The bathroom is probably the only room in the house that you absolutely can’t get along without. In addition to its practical uses, it has also become a sanctuary and haven from the busy world and some people prefer it to be as spa-like as possible.

For those reasons, the bathroom has a tendency to be one of the top items on a homeowner’s remodeling wish list. CalFinder has covered some ideas for when you want a bathroom upgrade but are short on cash. Here are a few of their ideas we especially like, and you can check out the rest of the post here.

• Try a quick fix: Maybe a coat of sky-blue paint on your white walls will give it that serene feeling you’ve been craving. And if it doesn’t? Then you can always look at more spendy ways to reach your goal.
• Leave some jobs to the pros: Plumbers know plumbing and electricians know electricity. Do you really want to deal with an exploding toilet because your knowledge of pipes is rudimentary? No matter how cheap your bathroom remodel is, save some money to hire experts for certain parts of the job.
• Reface the cabinets you already have–far less expensive than getting them entirely replaced!

No matter where you live or what type of home you live in, severe summer storms can quickly put your home out of commission. Being prepared, even just a little bit, is the smart thing to do. Here is a checklist and some advice to make sure Mother Nature doesn’t leave you in a lurch.

Flashlights, batteries and a good old-fashioned, battery-operated radio. This is the most basic of basic needs when the power goes out and the best way to keep informed on what is going on. It’s a good idea to have at least three working flashlights in your home with fresh batteries and a spare set for each one.

Back-up power, another useful asset to have in reserve, comes in many shapes and sizes. Portable, gas-powered generators can keep pumps, refrigerators and some lights going when the power is out. It’s important to buy the right size, place it at least 10 feet away from your home and never in an enclosed area. Also, you’ll need proper-sized extension cords — 12-gauge minimum to power a large appliance like a refrigerator or small AC unit.

These units can range in price from $600-$1,500. Whole-house installed generators are the easiest ways to keep your home running.  These systems kick on automatically and can power most if not all of your home depending on the size of the unit. They typically run on natural or propane gas. They range in price from $4,000-$15,000 installed.

Food and water: It might sound a little apocalyptic, but this is an easy one to do. Keep a six-pack of water for each person in your home. That’s about a two to three day supply and allows you some breathing room. As for food, keep it simple and choose things that can last — again, for a two to three day supply. Granola bars, canned fruit and raisins are just a few examples.

These few steps can keep you prepared and ready, and the best thing that could happen is that you’d never need any of this.

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For those of you who haven’t seen it, Marvin Windows and Doors is sponsoring a Window Wisdom series on Charles & Hudson. So far, we’ve shared tips for evaluating a window’s condition, cleaning and upkeep and shopping for the correct window. Here’s a glimpse at some of the tips we’ve offered up thus far:

Watch the Flame
“We use this same tip to check for drafts around a door. Hold a lighted candle 2-3 inches from the edge of a closed interior window and slowly move it around the window. If you see the flame flicker in a particular spot you know you’ve got a draft.”

Weather Beater
“If you live in a particularly extreme climate that gets extremely cold or hot or wet, you should check the condition of your windows more frequently than those who live in moderate weather areas. Water damage is a frequent cause of window failure and the expansion and contraction of window frames from hot or cold weather can also be detrimental. Not to mention UV rays which can break down untreated or damaged wood causing further damage.”

Before You Buy
“Be sure to check the wall thickness before ordering doors and windows. Manufacturers will customize the frame jambs to match whatever wall construction you have. Find your wall thickness by measuring the jamb width on an existing door or window.”

Ditch the Dirt
“Dust and dirt can quickly accumulate in and around the moving parts of a window. If it’s really bad start with a vacuum and and clean the tracks. Use a toothbrush to get in deep between the tracks. Then clean and lubricate all of the mechanical parts using a silicone spray.”

For the next post in the series, Charles & Hudson will take readers on a visit to a Marvin Windows & Doors dealer.

