Make a Splash with Fanciful Fittings and Finishes

When updating your bath, sometimes it’s the smallest detail that gives your bathing space the most authenticity. Even still if you don’t want to engage in a full blown bathroom makeover and your primary focus is on redecorating in a historical style, a good place to start is with the hardware and fittings.

The one fixture that is sure to make a splash is the lavatory faucet. Period style details such as a bridge design, gooseneck spout and traditional cross handles that are easy to use are symbolic of this tried and true treatment.

Traditional and Timeless Stylistic Construction

The reason why your basin taps are so important is because anyone that enters the facility will more than likely wash their hands either on entry or exiting the room. And being in such a central location on your vanity, its styling can add character and personality to the space.

Classic Quality Meets Modern Chic

Traditional basin taps are a vital fitting for this novel trend and are an easy way to introduce definitive design flair into your bathing space. Their restrained and sometimes understated appearance works well with neutral chromatic arrangements and even fit well in a modern style home, making them an ideal choice for those seeking a blending of classical features and modern style.

Form is not Dictated by Function

Elegant fittings in brushed bronze or chrome with touches of gleaming copper complement a classical bathing space, where you don’t have to sacrifice elegance for pragmatism.

Don’t get me wrong, in most homes a basic no-nonsense lav model will work fairly adequately. However, optioning for a more memorable design with familiar styles, you don’t have to settle for boring practicality. If you shop smart, you can still purchase a beautiful and functional traditional tap without breaking the bank.

New Technologies Combine Classic Charm and Modern Amenities

The good news is that modern bath ware high tech and construction has improved along with appearance. Professional interior designers will tell you, if you want to incorporate timeless personality and saleability into your grooming space, you need to buy fixtures that combine tradition and modernity in equal amounts when decorating your home.

Reliability vs Price

As a side note, I know that for some of you, it’s all about saving money but there comes a time when having to frequently replace your hardware just becomes a nuisance and will ultimately cost you more in the end so bypass the plastic parts and get the solid brass and metal innards models.

While a little on the pricey side a good course of action would be to invest in a sink tap that has ceramic disc valves. These types of fixtures are very durable and nearly maintenance free so you can better focus on adventurous finishes and alluring historical styles.

An Integrated Design for Old Style Indulgence

Traditional bathroom taps are best suited for a period inspired home and gives your lavatory a true sense of old style luxury. From antique bronze widespread faucets to elegant fittings in distressed-nickel that share a soft weathered appearance, these additions to an old-fashioned lavatory suite can give the room a feeling of familiarity that lends itself to an inviting and lingering space.

Reliving the Past Today

The addition of a timeless bathroom suite will not only enhance the beauty of your home but will also increase the resale value of your house. There are a fantastic range of traditional washroom taps, from Edwardian, Victorian or antique.

These handsomely fashioned faucets can dress up your period bathroom to recreate the charms of a bygone era in both mixer and separate taps to outfit a multitude of basin styles. So go ahead indulge yourself with a new spout today and why stop there, purchase other antiquated bath fixtures and furniture to match. Who said you can’t relive the past…

Forego the Overhaul but add Flair to the Room

Thinking of doing some bathroom renovations? If you’re concerned about the time and forthcoming expense of a home improvement project, you can take some comfort in the fact that most residential upgrades will grow the resale value to your home if you are thinking of selling in the future. The other consolation is that money spent now will allow you to enjoy a fresh and luxurious look and a space that’s both inviting and practical for your whole household to use in the meantime! So the question still remains, how do you make your greenbacks go further and transform your bathing space from an “ugly duckling” into a beautiful rendition of “Swan Lake?” Ok, time to put on your tutu…

Sizing up What it Takes for Bath Perfection

For most first time remodelers home improvements are desirable yet somewhat daunting at the same time. After all, a well-designed modern bathing space is supposed to be beautiful, resilient and decidedly functional all at the same time. Oh boy, this could get complicated! But don’t worry, be happy…The good part is that bath renovations don’t need to cost you a fortune. You can freshen up the space with a fairly inexpensive facelift. You would be surprised to find how different your lavatory will look after a simple coat of paint or the replacement of your taps and showerhead. If you’re lost, looking for what’s new and hip, browse designer showrooms on and offline for affordable trends and inspirational ideas.

