Whether your dwelling is a 1946 Airstream trailer behind a meat-packing plant, or a 12,000 square foot mansion on ten acres in the Hamptons, it’s your home-sweet-home, and you want to keep it safe and secure. One of the biggest threats to this safe haven comes from fire; according to the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association), more than 1,000 home structure fires are reported on an average day. This translates to 42 fires every hour, or one reported home fire every 85 seconds. In a recent five-year study period, home fires killed an average of seven people per day. The NFPA also found that almost all homes have at least one smoke alarm, but almost two-thirds of home fire deaths in 2006-2010 resulted from fires in homes in which no smoke alarm was present or at least one was present but none operated. [Read more...]
Four Fashionable Fire-Foiling Fixtures – Smoke Detectors to Alarm the Senses!
Latch Onto Your Pot With The Pot Latch Plant Holder
My wife loves house plants. Our home is the dwelling place for dozens of hanging and potted plants at any given time, running the gamut from beautiful, full and healthy specimens to some that are fodder for the compost heap. (Just because she loves plants doesn’t mean they always reciprocate). In the summer months, most of these plants are tasked with beautifying our back porch; they hibernate indoors for the winter, and the survivors are booted back out in the spring. [Read more...]
Our Insider’s Guide to Flipping Off – And On! With Style
Ah, the New Year is solidly upon us. All that remains of the now seemingly distant holidays are some stray needles from the tree, stuck to your sock, and an impressive stack of credit card bills. Plus, it’s tax season. Suddenly, that home improvement project that you’d been planning (you know, the two-story addition with exotic hardwood floors, custom windows, Stickley furniture, and a zebra skin rug) seems a tad out of reach. Rather than an extreme makeover, your accountant now gently urges “scale back a bit. How about some new switch plates?” [Read more...]
Mountain Laurel Handrails
I’m not even sure where to even begin with this; I am completely awestruck by these handrails. For most of us schlubbs, we are surrounded by your average everyday balusters. Perhaps you’re a little more artsy-fartsy and your balusters have some kind of turned detail to it, or you forwent the traditional balusters altogether and used cable or conduit or fishing line (hope you used high test). Could any of these alternatives even begin to compare to what the folks over at Mountain Laurel Handrails are doing? I don’t think so! [Read more...]
Hide a Bed and Your Unmade Covers DIY Style With a Murphy Bed Kit from Rockler
When I was a kid, I slept in a Murphy bed. They’re also known as hideaway beds or wall beds. It was awesome for several reasons, but one in particular: making my bed consisted of bungee-cording my pillow and blanket to the bed and then sending it up and into the wall. It took me about 3 seconds to “make” my bed, with no military style sheet tucking or parental nagging needed. To this day I am still reluctant to make the bed. After all, I’m only going to be sleeping in it again later that same day. It’s wasted effort I say! Not surprisingly, my wife disagrees with this philosophy. If you’d like to avoid making your bed and then hide the evidence of your misconduct, maybe a Murphy Bed is just what you need too. But wait, I know what you’re thinking, “Aren’t Murphy Beds around $2000?!” Not if you DIY your own Murphy Bed with the Create-a-Bed kit available from our sponsor Rockler. [Read more...]
Screw Art – No Really – Screw Art!
I can see how you might interpret the title the wrong way. I don’t quite look like an art connoisseur. But I love the inventiveness and true feeling in unique art pieces. If they use some form of a tool or hardware, then it’s even better. Bonus points if they use a tool and hardware. With that said, I introduce Andrew Myers artist extraordinaire. A former resident of Germany and Spain, he now lives in California where he went to art school. Andrew was trained in both painting and sculpture, which is lucky for us tool-heads. If you watch the video below, you will notice that he and others suggest that you really don’t learn something like screw art in art school. That is where true artistry comes into play. [Read more...]
How To Install Wainscoting – Our Cure for Being In The Pink!
A friend once said of my wife that she is not afraid of color. There is ample evidence of this in our home, with its yellow kitchen/family room, gold rag-painted living room, blue and deep-red sunroom, and so on. And most of the rooms actually look great, as she is good at picking the right shades. With one notable exception: Our side hallway, which some years back fell victim to a sneak attack of pink paint. (She claimed it was rose, but it sure as hell looked pink to me; anyhow, a rose by any other name is still pink, and still looketh like crap, as wise Willie Shakespeare aptly observed. [Read more...]
Don’t Forget Your Closets – And Here Are Three Reasons Why
I like closets, at least in my mind, but often they get forgotten. Like mine did. Shortly after Christmas I had an issue with my hot water heater that is stored in the downstairs closet. The hot water heater definitely had to go, but once I removed the junk that our closet held, it got me looking at how awful the closet actually was. Closets in general seem to get the very least attention of any space in the house. You throw in your clothes or shoes, a random vacuum cleaner, odds and ends, the occasional tool, etc. They really are the junk drawers of the house. Because of their red-headed stepchild status, closets tend to be neglected and can fall into disrepair quickly. As I see it, there are at least three reasons why you shouldn’t neglect your closets.
How to Hang a Tapestry with a Regular Curtain Rod
Normally we’re talking about brutish power tools and rugged home improvement projects. But occasionally, we like to tap into our inner Christopher Lowell and get our decorator on. So today, we’ll be talking tapestries baby! Just to stay grounded in our HomeFixated roots, our little tapestry project also involved some optional metal fabrication with a grinder. More on that to come. Tapestries can be great decorative items, but in our case we were installing them to deaden the sound in a plaster-walled office. Without soft surfaces, a plaster room with hardwood flooring can sound more like an echo chamber than a cozy room. Since I don’t consider myself an expert on tapestries, I embarked on my typically obsessive hunt for tapestries and installation methods online. In the process, I learned a few tips and tricks I’d like to share with you. [Read more...]
Caretta Workspaces Organize Your Wires and Give You a Rock Star Desk
I don’t know about you but my home desk is a mess and no it has nothing to do with my messy tendencies or lack of organizational skills, but the wires, oh the wires. What do you do with them all, I mean for an ever wireless world how does one explain the amount of wires required to make everything wireless? But there is a solution (and no it does not include adapting a troglodytic lifestyle and moving to a cave) and it’s done artfully with Caretta Workspaces. [Read more...]