Karim Rashid & Soda Stream: A Bubbly Match
Shelter Pop
“The award-winning designer has a new kitchen device — and he’s giving his only US interview to ShelterPop! With the at-home soda craze in full swing, it’s only natural that SodaStream — maker of the DIY soda maker — would bring some design cred to their machines by teaming up with award-winning designer Karim Rashid. Together. they’ve created a fun and bubbly limited edition home soda maker that us seltzer-aholics here at ShelterPop are crazy about. So when he agreed to give his one US interview to us, we jumped at the chance to talk not only about the DIY soda trend, but inspiration and good design as well.”

3 Smart Ways to Pay for Your Home Remodel
CalFinder
“As you may have noticed, the remodels with the greatest return often come at the highest price tags. Window replacement, for instance, costs an average of $11,066, bathroom remodels go for $16,634, and minor kitchen renovations ring in at $21,695. If you lack the cash up-front to cover materials and labor, how can you afford the work your home needs this year?”

Rooftop Gardens
Design*Sponge
“Outdoor space is most New Yorkers’ ultimate real estate wish. We initially hunt for more light, bigger rooms and better locations, but even after you’ve found a great apartment, it’s impossible to not eventually hope for a place to plant a garden to sit outside. While the reality of an amazing rooftop garden feels about a hundred years away for me, for some New Yorkers, it’s sitting right in front of them.”

DIY: Make a Sewing Kit in a Mason Jar
Casa Sugar
A picture guide to keeping sewing equipment for clothing emergencies in an adorable mason jar.

Why You Should Get an Energy Audit
Old House Web
“The right place to start is with an energy audit, a top-to-bottom look at your house by a trained professional who can then make suggestions on which upgrades can do the most good.”

The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Gardeners
The Daily Green
“Gardening for the first time? You can’t go wrong with these time-tested techniques.”

Making tax time a little more bearable
Design*Sponge
Maybe these tips will help you be more efficient next year: “Confession: this year I’ve become a total tax failure. It’s April 12, and I still haven’t filed. I’m only halfway through my receipts and feel like I need to psych myself up. In an attempt to rally, I rounded up just a few things that would make tax time a little more bearable.”

The Worst Paint Colors for a Home Exterior
Charles and Hudson
“We’ve all seen them. Maybe you’re out for a leisurely stroll, or a relaxing drive. You decide to check out some of the nearby neighborhoods. And then, without warning … you encounter one of THOSE houses. You know what we’re talking about–a home painted with a color so garish, so horrible, that you can’t help but admire the homeowner even as you laugh and question his or her mental reasoning skills.”

5 Examples of Bigger Being Better (In Small Spaces)
Apartment Therapy
“Bigger is better for many circumstances in life. Take umbrellas for example or how about bank accounts or a theoretical big heart? When it comes to small spaces it’s easy to scale back on size, but we’re here to reassure you that these 5 things arealways better bigger when it comes to home decor!”

Spring is here, it’s time to spruce up the yard with some terrific landscaping to accentuate your home. Now, I am all about showing you how to do things yourself, but like any improvement, you need to know your limitations.

What happens is simple: Folks visit the pretty nurseries to view pretty plants in bloom. However, when they bring home those beautiful azaleas, they’re heartbroken when the plants do not bloom in the summer. As with the inside of your home, the outside too provides a terrific opportunity to express yourself. It is all about planning ahead and knowing strengths and limitations.

When to call a professional
Whether you have a green thumb or not, it is always good to consult with a landscaping designer before any major outdoor project. The landscaping designer knows what grows in your climate and how the plants will look once mature. They not only focus on the look of the plants and shrubbery but the long-term life and care, as well.

Granted, you may know the color structure and type of plants you’d like featured, but a professional designer is familiar with many factors you may not consider, including leaf form, shape and structure of each plant, and how these plants will look year-round.

Plan for the environment

Like painting a picture, choose plants that are appropriate for different containers and specified spaces. This will allow you to achieve a sense of continuity, balance and structure in your landscaping.

Know that a few well-placed containers (10”x30” wide) full of flowering annuals look much more striking than many smaller containers that tend to make a yard look too busy. Also, larger containers keep plaints nourished and wet in warm weather.

Don’t bug me

Your professional will know about the disease and insect situation in your area (knowledge that is worth the price of admission). A great example of this: Certain varieties of geraniums are subject to disease, worms and insects that will eventually affect surrounding plants. A good landscaping designer will help you avoid plants that develop and carry rust, aphids, scale, mealy bugs, etc., thus eliminating the need to spray chemicals in the yard.