Budgeting to Add Value to Your Home

It has been establish that we don’t have a lot of money to spend so in an effort to give your washroom a better look and feel we need to project the cost of a remodel by coming up with a small yet workable budget, let’s say a couple hundred bucks. I think it would be a safe bet to say that any big-ticket items such as replacing your tub, toilet, shower or redoing your tiles is out of the question so let’s stick to transforming the essence of your lavatory by installing decorative embellishment to liven up the decor and increasing the user experience of your homely looking bath.

Source Price Conscious Materials

Alright so how do you enrich your washroom with a few small changes without the cost of a full blown bathroom remodel? Let’s examine five fast fixes to give your powder room a designer look without the designer price tag. I should point out that in order to save money you need to do your research on materials. You don’t always need the real deal, especially if you are planning for the short term to make a quick sale. If you do your homework, you can make a better informed decision at more reasonable price you can afford. Faux finishes are your friends.

1 – Create a New Look With Lighting and Mirrors

This is so simple, yet so effective. Good lighting will always make a small or cramped bathing facility look bigger. Lighting fixtures can be easily changed out to fit your style and needs. If you have glossy tiles then the light will also be amplified to make the room feel inviting and visually cleaner. And mirrors just exaggerate the space even further. Refresh your plain plate-glass mirrors by adding decorative trim or a contemporary frame so it becomes more of a design element in the larger scheme of the room.

2 – Color Conscious Choices

While you may be tempted to transform your bathroom into a personal Disneyland, picking the right colors should never be underestimated not only for resale value but for everyday livability. Pick foolproof washroom color combos with minute accents to create a fresh look. Painting your walls will change the ambiance of the room but why stop there? Paint that old laminated countertop or cupboard doors for a simple makeover with big impact. But remember that eccentric patterns and colors may be all the rage right now but might turn off potential buyers who will not be receptive to a total remodel to get rid of your subjective decorative whims.

3 – Accesso[...]

Cheap Does Not Mean Ugly

A lot of people believe that if you employ cheap bathroom remodeling solutions then you have few choices and can’t really create a memorable bath for less money. However, even though your makeover budget may be small, you can still design a bathing space with a wow factor.

Inexpensive refurbishing ideas that pack a punch and can transform your lavatory into a beautiful space just take a little more creativity. Chances are, you won’t be ripping up your floor or creating a shower cubicle with multiple shower heads and wall to wall designer tile, but you can still get the look you want on a tight budget. Below are a few low-cost home repair techniques to get you started on your budget conscious remodeling project.

With any cheap bath alteration, pound for pound, dollar for dollar, paint is your best bet for an economical way to freshen up the space. The color choices are endless and the low price per gallon is the perfect approach for the person trying to revamp their home with a limited budget. For less than $100 you can have a complete and affordable upgrade to your bathing space – and repainting is something that you can do every year and still not burn a hole in your pocket book.

Economical and Versatile Solutions

Going back to paint, it is not only cheap but it is also versatile. Of course you can use multiple colors on your bathroom walls, but an idea that will fit nicely into your modest remodeling budget is to use painter’s tape to create an interesting pattern of  two-toned stripes on your walls.

Or you can use this cost saving tactic to mimic a wainscoting effect by painting one color on the bottom half of the lavatory walls and a second color on the top half. If you want to get really creative, you can try stenciling a border on your walls to get a modern look while keeping the cost of your renovation low. Really, your choices with paint are endless, even though your home improvement budget is small.

When trying to save a buck your approach probably won’t include brand new cabinets, yet you can still do a few things to make your vanity look like new when revitalizing your bath. New knobs and pulls for your old storage can make a big difference, but won’t put a big dent in your limited funds . A quick trip to your local hardware store will show you all of your options and they will have solutions that can fit even the cheapest alterations.

Painting Your Cabinets

But if you’re really ambitious, you can paint your dilapidated bathroom cupboards for a lot less than you might think. While painting your storage units is a great recommendation, it is a bit of work. You don’t have to strip the finish off the surfaces, but you do have to clean them really well and put a couple of coats of high adhesion primer on before you’re ready to paint. But once this is done, you’re ready to completely upgrade the look of your decor without a major investment.

If painting your walls and storage units seems like a lot of work, there are still plenty of suggestions that don’t require quite so much elbow grease. For example, start with the biggest piece of material in your bathroom – your shower curtain – and you’ll get a dramatic, inexpensive new look.

