Redesign that old and drab to new and fab.

Every homeowner eventually wants to make a change, but if you’re like many people you haven’t a clue where to begin. Just like fashion styles, interior designs change with the times as well. So, if you’ve been in your home for a long time and are ready to sell or are just ready for a makeover, read on to see if the hottest trends are suitable for your home.

Go ahead and slap a fresh coat of paint on the walls. But don’t make it sterile white or boring beige. At the very least use these colors along with some vibrant accent colors on a single wall or two.

“We’ve gone through an era of everything being very muted and quiet and what we see with the younger generation coming up is that we’re really going to use lots of colors. Colors on the walls, color on the furniture such as lime greens, browns, oranges and bright reds,” says Dixie Lovejoy, owner of Arizona-based Apple Interior Systems, Inc.

A little paint can make a major change to a home. It’s always a good idea to put on a fresh coat or at least touch up the paint before you place your home on the market. It gives a buyer a feeling of cleanliness and that the home has been well cared for over the years.

“Paint is a very inexpensive way to do something new and not have your house seem dated as time goes on,” adds Lovejoy.

Think big, but buy less. “People used to buy accessories on a very small scale. In our office, one of our slogans is: bigger is better,” says Lovejoy.

She says that means things like pots, statues, fountains, and flower arrangements should all be bigger. So instead of having a lot of knickknack items, you buy less but when you do, you buy big. The idea is to make a statement with your decorating rather than make your home look cluttered.

Accent pillows are a must! The key home décor ingredient that no home should be without gives new meaning to pillow talk. Lovejoy says accent pillows will get your houseguest chatting about your harmonizing décor. “Accent pillows are kind of a key to all design that ties everything together,” she says.

Bye-bye sliders. In my opinion, sliding glass doors have always been a bit of an eyesore, but so many tract homes have them. Now, Lovejoy says, sliding glass and even French doors are losing ground. The new alternative creates wide open space even in a residential tract home. Instead, doors that virtually vanish or disappear are appearing in more homes and allowing better access to the great outdoors.

“They actually can slide all the way into a pocket that’s built into a wall or stack on top of each other so it becomes one small window on the left or right side but the rest of your house is all open. There are also folding doors that do that,” says Lovejoy.

She says the typical narrow three-foot opening on sliding or French doors just isn’t suitable for what homeowners want today. “The newest trend is opening up a 12 to 22 or 30 feet of glass. It gives you almost the lanai effect like you have in Hawaii where the inside and the outside all become one,” explains Lovejoy.

Of course, this is ideal for homeowners who have big parties or events at their home. “You can just open up your house and the traffic flows inside to outside,” says Lovejoy.

Then the outside is decorated much like the inside with fireplaces, couches, chairs, coffee tables, and Lovejoy says even drapes and pictures hanging on the walls on the outside of the house. All of this makes the determining line between the outside and inside of your house disappear.

Furnish your outdoors like your indoors.

“We traditionally don’t even use regular patio furniture. We upholster couches and chairs and everything in outside fabric because it’s gotten so incredibly intricate. It’s not the old red, white, and blue fabric that we used to think of for outdoor furniture,” says Lovejoy.

Today, designers are using big patterns made from velvets and even sheer materials on outside furniture which begs the question, “how does this fabric hold up on a couch or chair?”

“We’re the toughest market there is with the weather and everything else … and we’re the dustbowl of the world out here but even the moisture that you have in the costal cities wouldn’t affect it,” says Lovejoy. Need to clean your furniture? Don’t hire a professional. Lovejoy says, “You can take a hose to it and wash off the couch or chairs or you can vacuum them just like you do inside so there’s really no difference.”

When it comes to flooring, soft is out and hard is in. “I think that we’re going away from soft surfaces on the flooring,” says Lovejoy.

Traditionally, homes have always had carpeting in the bedroom areas and maybe tile or hardwood flooring in other parts of the house. That’s changing to create a better flow between the indoor and outdoor living areas. “That way when you open up your house for entertaining, the patio or the lanai on the outside, or your sunroom, has the same surface as the house so you get that huge expanded feeling,” says Lovejoy.

Of course, area rugs are making a huge impact in the marketplace because of homeowners wanting to have some cozy, soft areas on the floor near beds, couches, and fireplaces. Even just a few changes to your home can take it from drab to fabulous with these hot trends.

Written by Phoebe Chongchua as found in Craig Lilly’s Newsletter.

Paint Brushes

If you need to pause the job, but have not completely finished, then wrapping your brush or roller in a clean plastic bag is a professional trick to remember. This prevents the paint on the brush or roller from drying out and damaging the equipment. You should remove as much excess paint as possible before you place your brush or roller into the bag, and secure the plastic around the handle with an elastic band.