Doing it yourself

If you are going to brave it alone, without a professional, consider the goals and objectives for your landscape. Before you envision yourself enjoying that cool, iced tea in the summer sun, create a rough plan or sketch of the whole property. Decide which plants, trees, hills or rock outcroppings to add or keep.  Also consider wind direction, sun, patterns of shade and where rainwater collects.

As a do-it-yourselfer, know that your landscaping should complement the existing elements of the house. Knowing that terraces and patios are typically located near the kitchen, living room or bedroom, place smaller plants or potted plants close to the house. Place your larger items plants further from the structure.

Location and timing are everything

Often, features like flowering trees, sculpture or flowerbeds are located where they can easily be seen and enjoyed from inside the home. Also, know you’re your blooming times.

Remember flowers like pittosporum, juniper, trumpet vine and rhododendron typically do not bloom in the summer months. The longest blooming flowers (almost all year-round) are shade gardenias, geraniums, impatiens and begonias.

Maintenance

Ongoing care is key. Plan for traffic in the yard, enough space to push a wheelbarrow completely around the house for ongoing maintenance. Make sure the soil is treated and tilled for best performance, and remember to provide sufficient space for the development of your trees and shrubs.

Also, visit your local neighborhood nursery. They will be equipped to make recommendations on the appropriate and attractive plants for your area.

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At a certain point in any remodel, homeowners might find themselves fleetingly considering homicide. You might think you know about the disruption remodeling can cause, but dealing with dust, dirt, workers going in and out of your home, nonworking essential appliances, etc., can turn your attitude into surviving if you’re lucky and insanity if you aren’t.

Fellow bloggers Charles and Hudson recognize that remodeling can drive you around the bend and they have a few commonsense tips to help you make it through. Memorize their advice  to repeat as a mantra:

• Manage expectations: There will be times that it is just going to be bad. Expect that and you will feel better when it happens.
• Plan first: You know that old saying about how it’s easier to seek forgiveness than permission? It doesn’t apply when it comes to remodeling. Always plan first, and tear down later.
• Get ready for dust, dirt and inconvenience: Do a mini cleaning each day or week. It will help make the mess more bearable. Charles and Hudson suggests budgeting for a maid — maybe do this for a deep cleaning when the project is done.
• Schedule changes: Your schedule will be disrupted (see above point) and you must plan for it or risk coming home after a run to the water being turned off (that your builder told you about).

To these points we would also add that nothing lasts forever, although it may seem like it. Keep your eyes on the prize and before you know it, your remodeling project will be over.

If you’re interested in further reading on this very subject, check out this previous post from Lou Manfredini.

Image courtesy of Demed on Flickr.

‘Fake Clean’ Your House in a Hurry
DIY Life
Yes, the context for this tips article is Super Bowl, but the advice is timeless. This article from Francesca Clarke encourages homeowners to focus their cleaning time on the parts of their house where they’ll get the most impact for the energy they expel.

Interior design: Nicole Hollis
Dwell
“To call interior designer Nicole Hollis’s portfolio ‘eclectic’ is an understatement. On one page you’ll find a modern man-cave with a colorful LED-lit staircase and on the next, a rustic kitchen outfitted with copper pots and wicker baskets. Each project has its own merits, but Hollis’s greatest strength as a designer lies in her chameleonlike ability to channel her clients’ desires.”

18 ways to make a small space look larger
Houzz.com
“Lots of people live in a small home, a small room, or just a small space. Others want to live in an intimate way versus dealing with the maintenance and cleaning of a large square footage space. Small is beautiful, easy, and practical, too. No matter what your reason for living in a small space, you’ll undoubtedly have to make some compromises in your decorating, get really organized, and make some adjustments to your lifestyle in order to live efficiently. With color, strategic furniture buying, space planning and interesting lighting, your place will feel wonderfully YOU with all the space you need. See if some of our tips will work for you.”