Replace Your Bath Accessories

Shop around for the best deals to get the most economical shower curtain, and choose something that’s a bit different from your existing look. This will create the effect of a big change while staying within your modest financial plan. And while you’re at it, why not consider changing out that old, rusty curtain rod with a new one that will make your bathroom take on a new life.

Keeping with the accessories, a great, low cost decorating idea is to get new towels and a matching bath rug to add some instant color to the room. You can also consider a fancy new toilet seat and a new mirror to open up the space. Plus there are plenty of options when it comes to affordable art to create a decorative display with your limited funds . [...]

First Learn Basic Electrical Principles

Wiring a bath involves more than just electrical wires, receptacles and switches. The underlying fundamental about bathrooms is that they do have a tendency of being undesirably damp, and everyone knows that electricity and water do not mix. This shock avoidance combined with the thought of shorting out your entire house has sent more than one newbie renovator running for the hills.

Don’t get me wrong, wiring your washroom is not for the faint of heart, but a handyperson carefully following instructions can safely and reliably install all the electrical work that needs to be done in their bath. Just make sure you get the work inspected by a qualified electrician before you write it off.

When wiring a bathroom, to ensure safety and avoid electrical shock, lighting fixtures must be watertight and all receptacles are required to be ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCI for short).

Ventilation is Important

Another important principle of wiring a home that is sometimes overlooked because newbies don’t understand the significance of the matter is that you must put in effective ventilation in order to ward off the problems associated with excessive condensation such as corrosion.

If you are a first time washroom renovator, an essential thing to remember when wiring a lavatory is that light fixtures and overhead fans must not be on the same circuit as the receptacles. In the majority of cases most municipal building codes require that residential bathing spaces have their own separate wiring circuits.

However it is also helpful to note that some city building codes do sometimes allow household baths to share circuits with receptacles or lighting fixtures in adjacent rooms or other parts of your home.

Familiarize Yourself With Local Wiring Codes

Another tip to keep in mind is that in some neighborhoods, all home wiring must be GFCI shielded, so it is best to first contact your local municipality to familiarize yourself with local laws before you even begin wiring your bathing space .

We all need to plug in our curling irons, hair blowers and shavers to make ourselves presentable and a 20-amp GFCI receptacle located a short distance from the vanity, approximately a foot away from the water source will do quite nicely. Just make sure the cord does not have to drape over the sink when someone is using any small electrical appliance.

Attention to detail is always the key when wiring your home. Keeping your lavatory dry using the proper ventilation is one key precautionary measure that will not only ensure your bath is comfortable but will also satisfy safety codes.

Condensation Can Sometimes be an Issue

Depending upon the size of your bathing space your overhead fan must be able to consistently pull out moist air and dispose of it outside your home, therefore it is imperative you check the square footage of your washroom before purchasing an exhaust fan to make sure it can effectively remove the built up vapors.

When wiring your bathroom, for the most part you can decide whether you want the fan to come on when you turn on the light switch in your lavatory or you can place the fan on its own separate switch, but just to be on the safe side, check with your local construction codes when wiring your house.

Overhead Heaters are Becoming Popular

A new fad that is hitting the HVAC market is the inclusion of an overhead ceiling heater. The thing that you should be aware of when wiring a bathroom is whether or not the heater is a detached unit or part of the combination fan/light switch, either way these heaters have a tendency of drawing a lot of energy, therefore it may more than likely require its own circuit.

When people think about wiring their home, the first thing that usually comes to mind is lighting, from recessed canister down-lights, to strip lights above the mirror or sconces on either side of the grooming area to illuminate your face more clearly when preparing for the day.

Light[...]

Decorate With Minimal Cost

Personalizing your bathroom walls with stenciling is an economical way to decorate your home if you are on a budget, and who isn’t? Researchers have shown that people spend a large portion of their lives in their washrooms. Research has also shown that the mood and decoration of a bathing space can unconsciously change the disposition of those entering it, even if they don’t initially notice it. So why not express your creativity by stenciling your bath and at the same time improve the mood of those entering therein?

Adorning your walls with stencil patterns is not complicated, and can easily be done in a single afternoon. Stenciling doesn’t require anything more than creativity, paint, brushes, and the stencils you want to decorate with! If you’re not experienced and have never stenciled before, then we recommend getting some cardboard, to practice on, before actually starting the project.

