners will bring in interior designers, if they have the disposable income, to help them turn their tired rooms into something much more vibrant through a new pair of curtains, maybe some different furniture, some elaborate lighting or some subtle touches here or there that might not jump out at you but really make an impact in the room itself.

DIY is another great way of adding a personal touch to your home. It’s a common misconception that personalizing your home is about putting up pictures of yourself, your family, or splattering bits of memorabilia around. In fact, it can be as simple as putting up a few shelves on an empty wall and filling them with books, maybe feature vases or lamps, or maybe just creating something a bit unusual using a bit of creativity, some timber and a few screws.

One great method of adding a personal touch is through some kind of metallic design. If you have a family Coat of Arms for instance, you could have this created through a process known as cold heading process and turned into a piece of art on your wall, maybe inside the front door or in the hall. Cold forming, for those unaware, is a process whereby metals are shaped without removing any of the material itself, thereby helping to maintain its strength and stability helping to create a really clean and stylish piece of metal.

Alternatively, if you want to stick with the artwork theme, then a family portrait is a great option. Either having it done by a professional artist using paint and a canvas, (although this is time consuming so you might want to consider this option if you have small children who get bored easily), or transforming a particular family photo onto a piece of canvas and mounting it to the wall can not just give you a real “family home” feel, but also enables you to add a touch of colour and style to your walls rather than traditional photographs in frames.

Approaching

  An ant and flower

The Weekend in Black and White

The Benefits of Having a Garden Office

Working from home is becoming more common in the UK. Employers are realising they don’t need to have everybody in the office at the same time. If you don’t have a separate place to work at home, a garden office is the answer. These offices provide so many benefits, in terms of well-being efficiency, and cost. Here are some of the main reasons why you should seriously consider thinking about investing in such an office.

Cost Considerations

It can cost over £10,000 to install a good office in your garden. This is a significant cost and cost many people will feel wary about. If you consider the costs of commuting to work each day, though, things change. In London, workers often spend around £2,000 to £4,000 a year on commuting. In just a few years, the cost of not commuting will make sure the office pays for itself.

In the long-term, you’ll actually be making a profit.

Work and Personal Life

Work life and personal life are difficult to separate for many people. One of the reasons for this is because in a home-based environment the office might double as the living room. It’s hard to resist the pull of the TV remote. And this applies even if you’ve managed to dedicate a room to work.

The office in the garden is different. It’s detached from the property and it requires effort for you to shirk from your work to go do something else. It keeps work and personal lives completely separate.

Well-Being

Surveys have shown people who work from home are generally much happier than those who commute to a place of work. Whilst there are exceptions to every rule, it’s easy to see why this is.

At home, you don’t have to start work at a certain time. You can afford to start later or get a head start on your work as there’s no commute. If you consider how the average commute takes an hour you’re saving a lot of time.

And then there’s the commute after work. You don’t get paid for this travelling time. This is an hour of your free time you’re giving up to go to work. A garden office allows you to simple get up and walk back to the house. This takes no longer than sixty seconds.

Your Way

You have little to no control of your workplace because you don’t own the building. All offices on your property are yours to do what you want with. You can chop and change it according to your whims. This increases your productivity as you’re happy with where you work.

Stress Free

Most people who commute to work find themselves grumbling over the weather, the time, and other people. It’s a stressful experience which you aren’t getting paid for. If you don’t have to leave your property to go to work there’s no reason why you should be stressed. This promotes healthy living and makes you actually want to go to work each day.

Tim Miller recommends that if you work from your home that you consider setting up a garden office.

Bathroom Renovations –Homeowner's Guide

After the purchase of a home, renovating the whole house or even just a part, is probably the next biggest investment a homeowner can make. Along with kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations are among the most common modifications done to a property. Sometimes, this is because the old bathroom is too small to accommodate the needs of a growing family. Sometimes, the style simply needs some updating. Or perhaps, some lingering structural issues need to be addressed before things go out of hand.

Bathroom renovations, most people should know, are not endeavours that a casual DIYer can easily take on. Rebuilding a bathroom entails the expertise of specialists in plumbing, painting and even carpentry. You might think that you can pull off this project by yourself, but you'll be saving a great deal of money and effort by letting an expert handle the job for you.

But how do you find specialists in bathroom renovations? Interested home owners may ask for the recommendations of relatives and friends who may have had their bathrooms rebuilt for them. Alternatively, if you do not know of anyone who can give you a recommendation, you can simply search online. As you browse for a bathroom specialist, make sure to view their online portfolio to have a glimpse of the quality of their final output. When available, look for testimonials, both those posted on the contractor’s website and those posted on third-party review sites.

In their search for a company specialising in bathroom renovations, Home owners can benefit from the company whose employees have the necessary licenses for their trades.

