Nobody likes to feel like they’re in a closet, especially when they’re not. If you have a room in your home that gives the illusion of being the sizer of a shoe box, try a few of these tips to make your room look and feel larger!

• Move furniture closer to the wall.
  • Furniture that isn’t against, or near, a wall can block walkways and interfere with your view of a space, making it feel smaller.
• Light it up!
  • Brighter rooms look bigger! Let in as much natural light as possible; light is the only thing you can fill a room with that doesn’t take up space.
  • If that doesn’t work, replace any light bulbs in the room with a good quality, high output compact florescent bulbs. This will not only make the room brighter, it will lower your lighting bill!
  • If there is only one source of light in a room, consider adding a lamp.
• Keep it clean!
  • If you don’t need it in the room, get it out of the room! If it must be there, keep it neatly tucked out of the way. The more open space in the room, the bigger the room will feel.
• Use a simple color scheme.
  • Use colors from the same color family.
  • Cool and light warm colors on most surfaces will make the room feel more open, dark colors will make it feel more cramped.
  • If you have to paint any walls, we recommend Freshaire Choice paint for its environmentally friendly properties and premium durability.
• Soften up!
  • Again, dark colors make a space feel cozy and intimate; in a small room, this translates to cramped.
  • Lighter, cooler colors can make the same room feel more open and airy.
  • Soft blue and green tones give the best effect.
• Check your coordination!
  • Your furniture will appear to take up less space if it blends in with the rest of your decor.
  • Contrasting colors break up a room, making it look and feel smaller.

Take these ides and run with them. Apply them to your smallest room first, then try them in your biggest room. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that your house is bigger than it looked!

1. Paint - Paint the walls. Paint the cupboards. Or paint it all!
2. Shelves v. Cabinets - Need more storage space but don’t have new cabinets in the budget? Consider hanging some inexpensive floating shelves. Use them to showcase pieces or for easy access.
3. Floor for less - There are many great options today for refacing a floor. We love the new peel and stick tiles that you can pick up at any DIY store.
4. Tile over laminate countertops. The bigger the tile, the better it looks. Or consider replacing the old laminate with new laminate. Today’s versions are improved and considerably less than solid surface materials.
5. Replace the hardware. New knobs and pulls are an easy update. Say goodbye to that outdated brass. Coordinate with doorknobs and light fixtures. If you can’t replace outdated fixtures, go for a antiqued version of a similar finish on your new cabinet hardware.

The reason this house was so in demand is because it was thoroughly staged before the MLS pictures were posted. This Baltimore, Maryland home was staged by Paula Henry of Simply Put Interiors. Paula was hired by Realtor Joe Vickers of Century 21 The Real Estate Centre. Joe pays for the professional staging service at his own expense. He knows that staging works. In this case the homeowners were being located and needed to sell fast. The sellers had a good idea of what staging is from shows like Sell this House and Designed to Sell from HGTV. The house sold so quickly because the sellers were aggressive in following the stager’s suggestions to repaint and rearrange along with other tasks. They realized that it was no longer their home, but now it is a product on the market that had to show at its best. 

For more on this Henry and Vicker’s successful staging and sale, read the full story from Trans World News.

I found a hilarious post on home staging at St. Paul Real Estate’s blog. Curiousity drew me in to find out how banks staged the homes that they have listed. Teresa Boardman is a Realtor and author of this article. She has posted some excellent pictures with commentary that are sure to make you laugh. Check them out….

The 23rd Annual Kitchen and Bath Business Market Forecaster revealed its expectations for the industry in this rough economy based on consumer expectations from the last quarter of 2007. Both kitchen and bath remodeling project spending are expected to drop 14% which amounts to over a $118 billion drop. Parallel to this decrease in spending is the decrease in jobs in the bath sector of the industry, which is predicted to decrease around 14%. The kitchen industry expects only a 1% gain in jobs. With the threat of recession, lowered housing starts, and the weak real estate market, it is no surprise that consumers are spending less on interior design and home remodeling. In home staging we often see how reluctant homeowners are to remodel bathrooms, but notice that they are more likely to remodel kitchens. Bathrooms are private spaces and get little attention when it comes to home improvement. Kitchens on the other hand have become showy social places and the key selling feature of homes.

Figures from K+BB January 2008 issue

Kitchen cabinet refacing is a great way to get the look of new cabinets for less. Refacing uses existing cabinet boxes and avoids using or throwing out high-polluting and off-gassing particle board or plywood. That new cabinet box smell is formaldehyde…yuck. Today’s cabinet faces are typically made from 1/4 inch thick wood stock versus the old environmentally unfriendly plastic laminate refacing option.