Before you begin to design a luxurious and interesting lavatory wall with stencils you need to come up with some simple patterns you can incorporate into your room’s design, we recommend getting a pen and paper to doodle with so you don’t forget any of your good stenciling design ideas you come up with for your bath!

Get Your Cues From Other Bath Elements

Look around your present grooming space and try to incorporate some of the shapes, patterns and colors of your fixtures and décor into your preliminary design ideas so there is some form of consistency in your design elements. If you don’t have any good stencil wall ideas or if you’re not confident in your design concepts then you can always buy pre-made stencil templates for interior walls. You will find these cut out patterns in most home improvement stores, and you will have plenty of design solutions to choose from.

Another option would be to get “Debbie Travis’ Decorating Solutions” it is a phenomenal book, with more than 65 paint and plaster faux finishes for every room in your home and is sure to inspire and motivate you to decorate your walls. So once you’ve picked your favorite cut-out template, or designed something you’re happy with, you can move on to the next step to decorate your home with a mural or stencils!

Practice! That’s right, if you want to personalize your bathing area with stenciling you need to make sure that you do it properly. And this can only be done if you practice painting over a pattern outline on cardboard or paper to create original designs for your bathroom walls. You don’t want to have to redo your walls because of an unnecessary mistake so test out your stenciling ideas and painting methods first.

Practice Makes Perfect

Try it out on a piece of card board until you’re happy with the thickness of the paint and the orientation of the brush strokes. It’s very important for you to check your work to see that the paint is not dripping or if it’s smudging under the stencil and that your home made stencils are durable and reusable.

Another creative stenciling technique is to combine layers of stencils to create a unique bathroom wall, or you can use reverse stenciling techniques to update your bathroom as well.

The third step is what you’ve been waiting for! You can finally start to add art and design to your home walls using stencil designs. Take the custom designed stencils you’ve made, or the ones you purchased, and attach them to the wall with some masking or duct tape.

Make sure they are properly fastened because if they begin moving after you’ve started painting, the stencil outlines will be blurred and paint will seep underneath the stencil pattern and everything will be ruined. If you want to decorate your washroom with wall to wall stencils then take it one wall at a time, and remember small patterns work better on smaller surfaces.

Larger Surfaces Make a Better Canvas

The larger your wall surface, the bigger your patterns can be. But there is always an exception to the rule; if you want to use larger[...]

Feel Shower Fresh All Day Long

We all know that going to the bathroom is a necessary evil. What goes in must eventually come out. It’s just a fact of life. We also know that sometimes we don’t feel like we did a good enough job of cleaning ourselves with just toilet paper. How would you like to feel shower fresh all day long! Well in a sense you can when you use a bidet in your bathroom.

Bidets are primarily used to wash and clean the genitalia, inner buttocks, and anus and helps stop the spread of harmful germs and bacteria by completely rinsing with water. They range in price from about a hundred dollars to several thousand dollars depending upon the features and model.

If you would like the benefits of a bidet without the premium price then the Biffy Personal Hygiene Rinse is the perfect introductory model for you.

The Biffy Personal Hygiene Rinse is simple to use. It has no knobs, dials, blinking LEDs or electrical cords. All you have to do is sit back comfortably on the toilet seat. Use your right hand to push the handle backwards until a comfortable spray is felt.

When you push the handle, it swings out, turns on and rinses you, all in one motion. Let go and it automatically shuts off and hides away under the rim without a fuss. And while it does not have hot water you can attach an ambient water tank to the Biffy which allows you to store water at room temperature so you don’t get that cold jolt when you initially turn it on.

The other good part is that with continued use you do get use to it after a while.

Some of the benefits of the Biffy include: it lets you cleanse yourself thoroughly anytime you use the bathroom leaving you feeling fresh and clean. The Biffy enables people to maintain personal comfort and dignity in a private and safe manner.

Refreshing Rinse is Easy to Install

The Biffy enhances intimacy and improves sexual relations through cleanliness – before and after sex. While the Biffy does not protect you from STD’s it does stop the spread of harmful germs and bacteria by completely rinsing with water.

Using the Biffy promotes healing through soothing water allowing hemorrhoids to heal. It relieves constipation and diarrhea and benefits personal care for women especially at that time of the month. Another benefit of The Biffy is that it eases the transition of toilet training for both child and parent by promoting a healthy model for children.

The Biffy is relatively easy to install and attaches to most toilets in minutes with only a screwdriver and pliers to your toilet bowl and tank water supply. Just remember to turn off the water first before installing.