Once your painting job is finished however, cleaning your equipment is essential to prolong their useful life. If you are using a water-based paint, then water is the only liquid you should use to clean your equipment. Fill a bucket with cold water and use that to begin to work the paint out of the brush or roller fibers. Many people hold their equipment directly under a running tap straight away, but this uses a huge amount of water. Filling a bucket helps you remove a lot of residual paint without wasting too much water. Use your fingers to rub through the brush or roller fibers, paying attention to the ends of the bristles closest to the handle.

Disposing of the dirty water can be a problem if you are doing a lot of regular painting. If your DIY job is an occasional one however, you can safely pour the dirty water onto your garden, away from any food crops. Then you can either refill the bucket and repeat the process, or you can hold the equipment under a running cold-water tap and continue to work at the bristles or roller until the water runs clear. Squeeze the excess water from the equipment, and then leave to dry in the open air. Many brushes have a hold in the handle to enable you to suspend them from a hook while drying, to prevent the bristles from becoming misshaped.

If you are using an oil-based paint, then you will need a chemical cleaning fluid for your equipment some newspaper and some old rags. Again, remove as much excess paint from the brush as possible (an old piece of wood is useful for this). In an old jam jar, half fill with turpentine and gently start to work the bristles against the side of the jar to release the paint. This can take some time, and may require the brush to be suspended in the turpentine overnight so that the paint settles on the bottom of the jar. To do this, choose a jar that is taller than the brush is long, and use a stick or piece of dowel through the hole in the brush handle to suspend it in the turpentine without the bristles touching the bottom of the jar.

The following day, carefully remove the brush from the jar. Decant the turpentine from the paint sediment, and repeat the process. When you first remove the brush from the turpentine and paint solution, squeeze the bristles with the old rags to remove more of the paint residue. When you cannot get any more paint out of the bristles, which will probably take 2 or 3 sessions with the turpentine, you can wash the brush with warm soapy water. Then rinse thoroughly and dry suspended in the open air.

For more articles by author, go to Helium.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) document titled What You Need to Know About Lead Poisoning, “Despite laws established in the 1970s to make people aware of the dangers of lead and its poisonous effects, lead poisoning in children remains a common, yet preventable, environmental health problem in the United States.” Heavily-leaded paint is in about two-thirds of homes built prior to 1940 and one-half of homes built from 1940 to 1960, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). “Some homes built after 1960 also contain heavily-leaded paint.”

The CPSC recommends that any homes constructed before the 1980s be tested for lead before renovating. You can learn more about lead-based paint by visiting the EPA’s website. In this column we’ll assume you understand that if you think you have lead-based paint you need to seek expert help before any renovations. Now, we’ll tackle the fun stuff: choosing colors that have mass appeal (in case you’re selling soon), selecting quality paint, and understanding when to buy paint. For this information we turn to Gabrielle Genevich, branch manager, Sherwin Williams.

Top selling colors, still neutral for mass appeal. “We have a list of our top 50 selling colors. Most are light white or beige. Kilim beige is sort of a light tan color and most often that’s what people pick—warm colors that they can use for their entire home,” says Genevich.

Genevich says that the new design of homes is what helps to make these neutral colors so popular. “Most of the time people are looking for that one color that they can work throughout their house because so many of the houses now are open and you can see from one room to the next so they want a color that matches everything,” she says.

When it comes to selecting color for a specific room, say, the kitchen, Genevich cautions homeowners to not be too tempted by what they see in home makeover magazines. “For instance, people come in and they want a yellow kitchen and they pick out these bright lemon yellows [colors] you see in a magazine and they think it will be amazing in their house but then they get home and it looks like neon yellow. So I always tell people to go for the more muted tones. If you want a bright yellow you might try more of a gold tone, something that is a little more muted so that it doesn’t stand out so much. People want to go with big color which is great but you need to do it so that it doesn’t overpower everything else,” says Genevich.

What about paint quality? Do you really need to buy top-of-the line? Surprisingly, Genevich says no. “You don’t have to buy the best paint but buying a better paint is going to save you time and money. It’s going to save you from having to put three coats on your wall. A better paint will be fast, easy, and error- proof.” She suggests buying something in the mid-range for good coverage and value.

“If you have smoke stains on your ceiling you’ll want to repaint it but [if that's not the case] you don’t need to paint the ceiling to make your house look fresher. You can just do the walls. If you do paint the ceiling you can use a lower-cost interior flat paint,” says Genevich.

One final tip before you get started, Genevich says, “Prep work is most important because you don’t want paint on your trim, carpet, and floors. Get a good brush and roller that’s not going to leave fuzz on your walls.

When’s the best time to paint? Well, that’s pretty open if it’s an interior paint job. However, Genevich has some advice about the best times to buy paint. “Shop around holidays; that’s when all the paint stores have good sales.” She adds, “If you’re going to do a big project where you’re painting your interior house it’s going to pay to get 25 percent or 30 percent off.”

Written by Phoebe Chongchua as found in Craig Lilly’s Newsletter.

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