So you’re doing some remodeling and it occurs to you that, hey, you can hang the drywall yourself and save some money. How hard could it be? You just nail some paper-covered chalk board to the studs and voila! You’re an expert. Whoa! Hold on there. I want you to hear me out. I think…
One day, when I wasn’t looking, my once-charming front porch went from shabby chic to just plain disgusting. I waited for the crew from HGTV’s Curb Appeal to show up. When they didn’t come, I decided to take on the job. Here’s the porch I started with: As you can see, I had many challenges:…
When Jennifer Aniston’s home turned up in Architectural Digest last month, the bed in the master bedroom really caught my eye. As you can see above, it’s an oversized platform with two “ears” for low-slung night stands. I can imagine one of those ultra-comfortable memory foam mattresses sitting atop this platform. It’s just too yummy.…
After the overhead cabinet came down in Joni’s kitchen, and sunlight from the back yard flooded in, she said: Ten years! I’ve wanted to do that for 10 years! With a $1,000 budget, she wants to update and brighten the kitchen, giving it what she calls a coffee-house feeling of comfort. Now, it just looks…
For a cool contemporary home, these DIY paintings might be fun and flexible. These look so sophisticated. But actually, they’re simply canvases stretched on wood frames covered liberally with gesso-thickened paint. And where in the world would artists be without the miracle of gesso? Just moving one colored canvas in or out of a scene…
Today’s Guest Blogger is Colleen, a stay-at-home mom from Lake Forest, who finally gave in to my pleading for Guest Bloggers. (Was it the praying cat that put her over the edge?)Here’s her story: When we bought our Lake Forest townhouse, everything was perfect except the kitchen. It was beige laminate everywhere (applied over the…
Well, why the heck not learn home improvement from stars? This is SoCal, after all. Home Depot refers to its new celebrity workshop series as "where Hollywood meets how-to." And personally, I could watch the Los Angeles-based Steve Harvey all day long. Anyone see him in "The Original Kings of Comedy"? In a video on…
Should you add square footage with your own hands, hire subcontractors to do it or pay a licensed contractor to oversee the project? The upside to doing it yourself, as evidenced by this Westchester addition designed and built by an aerospace engineer and his brother, is that you get a bunch of new space for…
Thanks to reader Jeannie for sending a link to this online booklet: Is Your Home Protected From Wildfire Disaster? A Homeowner’s Guide to Wildfire Retrofit. It was produced by the Institute for Business & Home Safety, with input from government and insurance agencies. Of interest to me is an estimate of how much fire-protection retrofits…