It is self-cleaning which is good because who wants to clean down there anyway and is designed for low maintenance and is engineered for durability.

Although the Biffy offers the benefits of a bidet, it is a lot more convenient, works much better and costs far less. It also comes with a spacer and seat bumpers in common toilet colors such as white, black and almond.

While the Biffy doesn’t have bells and whistles like heated seats or warm water tanks, it does do what a bidet was meant to do, that is, spurt water up so that you can clean yourself after using the toilet. It’s also versatile, so you can easily remove it and place it on another toilet if you move.

The Biffy has been seen on TV and has gotten good reviews from users both on and off line for its model class. Of the ten sources we audited all gave a positive review of the Biffy. It is a great starter model into the bidet market. Try it and discover how clean and fresh you will feel! You will probably wonder how you ever lived without it. I have one in my home.

Don’t forget to check out our other categories on bathroom residential renovation, residential bathroom design, bathroom remodeling for homeowners, bath consumer trends and bathroomware consumer reviews for[...]

A Fresh Approach to an Old Ready Room

Bathroom decorating ideas allows the homeowner to enrich their bath with a fresh treatment of well-chosen accessories and thoughtful touches to their grooming area. Embellish your lavatory by learning some of the fundamentals professional interior decorators use to achieve exceptional results with their home décor endeavors. Surprisingly with a simple remodeling plan, you can update your bathing space and make it more functional without changing the size or layout of the room. By refitting your washroom yourself, you can make dramatic changes, yet avoid extensive contractor cost.

Find What is Right For You

In general, all baths, from luxurious home spas to the creative, child-friendly bathroom down the hall require adequate lighting, decent ventilation, abundant useful storage space, and fixtures and fittings that are practical, functional and ultimately attractive. Just remember that with any beautifying recommendation, there is never one right way, there is only the way that’s right for you.

Follow Your Instincts

Finding the right refurbishment inspiration isn’t hard, just trust your tastes and follow your instincts. Here are some other considerations to help you with your bath rejuvenation project:

Home décor and design tips will vary greatly from small powder rooms to large luxurious master baths. Your home may have a single grooming area or several to decorate. If you have more than one home renewal project to attend to, you may designate one bath to be used by the children or reserve one as a guest bathroom to spread out your family’s usage needs.

Anticipate Usage Patterns

When coming up with viable decor solutions, the accessories you choose depends primarily on the type of ready -room you are upgrading. To make your bathroom(s) function at their best, make sure you stock them with carefully selected accessories that appease and serve the bath user’s personal needs.

For the look of luxury when decorating your half-bath, simple terry towels can be effortlessly transformed into stylish accessories by trimming them with lace edgings, bands of complementary fabrics, appliques, or monograms. Pampering yourself with your very own homemade brand of potpourri is another way to garnish the room.

Taking Stylistic Clues From the Rest of Your Home

If you are seeking decorating ideas for your guest bath or powder-room, you may deck – out the room with specialty soaps, decorative bath oils, potpourri, and fancy towels embellished with lace trimming. In your children’s grooming space on the other hand, more creative license may be required to keep it interesting for your child.

Incorporate elements from other places in your home.

For example, you may want to create a sunshine beach theme, with beach balls, and sand pails with plastic shovels as bath-time toys or for storing bath salts. Also the use of over-sized colorful beach towels would solidify the whole seaside decorative theme. Two important adornment issues to take into consideration here is child safety in the bathroom and also the fact that your children will not stay kids forever, so have a design plan in place to redecorate and upgrade the style of the room as your children grow and their tastes and sense of style changes with the times.

Addressing Safety Issues With Finesse

On the topic of safety, a beneficial bathroom design and decorating idea is to install anti-scalding water saving appliances and also a handheld shower-head in the bath would make using the shower easier and more accessible to all ages. Also slip-resistant surfaces are always appreciated additions to your bathroom decor.

An often overlooked decorating idea is that of duplicating the stylistic nuances of the other main rooms in your home. Your bathing space should retain some hints of color or stylistic consistencies with the rest of your home to maintain design continuity.

Present and Future Fashion Considerations

When it comes to home betterme[...]

