Depending on the local landscape of your neighborhood, you may have plenty of flat space to work with, or as in the case of the projects below, the space available to improve your yard poses some type of challenge. Whether you have a hill right off the back door or need to work inside an established footprint, there's a solution to any challenge.
Read MoreTopics: Outdoor Living, Design Trends and Ideas
Whether you're planning for aging in place, or you just want your home to be more accessible, universal design concepts can be applied throughout your home. To get the most out of a universal design mindset in you home, not only should you look at major considerations in the kitchen and bath, but also pay attention to the ways in which those ideas can be applied to all areas of your home. Here are 4 Universal Design features that can make any room in your home “user friendly” for a lifetime.
Read MoreTopics: Design Trends and Ideas, Aging-in-Place, Kitchens
Outdoor living extends the function of our home's property by providing useful areas to hang out, grill out, and chill out, outside of the house. While some homes come with great outdoor areas already in place when you move in, often time these lawns, porches and patios don't account for the specific ways you and your family want to interact with the outside. In the six examples below, we've highlighted before and afters that show what a bit of personalization can do to improve the usefulness and quality of your home's outdoor living areas.
Read MoreTopics: Outdoor Living, Design Trends and Ideas
Original Blog Post 10/09/2012 Updated 7/18/2016
If you are planning to remodel a kitchen, you will need a floor plan design. The design should address the basic functions of a kitchen including food prep, cooking, storage, appliance use and clean up. Other areas to consider in your kitchen plan may include space for informal dining, a beverage center, a message center, or a walk-in pantry. As long as people have been using kitchens, fitting these various areas in has been the key challenge. While there are many variations, most kitchen floor plans fall into one of 4 time-tested designs.
Topics: Design Trends and Ideas, Kitchens
