Home Building

How To Build Built-In DIY Bookshelves For Your Home Is Easier Than Ever

Increasing the value of your home with built-in DIY bookshelves is easier than ever with stock components from your local home improvement center. You might be surprised at how professional they look when all is said and done. It's worth a few minutes of your time to look into it for future reference.

Carl @ Instructables built a HUGE wall of built-in bookshelves from stock base cabinets and laminated melamine shelves with pre-drilled holes. His step-by-step instructions are clear and concise. It's an ambitious project to be sure, but it can't be made any easier or cheaper. He mentions a few tricks and tips like using some metal L-brackets in key areas for support and adding crown molding for a professional finish.

You can also build your built-in bookshelves from scratch to show off your carpentry skills. Here is a video showing how to build your own built-in bookshelf at home:
 

The following links provide some great ways to build your very own built-in bookshelves. Here are a couple of links to some that I liked:

• Build and Install Built-In Bookshelves
• Built-In Bookshelves Project
  
• Photos of Custom Built-In Bookshelves
• How To Build A Built-In Bookshelf

Good luck! Have some fun with it.

How To Create Window Seat Storage For Comfort and Utility

Well, the economy is currently in a tough spot and the housing market tanked, making this a bad time to move for many people. Or maybe the "less is more" mindset has always been a part of your life and you don't necessarily want to "move up" to a larger, more expensive home.

But, like many others, you find you need just a bit more space to make your home more inviting and comfortable.

How do you make better use of your current square footage? In my last post, I talked about using the space under stairs to add storage.  Another option to add both storage and seating is to add a window seat and bookshelves. Now that's the stuff!

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Great Ideas For Storage Under Stairs

Do you want to increase storage space, reduce clutter and make your home special, functional and unique? How about converting the dead space under stairs into storage under stairs.

There is so much you can do with that little bit of space by using a little bit of imagination and creativity. Consider installing bookshelves, a closet, drawers, or whatever strikes your fancy, to create that little extra storage.

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Is Universal Home Design the Wave of the Future? You'd Better Believe It Is!

What is universal home design? Oh... just the next big wave of home design after green homebuilding... that's all! A combination of both schools of thought would be cool. You could call it "universal green home design" or a variant of that phrase.

Universal Home Design is a term that has been around for awhile but it's just beginning to come to the forefront of the home building industry. Why? Because baby-boomers will begin hitting age 65 in 2011, and there is a huge wave of homeowners to follow that will demand homes that are barrier-free with a design focused on comfort and ease of mobility.

In this post, I'll uncover:

• a few universal home design floorplans
• the best features of a universal home design

Continue reading: Universal Home Design

What You Need to Know to Have Custom Closets Installed In Your Home: DIY or Professional Installation

Creating and planning custom closets in your home is probably one of the best things you can do for yourselves as homeowners. Organization is key to reducing your stress level and having an organized closet is a HUGE step to meeting that goal.

Where do you start when you want to plan to have custom closets installed in your home, either professionally installed or a DIY installation? Let's start with how much stuff you have stuffed in your closet. Obviously, custom closets aren't limited to bedrooms but that will be the focus here. There are a number of space saving, task-based closets that can be built in some places you may not have thought about before.

First things first, though.

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Top 10 Luxury Homes For Sale

What are the 10 most expensive luxury homes for sale on the worldwide market? I was curious because the housing market stinks to high heaven right now and there have got to be some outstanding deals to be had. People still have money but their financial portfolios aren't as fat as they used to be.

Purse strings are tight and consumers aren't necessarily spending like they normally would in a vibrant, healthy economy. The (bursting) housing bubble and the ensuing economic meltdown saw to that.

So... if you had $150 million dollars (or more), would you buy an outrageously extravagant home, bask in its' glory for a few years and then sell it off for a huge gain in about 5-7 years from now? I would... without a doubt!

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How To Choose A Clay Tile Roof For Your Home

If you've decided that your house style is best suited to a ceramic tile roof, you need only decide on the color and roof tile vendor for your home and you're done... right? Wrong! Because not all clay roof tiles are created equal.

You have much to learn, Grasshopper!

A clay tile roof is pretty special. Ceramic tiles for roofs have been around for thousands of years, and for good reason. They're durable, attractive and the materials to make them are found in many parts of the world. Notice I didn't mention that they were cheap. They may have been inexpensive at one time but not in this day and age.

A clay tile roof is more cost-effective, though, with many brands of roof tiles with either lifetime or multi-decade warranties. Archaeologists are still uncovering ceramic roof tiles among ancient Roman ruins. That's how durable they are. The same can be said for slate roof tiles, as well. Lifetime warranties are standard with slate.

Continue reading: Choosing A Tile Roof

Significant Real Estate And Home Building Industry Trends

Would you like to know what the home building real estate trends are? Of course you do. Why? Because 2010 is shaping up to be an extremely important year with regard to the beginning of a steady recovery in the home building industry, amongst other important economic markers.

I read a piece on Top Trends for 2010 on HGTV's FrontDoor website and thought that it made pretty good sense with the way that the economy is performing, the instability of the job market, attitudes and actions of the majority of banks, and the amount of foreclosures and short sales going on in the home building industry.

2010 still holds great news for first-time home buyers with the extended and expanded tax breaks allowed by the Fed. If only this were going on when we bought our first home over 20 years ago. There was a recession going on then, as well, but the home loan rates were terrible. Our initial home loan rate was 10.5%!! We've refinanced a couple of times since then, though, as rates have dropped over the years.

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Easy Christmas Storage Solutions

Looking for some easy Christmas storage solutions? Don't you wish you could be as relaxed as our cat seems to be when it's time to put away the Christmas decorations? We humans aren't quite so lucky. You can choose to reduce your stress level during the holidays by being better prepared for all of that decorating, and stowing away, that needs to be done.

Decorating your house, yard and the Christmas tree requires a great deal of planning and organization to pull it off without a hitch, depending on the amount of decorating you'll do, of course. It can be a bit of a chore getting out all of your Christmas decorating "gear", getting the lights and decorations on the tree, decorating the house and yard inside and out and then putting it all away at the end of the season...and you are supposed to take everything down every year people.

I've got a few simple storage solutions and tips that I've picked up over the years to help you with storage and organization. I am 100% positive that there are folks like Clark Griswold that totally go overboard and are more organized than I am. If that's you then this post is not for you. You're far beyond needing any tips on organization. You've got it down to a science. This post is for the average Joe trying to make his/her life just a little less stressful at the most stressful time of year.

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FlatWire Gives DIYer's A Novel Solution To Hide Sconce Wiring

We saw this really cool product on television the other day. It was among the Top 18 Products - Popular Mechanic's Editor Choice Awards at the 2009 Consumer's Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year. It's a product called FlatWire .

We could have used this product a few years ago as a solution to put a pair of sconces on our wall without the "hide the wire encased in a decorative metal bar that extends vertically down the wall" solution. I thought I should take a look at this product to see if it's too good to be true or not. It's been out for a couple of years and they've added to their product line.    

Too good to be true. Hmmm...that depends on your level of skill when it comes to mudding, sanding and painting. It's also a little more expensive than premium wire. Don't get me wrong. This is a very cool invention but is it worth the price and supposed minimal effort to get a pair of sconces on your wall without the ugly wiring needed to power them? Let's find out.

Continue reading: Invisible Wiring