Friday, February 13th, 2009
Too often we see balcony and deck areas go unused because of a sheer lack of privacy. Now you can showcase and bring texture to your yard with natural beauty and privacy at the same time. A unique way to add beautiful greenery to your balcony, coverage from the prying eyes of neighbors, or, what might be an unattractive view, is to create a natural outdoor privacy screen .
Start with lightweight decorative resin or plastic containers. We used 3 for our project because of the size of the balcony deck. One for the front, and one for each side of the balcony. Be sure to select containers that that have drainage holes at the bottom. Plants that are sitting in soggy water-filled soil are never a good thing.
Put a few small rocks around the top of the drainage holes to keep the soil from draining out. Then, fill the containers with soil, and plant vines (we used Creeping Fig because it is hardy and will naturally cling to the surface once it gets established) with branches that are long enough to secure to your balcony’s fence panels. Position your 3 decorative resin containers along the front side of the balcony – center, left and right side. This will give you an outdoor privacy screen that covers all the angles.
Next, cut rolled plastic fencing in to 1-2 inch strips and staple to fence using your staple gun. Secure vines to plastic fencing with plastic coated wire ties. Be careful not to staple the vines themselves. Ouch!! As vines branch out, continue to add more plastic fencing until wood fence panels are completely covered. This will give your balcony a custom charm and a natural outdoor privacy screen. You can also use this same method to cover ugly metal fence poles in your yard as well (see our article on ‘Covering Up Ugly Metal Fence Poles.’)
Supplies:
3 Lightweight resin plant containers with drainage holes, or drill your own. Plastic Gardener Fencing (3 x 50 ft. ? Can be found at most home and garden centers.) Plastics coated wire ties for outdoor plants. Staple Gun Staples (for your staple gun of course) Scissors or wire cutters 3 creeping figs Potting soil and mulch Drainage saucers
Tags: Area, Balcony, Charm, Custom, Deck, Green, IdeasCreate, Landscaping, Natural, Outdoor, Privacy, Screen, Sure
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Friday, February 6th, 2009
Turn your kitchen remodel into a chef’s dream. Show off a modern kitchen design straight out of New York City. Think kitchen remodeling. Whether you want to update the space with a modern or traditional kitchen remodel, or start over from scratch, Italus will provide the kitchen design and planning you need for your kitchen remodeling.
Spacious, functional, breathtaking… kitchen remodeling by Italus will allow you to spend more time cooking, entertaining, and just plain old laughing in your modern kitchen or traditional kitchen. Italus can provide you with everything you need in a kitchen remodeling, including a full range of products like custom-made cabinets, faucets, fittings and installations.
Kitchen remodeling doesn’t have to be hard. From start to finish, Italus works with you through every step of the kitchen remodeling process to select and install the modern kitchen or traditional kitchen of your dreams – even a kitchen design from New York City. Begin with a kitchen remodeling consultation, then sit back while Italus designs, plans, prices, and recommends materials for your kitchen remodeling. We’ll then order materials and begin working. Finally, you’ll meet with Italus to finalize your kitchen remodeling project.
Once the kitchen remodeling is complete, you’ll feel relaxed and revitalized in a kitchen design right out of New York City. The focal point of your everyday life, your kitchen provides a centerpiece for your family, and a kitchen remodeling makes everyone happy. Italus… your destination for kitchen remodeling.
Kitchen Ideas
Your dream kitchen is within reach – all you need are a few kitchen remodeling ideas to get you going. Experience the magic through Italian kitchen designs from Italus. A modern kitchen or a traditional kitchen – the choice is yours. You can’t go wrong – kitchen remodeling ideas from Italus are the highest quality you’ll find anywhere, even New York City.
At Italus, we’ve got everything you need to create truly masterful kitchen ideas, including a full range of products from custom-made cabinets, faucets, fittings and installations. And, Italus will manage your project from inception right through to completion. Your Italian kitchen design – your dream kitchen — will be yours.
With the most advanced technology and finest Italian kitchen design products at our disposal, Italus has the most innovative kitchen ideas around. Discover modern kitchen and traditional kitchen products by Rossana, Febal, and Prodomo Cucine – a dream kitchen in the making — and Italus is the exclusive U.S. distributor. No matter whether you want a modern kitchen, a traditional kitchen, or a particular kitchen design from New York City, Italus has the kitchen ideas you’ll need to help build your dream kitchen.
If you’ve been longing for an Italian kitchen design of your own, look no further than kitchen ideas from Italus. Whether it’s a modern kitchen, a traditional kitchen, or a kitchen design from New York City, Italus will deliver your dream kitchen through extraordinary kitchen ideas.
When it comes to kitchen ideas, no one has more brainstorming capabilities than Italus. Do you love a modern kitchen or a traditional kitchen? If you want a modern kitchen, see our innovative kitchen ideas by Febal and Prodomo Cucine. If it’s traditional Italian kitchen design, both companies offer Italian kitchen design lines with your taste in mind. For a kitchen design from New York City, Rossana has kitchen ideas you’ll swoon over.
