What wood works for your Kitchen floor?

One of the least frequently remodeled room in a house is the kitchen, people will redo their bedrooms and closets three times over before even thinking about the kitchen because once a kitchen been designed and eaten/ cooked in a few times, it develops a certain feel. You never change things around because a place where you cook or eat needs to feel familiar as opposed to new.

But that doesn’t mean that kitchens are never remodeled, they are and more often the budget for a kitchen remodeling is bigger in proportion to the budget for any other room. Kitchen changes are big like putting in new floors or new cabinets though there are small scale ones involving painting kitchen cabinets a new color or changing the knobs.
Should you decide to put in a new floor or new cabinets for your kitchen, a new wooden floor, here’s a breakdown of which wood works best for what.

Maple wood works best for kitchen cabinets because of it doesn’t stain easy and can hide most stains. You can get a rich range of colors in this wood and depending on the quality, you can several excellent finishes. The wood is durable stuff and works for most cabinet types. The best part is that maple is easy to work with so if you’re looking to fit in some design with your new cabinets, this wood should be your top pick.

Cherry is the wood you prefer if you’re looking for truly elegant and long lasting kitchen design. The wood weathers really well and as time goes by it tends to change hues. This is the wood to use if you’re looking for a nice rustic red color in your kitchen. The wood isn’t cheap though and is generally going to be used in a more upscale kitchen.

Oak is what you should use if you want something sturdy and durable but nice to look at. This wood has a fairly good finish and something close to 200 types of oak exist. This wood doesn’t swell up from moisture or humidity as much as other woods do.

Bamboo is becoming popular because it’s environmentally friendly, people who like to live green find it easier to use this wood because it grows faster than any other kind of wood and can be quickly replenished. Unfortunately the wood isn’t thick enough to be cut into planks and has to be more as a covering over stronger wood types; which makes it expensive to use.

Mahogany is the best wood when it comes to sleek and finish, it’s also expensive and not as strong as most other woods. It’s more suited for decorative purposes.

Downsizing Your Living Space- How To Get The Sofa Through The Door

Moving out of your parents house and in to your own place can be exciting; it brings the kind of independence that only living on your own can but it can also create problems for you if you’re moving in to a living space that’s smaller than the one you’re used to

Being independent and finally getting to live on your own in some place other than your college dorm is one of the pinnacles of adult life. You never forget your first apartment because it’s the one you work the hardest on. You measure your success by the quality of your living space so you work hard to make it just right. Unfortunately not everyone manages to make their apartment in to a comfy cozy place to live in for the next five years but here’s some helping tips to give you a good start.

Measure everything:
Measure the space you’ve got to decorate before you do anything else and if there’s a room that has a slanting roof or other odd angles, decide how you intend to deal with them instead of just stuffing the room with furniture and hopping it’ll all turn out to be a good fit. One thing that you need to measure is the door, all the doors, so you know just how wide a sofa (or any other furniture for that matter) can fit through.

Furniture should be practical and comfy:
As opposed to chic and overly expensive designer furniture, your emphasis should be on practical pieces of furniture that’ll help you avoid clutter and organize your things better. What few people realize is that good design has a lot to do with a clean look. Using the room measurements that you’ve taken make sure that everything can fit comfortably in the room. Make a room map to be accurate and if the rooms are small, don’t buy huge pieces of furniture.

Find a focal point for every room and find the dark spot:
For every room, find a focal point which will determine what direction the furniture will face. It might be the window or the part of the room with the best light. It could be an ordinary wall where you put up fixtures and frames or just your TV. As for the dark spots, they’ll be areas that you don’t want to attract too much attention to. Decide how you’re going to phase them into the background either by using less lighting in the area or by concealing it with furniture. This area could be the odd angled wall that I mentioned earlier.

Don’t forget; you need to be able to move around
Don’t fill every space you’ve got with furniture. Whether your rooms are small or big, the space to move around conveniently will have to be planned out. Make sure you’ve got a good flow of the traffic and the functionality of the room isn’t affected in any way.

Three basic functions:
Your living space should provide you with three basic rooms for three basic functions. A bedroom and bathroom, a kitchen and a living room, to sleep, cook and eat and entertain your friends. Don’t clutter the rooms with additional functionality if you haven’t got the space for it.

Wall paper to go with your sofa

Ever have one of those irresistible desires to change how your wall looks? I know it sounds strange but when you’re walking past a store (or idly browsing its isles) you can’t but help imagine how great some of these patterns would look on your wall. I’m a sucker for anything with gold or silver trim because to me it gives the ultra sophisticated look (not to mention a hint or royalty). To satisfy my wall paper desires I have one wall reserved in the entrance hall where I change a panel of wall paper whenever I feel like it. There’s a nice little varnished table that sits there and I put a matching vase or some other decorations piece on the table and it looks just wonderful. For someone like me, whose compulsive at best whenever I see some a new pattern for anything, this is the only thing that can be done. However, if you’re the calm and sensible home maker who doesn’t get giddy just walking past fabric stores you can do so much more to bring out any old room with a simple wall paper change.

You’re probably thinking that you’ll need to make some serious changes in your furniture if you decide on a wall paper that doesn’t go with your current scheme but there are a lot of other options. If you ever look closely at how rooms are made over, you’ll notice that the designers create a more sensible color interval to bring out the furniture. Color interval isn’t something official; it’s what I call it when there is a neutral color between any two matching strong colors. Say you’ve got a bold wall color, your sofa and cushions will be less bland but the center rug is going to be just as flashy as the wall.

When you repaper the wall you just need to add something at a good interval. Let’s say you’re entire room is furnished in pink and you suddenly decide on sky blue or green wall paper. Add a matching decoration piece in the center of the room and at all corners that draw attention. You can purposely place something that matches the new wall color under bright light or add one or two cushions on the sofa to match the new color and tie in the whole theme.