Looking for a beverage center, wine cooler, and a mini refrigerator? Consider the multiple-use Liebherr RU500 undercounter refrigeration unit. It stores up to 29 wine, champagne, beer, liquor, or water bottles or 88 soda, beer, or - as we say in Ohio - ”pop” cans. Unlike common wine storage units, the Lieberr unit has pullout racks and glass shelves that are adjustable to suit your needs. Silent storage is a bonus feature thanks to a vibration free-compressor that keeps contents quiet.

Side note: Liebherr also is a manufacturer of concrete mixers, aerospace products, cargo handling machines, earthmoving and mining equipment, all sorts of cranes, and other large machines and tools!

Just when you’ve think you’ve seen all the home improvement, interior design, and do it yourself magazines out there something new comes from out of nowhere. I got yet another free magazine offer in the mail today, which is perfectly normal. But this one was different. I had never heard of this one, ReadyMade. Curiousity made me open it up. I scanned the brochure…so good I ended up reading ALL of the material and sent in the free issue postcard. My first reaction was, “How did they find me?” It’s like they knew I was into thinking outside the box and giving objects second lives (for cheap). One of a kind, hip, crafty, geeky, inspiring, recycled, reused, transformed and always changing. Am I talking about me or the contents of the magazine? I can’t wait to find out what this magazine is all about! I mean I know it is about insanely creative, out of the ordinary, unique, and inexpensive projects that almost anyone can do. Some examples are using a surfboard as a floating shelf (sounds tacky but is surprisingly striking), making a mid-century mod clock out of chopsticks (think Herman Miller style), creating a bird feeder out of martini glasses, turning a old radio into a vintage style mp3 player, etc. One I love is making a faux mosaic table out of paint swatches. As soon as I read some of the project ideas, I was ready to get started!

When doing research for this blog I found the ReadyMade Magazine website which has a million projects that anyone can search through with complete instructions - magazine subscription free! So if you like the mid-century post-war modern (Design Within Reach style) and IKEA or - better yet - Salvation Army prices, then this magazine might be for you!

I got this great little info packet in the mail from The Summit/Akron Solid Waste Management Authority this week and thought I would share. I thought that reading it out loud would reinforce my recycling efforts in my home. I hope these figures made enough impact on my family members and will on you as well.

• Recycling one aluminum can save the energy equivalent to six ounces of gasoline.
• The energy saved by recycling steel each year is enough to meet the annual electric need of 20% of American households.
• Recycling one ton of plastic saves the energy equivalent to 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of gasoline.
• Making new glass from recycled glass reduces air pollution by 20% and water pollution by 50%.
• Recycling creates almost 5 times as many jobs as waste disposal - in fact, recycling supports 1.1 million jobs in the U.S.

Gas prices are high here in Ohio and they have everyone grumbling. The economy isn’t looking too good either. So if we can make an impact on gas prices, create jobs, and make our skies a little bluer, then what are Summit County homeowners waiting for?

Or are we already there?

According to a recent article on the Washington Times website, “This year’s housing bust is shaping up to be one of historic proportions. Sales and construction have sunk to levels not seen since the 1990 savings and loan crisis, while foreclosures and price drops are the largest since the Great Depression — and expected to get worse next year.” The article predicts millions more foreclosures and over one trillion dollars (yes trillion) in mortgages reset within the next two years. So what caused this dilemma? “John Stumpf, president of Wells Fargo & Co., the second-largest U.S. mortgage lender and a survivor of the housing busts of the 20th century, blames today’s crisis on unscrupulous lending practices, which joined in a toxic mix with outright greed and extraordinarily low interest rates to send house prices soaring 90 percent between 2000 and 2006. When the bubble burst, house prices collapsed by 5 percent to 20 percent in cities nationwide.”

Greed definitely played a huge role in the extreme number of foreclosures. Rachel saw this first hand when she worked for years at a mortgage company and knew of other offices whose brokers would intentionally sell adjustable rate mortgages so that borrowers would have to refinance a few years down the road. That way the broker could charge them more fees. Can we say predatory lending? Her office did the right thing and locked homeowners into fixed rates at historic lows that they could afford. If only more lenders did the right thing.

Lenders are now giving their lending practices a makeover by re-popularizing the 30 year fixed loan. You can read more about the crooked lending process and the governments role in this economic decline in this article, part one of the Washington Time’s series.