Tags: Design, From, Green, Ideas, Italus, Kitchen
Posted in Kitchen | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
As a kitchen designer for the last eight years, shoulder to shoulder with my clients I have battled a myriad of kitchen remodeling challenges: soffits, out of level floors, windows over stoves, chimneys and pipe chases to name a few. I love it when my client rattles off five or six things about their existing kitchen design that they absolutely hate. I now know exactly what to avoid in their kitchen remodel, and I know there is nothing I have found yet that I can’t fix with a new kitchen layout! I never looked for alternative solutions such as kitchen refacing, why would I? Selling cabinets was part of my job. And if anyone brought up kitchen refacing, it became very clear: I was a kitchen cabinet refacing snob.
If asked, I would explain simply to the customer, that the kitchen refacing process was nearly as expensive as a full kitchen remodel, and after all the mess and inconvenience involved in kitchen reface, you ended up with basically the same kitchen design you had before, who would want that? The kitchen cabinet refacing service provided by most companies, I explained pretty much like this:
remove old doors and drawers fronts
sand cabinet surfaces,
smear with glue,
slap up plain laminate
install new doors and drawer fronts
leave customer with same old floor, counter top, layout and basic look
…and then, the nice folks generally purchased a new kitchen. The neighbors new it was coming the moment I had a 30 yard dumpster dropped in Mr. and Mrs. Happy Kitchen-Customers driveway. A typical kitchen remodel takes between six and twelve weeks, and the dumpster often remains there for almost the whole time, just to be sure that all the debris was properly removed.
My limited knowledge of the kitchen refacing process had me mentally confined to a pen, and I couldn’t see beyond it.In fact, it wasn’t until I began to work for Empire Kitchen & Bath, Union, New Jersey that I began to see a different way, more custom, a whole new added value in the kitchen reface process. It took a little time and understanding of the approach, and one main rule to qualify a cabinet refacing candidate, the kitchen cabinet boxes had to be in “good” condition, and in fact many older kitchen cabinets have full plywood construction, or solid wood, far higher quality than what most homeowners will manage to afford in a brand new kitchen cabinet. That meant clearly that structurally the refaced kitchen would have more strength and intergity. Other than that, I learned there wasn’t much I couldn’t do in a reface kitchen and the process really went more like this:
remove all old doors and drawer front and drawer boxes
sand all exposed areas as per plans
finish interiors of any cabinets with glass doors
make plumbing & electrical upgrades as per plans
add custom reface cabinets and make necessary modifications to existing cabinets
refrigerator gets concealed behind custom panels and a new deep cabinet installed above it
new flooring is installed
high Pressure Laminate or wood paneling is applied (refaced)to all exposed cabinet surfaces as per plan
new Doors are installed with concealed European hinges
new solid wood dovetailed drawers with full extension soft close drawer glides are installed
new drawer faces are installed
new counter top surface of customers choosing is installed
new roll out trays, base wastebaskets, vegetable bins, liter bottle pullouts, spice racks, cutlery dividers, every convenience you can imagine is available and installed per plans
new crown molding and light rail
under cabinet lighting is installed
and a full custom back splash is added, tile, Corian, granite, customer’s choice
That sounded and looked to me much more like a newly remodeled kitchen, and with the right craftsmen on the job, I learned cabinets could swap out their old function for new in the blink of an eye. The fact that most of the kitchen is saved, means I don’t contribute an extra 30+yards of trash to the landfill. A cabinet refacing crew generally brings back the debris in the back of their standard work van!
The benefit to the environment is undeniable. This is the ultimate in recycling, and the array of choices of styles, colors, and finishes available rival any new cabinet manufacturer’s offerings:
new crown molding and light rail
glazes
hand wiping
penciling
high gloss polyester lacquer paint
natural stains
One of the many benefits to Mr. and Mrs. Happy Kitchen-Customer is the amount of money they save on re-using the bones of their kitchen, it helps afford more bells and whistles in the finished product, kitchen accessories are key to good function and homeowners enjoy their use every day, rollouts, cutlery dividers, spice organizers, and pantry storage systems! Other benefits to consider are that it takes less time start to finish, an average of two and a half weeks to complete a kitchen refaces if they install a new counter top and back splash, the savings yielded also provides additional budget for counter top upgrades and beautiful hardware. Then there is the behind the scenes benefit to the environment, by not manufacturing new cabinet boxes, trees are spared, less cardboard is used, there is a savings on shipping, and the pollution from manufacturing is reduced dramatically. When the replacement doors and drawer fronts are purchased from a source that uses their factory excess to heat their factories and kilns, or re-sells its waste to say the pet industry, you have nearly closed the loop on unnecessary disposal.
These are some of the solutions we can look to more and more, the list of products is growing almost daily. While these solutions may not be for every client, they are for some, are they possibly for you?
Ask yourself, what else can I learn about kitchen refacing, is it for me? Is it for some of my clients? I know it is for some of mine.
Tags: Envy, Friends, Green, Kitchen...your, Truly
Posted in Kitchen | No Comments »