Influences From Around the Sphere

If you have ever traveled to another country and thought how wonderful it would be be bring home some of that old world charm, then designing a world style bathroom might be the decorative solution your are looking for. Countries and cultures from around the globe are coming to a bathing space near you! There is no argument that we live in a global economy. What affects one part of the world will inherently affect what happens elsewhere on the globe. A typhoon in South Asian can have profound effects on the production of electronics and consumer goods around the world, so it is no surprise that bath design sensibilities and influences from other parts of mother earth would eventually make their way into the mainstream of Western society.

Nostalgia Plays an Integral Role

Globally inspired bath ideas can come from many places such as vacation destinations you have traveled to or recollections from your childhood if you relocated with your family from another country. World style itself is no one particular genre but an eclectic decorative theme that borrows its inspiration from the periodic span of time and continents to create a personal ethnic powder room style.

Successfully creating a world inspired washroom will be subjective to your degree of authenticity and which country or geographic area you take your design cues from to re-create your global bathroom retreat. Some representational fixtures and fitting may be more easily acquired than others. From the clean lines and simplicity of Japanese baths to the old world impact of a Tuscan Spanish Vila, you can borrow elements from one or several periods to design your own restroom.

Scale Adds Coherence

With so many international configurations to choose from, how can the bath renovator put it all together without creating a design nightmare? The critical factor to effectively mixing styles and eras of world design is scale. Decorative room elements can peacefully coexist if their relative scale is common to the overall interior design.

Consequently the design styles from different countries and regions are going to be distinctive but there will be certain commonalities that can be used to create coherence within your decorative theme. Try to pick unifying elements that transcend colors, patterns, materials or similar shapes that inject an ethnic flavor in your bathing space.

Stay Fresh Through Personalization

To achieve a fresh approach, display your favorite items on a open shelf or case but be careful to keep it simple without overwhelming the space. Hand plastered walls and unmatched bathroom furniture with hand glazed finishes are simple ways to create an old world atmosphere in your lavatory.

While including influences from your family’s ethnic background is the typical inspiration for a world style bath, you can also gather stimulus from a passion of historical events: the French revolution or the Rustic styling of colonial homes from the Boston Tea Party era offer visually stimulating ideas. Remember the details; this is where creating a n internationally inspired bathing space gets fun.

While you may not be able to recreate the exact mannerism s of the period, try to purchase accessories that create a sense of the theme you are striving for. Ornate fixtures finished with elegant coverings, elaborate moulding, faux paint treatments or wood and tile work from a particular region give your bath a distinctive cultural flavor. So with a little research to the history section of your local library you can find the perfect theme for your bath.

Picking a Theme

Old world washroom style typically brings up images from the European continent emanating the embodiment of relaxation with elegantly arching doorways and hand painted scenery adorning the bathroom alcove walls. Southern European world styling might combine rustic antiquity with Mediterranean serenity. Here intensely colored handmade tiles set in cement colored grout house a[...]

Budgeting is Key

Looking for a way to finance your bathroom renovation project? Tired of feeling embarrassed every time you have a guest over that needs to use your washroom? Needless to say the majority of homeowners that want to engage in home renovations are not millionaires who can just throw money at their ugly or rundown looking m oney pit and presto they have the home spa of their dreams.

If you are like me with a modest remodeling budget, you don’t have or want to spend a fortune on a home makeover. One of the biggest mistakes that a first time bath remodeler can make is to try to over improve or spend more than they can really afford on unnecessary upgrades that will just put them in even further debt. If cash is a problem for you, and it usually is for most of us, we have to be a little bit more conservative to avoid expensive design mistakes.

Strategies to Lower Your Costs

Finding sources of money for bathroom renovations is all about making smart remodeling choices that make the money you put into your restoration’s worth the time and effort you devoted to the project and hopefully in the end gain a nice return on your investment. Look mom, no more embarrassment!

Cash can be used as a cost saving strategy when sourcing money for enhancing your home. For those of you with financial woes, we know that if you were to visit a credit counselor she would tell you that if you don’t have the loot then don’t spend the money. Using cash for your construction expenses forces you to limit your upgrades to the amount of dollars you have on hand when setting up a schedule for your washroom project.

Prioritize Your List of Expenses

Put aside enough cash to tackle the most pressing issues in your lavatory and take care of the minor makeover fixes at a later date. This in turn forces you to better plan your expenses when setting up a remodeling budget. Cash is the simplest way to pay for the rooms makeover anyway. While you can write a check, you can also use your credit card but be sure to pay off your monthly charges as soon as you get the bill to reduce any late charges.