10 Architecturally Wondrous Staircases
Curbly
“A friend forwarded me one of those emails her husband got at work. It was full of photos of amazing staircases plus some strange magic eye type puzzles. Being the visual person that I am, I became completely fixated on the staircases and even went so far as to search for more and more visually indulging photos of creative staircases. I couldn’t get enough. Who thinks of these designs?”

Early Spring Maintenance Checklist
Charles & Hudson
“We may be getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but it’s time to think spring! Even if you’re not quite out of the winter weather woods, we’ve got a short list of tasks you can tackle to get your home–both inside and out–ready for warmer months.”

Ice Castles Grown by a Minnesota Man Using Geothermal Heating System
Inhabitat
“Winters in Minnesota are cold and the best way to get through the bone-chilling season is to have fun with it, just like Roger Hanson does. For the last four years the ice builder has been growing ice castles in his front yard with the help of his geothermal heating system, some fancy sprayers and a computer program he created himself.”

The $200 Microhouse
New York Times
“For ingenuity, thrift and charm, Mr. Diedricksen’s tiny structures are hard to beat. Made of scavenged materials, they cost on average less than $200 to build. They often have transparent roofing, which allows a fine view of the treetops, particularly in the smallest ones, where the most comfortable position is supine. They have loads of imaginative and decorative details: a porthole-like window salvaged from a front-loading washing machine, a flip-down metal counter taken from the same deceased washer.”

How Many Recycled Cans Does It Take to Make an Airplane?
The Daily Green
“The good news is that my yearly office cleaning gives me a chance to sort out the hundreds of press releases and news clippings I’ve saved during the year for my annual Top Ten Shocking Eco-Facts blog post. Remember, being the Green Cheapskate, that’s “eco” as in ecological as well as economical.”

DIY Home Humidifiers: Humidify Your Home for Less
DIY Life
“The cold winter weather outside, coupled by indoor heating systems, easily sucks all the moisture out of your home. Low humidity levels can also lead to a host of problems including dry skin, sore throats, along with cracks in paint and wood furniture. Adding a humidifier is an easy way to replace this lost moisture in your home, but at times humidifiers can require high maintenance and more space and money than you would like to expend. Luckily, even on the tightest of budgets, there are inexpensive tricks to humidify your home.”

Recession Buster: DIY Wall Art
Calfinder
“There are some great things you can do in a weekend to revolutionize your living room—and installing affordable wall art is one of them. Check out how.”

diy project: homemade leprechaun spirits
Design*Sponge
“Saint Patrick’s Day is right around the corner; it will sneak up on you before you know it, so you might want to prepare! The tradition of drinking on the holiday comes from a legend called Patrick Pot. This project honors that tradition.”

Everyone loves a clean house, but it can be so hard to achieve and maintain. Between work, family, friends, and social and volunteer activities, the last thing most people want to spend their precious free time doing is cleaning. But there’s nothing like the serenity of a perfectly clean house where everything is in its place.

Shelterpop offered up a list of cleaning tips for every room in the house. Here are our favorite tips of theirs for each room.

• Create an inbox in the entryway. This can serve as a repository for bills and other mail to take care of — no more mail strewn on the kitchen table! Don’t forget to recycle junk mail and toss unwanted credit card solicitations and the like in the shredder as soon as they arrive.
• Recycle all those magazines and newspapers in your living room. Unless you are a collector, you probably will never read old magazines. Clip or scan articles you find interesting and get rid of the rest.
• Pare down the “bag of bags” in the kitchen. Whether they are paper or plastic, trust us: there are more where they came from.
• Sleep stuff only in the bedroom. Shelterpop suggests removing “anything that doesn’t relate to your nocturnal life.” It’s a tall order, but really, what do you need in your bedroom? A bed, of course. Drawers and closets for storing clothes. A bedside table for a few  necessities. A chair or bench maybe. Keeping your bedroom clutter-free can only improve your sleeping.
• Streamline your products in the bathroom. Got through drawers and shelves and only keep the stuff that you use on a regular basis. Toss old or expired makeup, use up the lotion bottles that have just a tiny bit of lotion in them and ask your friends if they want that styling creme you bought at the salon a few months ago and only used once.

Check out Shelterpop to read the rest of their tips!