Almost every homeowner has a particular idea about the final look he has in mind for his newly-renovated bathroom. But unless you have an unlimited budget and superior aesthetic sense, you will do well to work with a bathroom specialist who is keen on collaborating with you for the best outcome for your bathroom.

With your own inputs as well as a fixed budget in mind, an expert bathroom contractor can push you towards the right direction in terms of choosing the best theme, design options and even choice of fixtures and fittings. Apart from experience and expertise, the bathroom renovations contractor you should get knows that the key to a successful project lies in his ability to listen to what his client has in mind.

A reliable bathroom renovation contractor is upfront and transparent about all the costs entailed in a project. He acknowledges that renovations can inconvenience the residents of the house. And as such, he works diligently to meet the agreed upon deadline for the turnover of the project without compromising workmanship and the quality of the final output. Finally, he makes sure that the house is clean, or even cleaner than before the project commenced.            

So when looking to run this kind of renovation project for your home, be sure to plan things ahead. You will need to consider your budget, find the right contractor and closely monitor the progress of your bathroom renovation project. It will be great to share a timeline with your contractor so both of you know if everything is running on schedule.

About The Author: Kenneth Lawrence is a crafty "handyman". His craft involves DIY concepts. He loves to share guidelines and tips about stuff on home improvement. He writes and reads almost anything that can hone DIY skills and increase knowledge about DIY concepts. Kenneth Recommends http://smartbathroomrenovations.com.au for specialized bathroom renovations that couldn’t just be handled by any DIY guy but requires professional and expert assistance.

Budgeting Mistakes to Avoid While Buying a Home for the First Time

Buying a home for the first time is an occasion too big to not feel butterflies fluttering in one’s stomach.  The amount of money at stake is simply mind boggling and therefore it is advised to be thorough with every detail of the deal to ensure a happy ending.  Not many get a second chance. Here is a post detailing the very mistakes one must avoid committing.

Buying a home in one of the best locations is a dream that everyone would like to fulfill at least once in his or her lifetime. Those who are able to accomplish the same are considered lucky by themselves as well as others. However, consider a situation when you had the best of opportunities to achieve this dream and by your own minor error of judgment you aren’t able to close in on the deal the way you would have want to. Not only will it stick like a sore thumb, the thought of getting so close and yet not through will haunt you for the rest of your life. It is better to be prepared than to repent later and therefore, this post will serve you as a primer on the important things to take note of while investing in real estate and more importantly avoiding the mistakes that can turn a sweet deal into a sour one.

Not considering the hidden costs while buying the home

This is the most common and annoying of all the budgeting mistakes, justifying why it has been listed above all. Most first time home buyers have a figure in mind that heavily discounts on the complete costs of ownership, excluding common fees like appraisal fee, notary fee, escrow fee, which when combined can make a sizeable amount of money. These all are the closing costs, which, if not included from very early on can make you house poor, where you will have spent so much on just buying the home that you wouldn’t have much left to afford the other expenditures that follow.

Ignoring a bad credit report

Your credit report is the first thing that a bank official would check before signing on the approval form of your home loan, and if it doesn’t looks right it will also be probably the last thing to be checked. Most people underestimate the importance of credit report.  However, not only a decent credit report will help the finance company speed track the approval of mortgage, but might also help you get a lower interest rate on your mortgage. You can yourself check the health of your credit report through an official website.  A bad credit report notwithstanding, an even worse condition would be to have no credit history at all.

Not considering home resale value

As a first time home buyer the selling value of your house, which you haven’t even bought till now is certainly not one of your first considerations. In spite of all your intentions to spend a lifetime in the newly bought home, there might be a situation when you are forced to move out to a different place, or who knows you might get an even better pad to live on, and in such condition selling the existing one is only a just and reasonable thing to do. Home buying is essentially an investment, albeit a long term one and therefore, it is essential that you make your moves while considering what others also think about your home, in addition to what you yourself think.

Not budgeting for the home loan

Majority of the mere mortals have banks and other finance companies for their homes. If it had not been for their mortgages and home loans, buying a new property would have remained the privilege that few would have enjoyed.  Not making a budget that takes into account your monthly down payments is a disaster. The easiest way to stay in clear is make a complete list of what your existing income and expenses are and then making an easy comparison.  Many first home buyers do not go through the ordeal of this budgeting and consider their rents as equivalent to the monthly EMIs, making a decision in haste, only to regret it later on. 

Author Bio: Delhi born Saurabh Tyagi has a penchant for writing, which he discovered early on in life. He likes to put pen to paper every now and then for topics such as properties in Kochi, serviced apartments for sale and commercial real estate Noida. Currently he writes on behalf of 99acres.com, a leading real estate site.