DEEP CLEANING YOUR HOUSE AFTER HOLIDAY

The Holiday Season (I love holiday), starting in November with Thanksgiving (stuffing, sweet potato, turkey and many other goodies) thorough the end of December with Christmas and New Year's, has also ended.

Yes, it is the most wonderful time of the year!

If you are like most families, you probably had a house full of people. It's great having friends and family members coming to spend the holidays with you. People in and out, children running up and down the stairs, lots of cooking in the kitchen, and accidental spills of both drink and food on the floors and carpets; your house sees intense traffic during the Holiday Season.

By now, you are probably agreeing that your house deserves a deep cleaning!
Finding the time to tackle this job is difficult for most people, who are too busy taking care of other things. It's even harder to schedule if you are full-time worker.

Following, you will find some tips that can help you with your post-holiday, New Year cleaning:

1) Floor Cleaning
Hardwood floors really suffer with all the snow and salt this time of year. We recommend vacuuming first and using no more than water and vinegar to make your floors clean and shiny again.
Carpets need to be vacuumed regularly. Make sure that your cleaning company uses a vacuum with HEPA filter. If food or drink was spilled on your rug, you may need a shampooing to remove the stains.

2) Bathroom Cleaning
Special attention should be given to bathtub and toilet. Mildew or mold can spread very quickly on your tiles and glass doors. A good solution for that is warm water, a sponge, and liquid soap.
Cleaning the toilet means not only inside the bowl, but cleaning the base and behind the toilet bowl as well. This is a hidden area and it is missed most of the time.
Bathroom mirrors should be cleaned with no more than a glass cleaner spray and a paper towel.

3) Kitchen Cleaning
Extra cooking during the holidays also means extra grease for your kitchen and kitchen appliances. Most of the time, people forget to clean under their appliances. It is the perfect place to accumulate dust, grease and germs.
It is also very important to clean inside your oven and microwave; you don't want your food going to a dirty place do you?
Top of cabinets and refrigerator tend to be missed too.

HOME DECORATING ON A LOW BUDGET

Having a beautifully designed home need not be as costly as you may think. That is, if you know how to save without sacrificing style, and know how to avoid wasteful expenses, home decorating on a low budget is possible.

First, determine your budget. How much are you prepared to spend for decorating your home? Then, plan out how you want to spend that budget. List all the items you will need - materials, fixtures, accessories - for each portion of the house you will decorate. It would be better to prepare your budget on a per-room basis rather than budgeting for the entire house all at once. This way you can undertake the decorating one room at a time, starting with those rooms that you feel should be decorated first.

Before you buy anything, visualize first how everything would look in your room, with all the considerations of color, space and lighting. Your interior designer or the store where you will buy the fixtures can help you with this. It is important to view the color schemes you have selected both with natural light and with artificial light from electric lighting, as different kinds of lighting will produce differing effects on the colors. You need to do these visualizations before you make your purchases and installations to avoid having to make the changes after the items have been installed, which would mean a lot of money and time wasted.

Finally, are you decorating a home that you own and where you plan to stay your whole life, or is it just a temporary home for you? These things matter when you plan the amount of money you will put into decorating the place. If you have no plans of staying in this home for a long time, then you would not want to spend too much money on constructions or fixtures that you will have to leave in just a few months. There are decorative items, even furniture, that you can enjoy now but also take with you when you leave. This will also help you save on decorating the next place you will be staying in.

Simple Bathroom Renovation Guide

Bathroom Renovation Guide: Step 1

When designing your bathroom, thinking of your current needs and future needs is the most crucial step. Even in the earliest stages of planning your new, or ‘soon-to-be’ renovated bathroom, it pays to visit your local interior design center to collect ideas on the range of bathroom fittings on offer and the styles of bathrooms that are available. 

If you’re considering a contemporary bathroom interior, try incorporating chrome, gold or other sleek metal finishes into the bathroom fittings, trimmings, bathroom accessories and color scheme of your bathroom. You may wish to consider using marble or stone tiles on the floors and walls with contrasting color basins and bath.

For a more traditional styled bathroom, cast iron bath or gold timber panels on the wall and brass taps will incorporate well into a vintage style. You should consider incorporating a range of heritage colors, vintage-looking fixtures and decorative accessories into your room.

As you can see, there are many questions to ask yourself. Do you want a spa bath, claw foot bath, combination shower bath or a plain shower? What type of vanity unit or basin do you want? Double bowls, three drawer vanity or pedestal basin? The list goes on….and within each product choice is a range of fixtures to suit every bathroom style, everyone’s color and feature preference, as well as every budget.

Bathroom Renovation Guide: Step 2

Now that you’re starting to think of the styles and product options for your bathroom interior, you should undertake an information search. 

Firstly, visit your local interior design center to obtain advice on the type of products available and collect bathroom product brochures, or visit your local building information center or home shows for tips on bathroom design. From these, you will begin to see designs that will appeal to both your style and budget.

Bathroom Renovation Guide: Step 3

After your ideas gathering stage, determining a budget for your finished design is imperative. It is easy to overspend when you are renovating or building, so you should obtain quotes for all the products and labor required to complete your bathroom. Remember, you may need to seek council permission if you are embarking on any major structural developments in your bathroom. This may mean administrative costs need to be factored into your budget. Your plumber or contractor can advise you in this area.

Bathroom Renovation Guide: Step 4

The layout stage is where the fun begins! Now that you know the style that suits your need and your budget, you need to develop a layout for your intended bathroom design. Doing a bathroom planning is essential to ensuring nothing is forgotten when it comes to laying out your ideal bathroom and selecting the products and fittings that suit your needs. This step will show you how your floor plan will function, incorporating the location of your bath or shower vanity, toilet, storage space and the other elements of your design.

Bathroom Renovation Guide: Step 5

Upon finalizing your bathroom design and style concepts, take your planning to the local interior design center for suggestions and advice. You may also work with an interior designer to get all the help your need to create your beautiful bathroom.

HOUSE RENOVATION IDEAS

There are so many great house renovation ideas out there that you can use, and it really pays to be aware of as many of them as possible before going ahead and doing any house renovations yourself, so that you can be more knowledgeable and informed and also so that you will have a better idea in terms of where to start.

Bathroom

Let’s start with the bathroom. The majority of homeowners say that they want to do house renovations to their bathroom, but simply do not know how to get off the ground. The first step is to analyze the current situation of your bathroom. Determine how rough of shape it is in and how much money you think you would have to invest into it to make a difference.

You also want to more specifically determine what type of results you are looking to gain from doing these particular house renovations, and for instance if you think that your bathroom is too small then perhaps you may want to break down an adjoining wall so that you can expand the space.

Maybe it is just the color of the bathroom that you are interested in changing or the type of flooring. Make sure that you really put some thought and consideration in here and that you do not make any final decisions until after you have done this.

Bedroom

When it comes to house renovation ideas for the bedroom, you can really have a lot more fun. After all, this is not a room that most people see when they come into your home, and so you can really go all out and do whatever you want here.

You do however want to have at least some sort of a theme, and the best idea is to determine a color. Decide on a color that you are going to enjoy and not bore of or regret a couple months down the road. If you already have a bedroom set that you love then maybe pick a color that coordinates well with it.

Regardless of what type of house renovation you are considering, if you really want to make sure that you are going to get it done right then you should speak to a professional, tell them about what you are planning on doing and ask them to give you some information. This way you can be sure that you are on the right track and that you are going about things the right way, especially before you actually spend any money.