Alternatively you can even borrow money out of your savings account for your reconstruction costs. The beauty of this strategy is that it allows you to reduce the expense of paying interest to your bank or other lending institution. In order for this to work however you have to promise yourself to replace the funds as soon as possible and make up a monthly schedule in order for you to do just that.

Sourcing For Funds

Refinancing is another way to fund your home improvements. For all its worth, if you don’t have cash or savings then this is a viable option to get money to remodel your bath. The plus side to this sourcing strategy is that the interest rate will be lower than if you were to get a home equity loan.

What refinancing allows you to do is take a cash-out mortgage loan, essentially paving the way so you can refinance your mortgage for a higher overall amount than what you actually owe on your home. The downside to this technique is that it extends the term of your mortgage payments but you do get to upgrade your bathing facility without having to come up with the funds yourself.

Weighing Your Options

If you own your own home and you have accrued equity over the years you can borrow against the equity you have built up in your home in order t o give your powder room a facelift. When finding money for home improvements the amount you can borrow is calculated depending upon your homes market value and the amount you still owe on your mortgage.

Now this can be a good or bad thing depending upon future lending rates but the rate that you pay is fixed so it remains the same over the length of the loan whether is be six or thirty years. The plus side to a home equity loan is that in most cases the loan itself is tax deductible.

Getting The Governments Help Through Low Cost Loans

Believe it or not the government might be able to help you on you[...]

Transform Your Ideas Into Construction Plans

There are many qualified interior designers that can help you create a grooming area that fits into your family’s lifestyle. The experts can give you advice about the latest home decor trends, how to utilize your floor space, which fixtures to choose, what colors to use and even arrange for a professional contractor to do all the grunt work for you. But unfortunately all this hand holding does not come cheap. So what are your alternatives if you are a renovation newbie but you still want to design your own bathroom?

Create many different versions of your ideas quickly.

Maybe it’s the thought of the challenge that drives you or the payoff of having saved hundreds or even thousands of dollars if you do it yourself. Whatever your reason for wanting to create your own bathing space, you are in luck because there are also numerous 3D bath modeling tools on the market that will help you transform your wish-list into a usable floor plan.

Virtual Room Planning is Just a Click Away

Devising a bathing space by yourself is not for everyone because of the research and planning that is involved, that is why having a virtual bath planner is the ultimate home improvement shortcut for the stylistically challenged remodeler. These house remodeling software solutions allow you to conceptualize your entire layout and virtually walk around your new chamber without even laying down a single tile.

Before even thinking about designing your own lavatory, there are questions you must ask yourself. Are you really up to the task? How much work can you do yourself? Plumbing and wiring are tasks that may be better left to a qualified professional. Know your limitations but be willing to learn and grow in areas that allow you to expand on your expertise or learn a related skill, however don’t take on more than you think you can handle.

Stacking up Your Skill Set

How handy are you and are you willing to go the distance to get your construction project done. Do you have enough time set aside for all that is needed? Maybe watching an episode of “Canada’s Worst Handyman” may put things in perspective! Ok, you’ve answered the above questions and you are confident or at least optimistic that you really can customize your own washroom.

The psychological hurdle is over, now it’s time to get down to the remodeling process. But before you even grab your mouse or 4B pencil (I know there are some die-hards out there that still use those archaic devices), in order to build your own powder room you must answer two further questions that will determine everything!

Outlining a Strategy

Though anyone can design their own bathroom, there are still a few ground rules the new renovator must be aware of before attempting an update. The two most important questions you must ask yourself are: how much space do I have for my new construction and how much money can I really devote to this venture.

Think of things you would never have thought of before.

These two key questions alone will impact every design decision that you make thereafter and must be weighed very carefully. From the selection of fittings, size of fixtures and surface finishing materials, the ball will really get rolling once you have addressed these issues.

Build Your Bath

Each tailor made space must center on a central theme that holds all the spatial elements together. Colors of bath walls, shapes of design features, surface textures and finishes, and sizes of fixtures can seem out of place if there is not a binding theme that holds the room’s décor together. The great thing about exploring your draft in 3D is how quickly you can draw up a new theme.

With the simple click of a mouse, you can easily fashion construction visuals in no time flat and then quickly print out your blueprints to compare and select which theme is right for you. This is not only a time saver but offers you a smorgasbord of configurations you never would have thought of b[...]