Learn how to naturally clean your microwave by using just lemon and water.

The solution? Instead of throwing a party with set hours, which will run into conflict with prior obligations, consider holding a holiday open house — a party that runs all day, allowing guests to arrive at their leisure.

A holiday open house also puts less stress on the hosts. With a little decorating, holiday libations and some simple snacks, you can easily plan an all-day get-together that allows you to mix and mingle, rather than watch the oven or shake cocktails.

Not sure where to start?

Pottery Barn offers the following tips to help you plan a successful holiday open house:

Create a festive mood

Get your guests into the holiday spirit before they even enter your home by lining your walkway with Arches lanterns and pillar candles and hanging a wreath on your door. You can also decorate trees and shrubs with lights.

Use candles to infuse your home with warmth and light. Wrap garlands around banisters, and drape them over doorways.

Set up a buffet

Use your dining table to present an array of delectables that do well at room temperature. A cheese board, for example, along with Marcona almonds, dried figs and sliced baguette, looks elegant without requiring anything more than the occasional refill.

Create a bar

Pottery Barn portable Modine Bar lets you set up drinks anywhere in your home. Keep ice on hand for cold drinks and an electric kettle for hot ones. Select two or three drinks, and print out the recipes on cards, so guests can mix their own cocktails.

Provide entertainment

No matter what time guests arrive, make them feel like they’ve experienced the best of the party by focusing the merriment on a few activities. For example, invite guests to bring a toy to donate to a local organization, and put all of the toys on one table, so guests can see the pile grow. Set up a craft table for children, giving them supplies to make paper snowflakes, simple tree decorations and homemade wrapping paper. And before the fun is over, hand out party favors, like ornaments, that your guests can take home.

For more entertaining ideas, visit www.potterybarn.com/stylehouse.

Courtesy: NewsUSA

“With busier lifestyles, growing families, gourmet kitchens, home offices, and diverse hobbies, consumers are purchasing more items than ever before. As a result, people are discovering more creative uses for cabinetry, such as lockers in mudrooms where kids can store ‘their valuables’ after school, sports, and other activities,” says Mindy Brooks, advertising and communications manager at HomeCrest Cabinetry.

Another popular trend is replacing old dressers and other unwieldy bedroom furniture with standard and custom cabinets that line walls or fit snugly into closets. Especially in smaller homes, closed-door cabinetry or open bookshelves placed strategically as room dividers between living and dining areas, and all along walls, can generate new space by increasing storage options.

Not only does cabinetry utilize space better than furniture throughout the home, it helps you get organized and stay that way. With cabinetry, everything has its own home so there’s less clutter and chaos in your life. For example, you can create a beautiful wood wall-hugging credenza to showcase everything from your family heirlooms and framed photos to knick-knacks using shelves and glass-door display cabinets, while organizing a multitude of items that would otherwise be clutter, inside credenza drawers and closed cabinet spaces. As a result, you’re much freer to relax and enjoy your time at home without feeling crowded by too much furniture or overwhelmed by belongings.

When using cabinetry instead of furniture, the design and storage possibilities are as rich as your imagination. To create a cozy country look and feel, you can choose closed cabinets and open bookshelves surrounding a mantel and fireplace in a den or living room. A window seat with built-in storage and marble-topped cabinetry on both sides creates a comfortable nook for reading and relaxing anyplace in the home where there’s a window with a view. You can even divide rooms using a beautiful wooden china hutch that combines closed solid-wood storage cabinets stretching floor-to-ceiling at one end with elegant glass-door china display cabinets lowered to kitchen island-height at the other end, achieving an airy, open feel between rooms that doesn’t block light or conversation.

You can find creative cabinetry solutions like these from HomeCrest Cabinetry, a premier manufacturer of home cabinetry. To provide even greater flexibility, HomeCrest offers Custom Choice, an innovative program that lets homeowners add modified options to standard cabinetry to achieve custom looks and functionality — without custom pricing. Using standard doors and drawer fronts, Custom Choice can accommodate wider cabinets, deeper drawers, additional panels or doors, and many other options for a perfect fit anywhere. It brings creative, custom-quality cabinetry to every corner of the home — dining and living areas, bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, pantries, offices, laundry and utility areas, and beyond.

For more information about HomeCrest Cabinetry, or to locate a dealer, visit www.homecrestcab.com.

Courtesy: ARAcontent

Hidden Potential shows homebuyers (and its viewers) what their dream home could look like before they buy it. In each episode, a homebuyer will look at three very different homes that need renovation. As they tour each home, a design expert will show the homebuyer computer-generated graphics that will showcase the home’s “hidden potential.” In the end, we’ll learn which house the homebuyer chose to turn into their dream home.

Courtesy: HGTV

When Portland cement is mixed with water a chemical reaction takes place which makes the cement harden. In doing so it binds together the sand and gravel mixed with it to become one solid rocklike mass.

Many varieties of cement are made of which five are commonly used and available at most suppliers.

Standard Cement

This is ordinary grey cement. Used for all general construction. If you don’t specify otherwise this is what you will get when you buy cement.

White Cement

Similar in all properties to standard cement except that it is white in color. Used to mix light colored concrete and mortar and for making colored cement.

High Early Strength Cement

Hardens and develops strength much faster than standard cement. Allows quick use of driveways and walks.

Air Entrained Cement

This is not as strong as standard cement but has high resistance to frost and salt. Useful where salt is applied for ice and snow removal.

Masonry Cement

A special mixture for use with sand to make mortar. Has more plasticity, water retention and ease of handling.

The type of concrete mix is expressed by three numbers such as 1:2:4 which means 1 part cement, 2 parts sand and 4 parts gravel or stone. To make good concrete you must measure ingredients accurately.

If you don’t want to mix your own you can buy, at somewhat higher cost, prepackaged mixes. These contain the right proportion of ingredients to which you only need to add water.

Concrete can be mixed by hand on a plywood sheet at least 4 by 6 feet. It can also be mixed on a concrete sidewalk or driveway. Mix the cement and sand till completely blended then add the gravel and mix till coated with cement. Make a crater in the middle of the pile and pour in about half the measured amount of water. Rake the sides of the pile up and into the water. When all the water is absorbed make a new crater and add the rest of the water.

Mixing large amounts of concrete by hand is hard work. It is better to buy or rent a concrete mixer if you need a lot of concrete. These instructions for how to make concrete are very simple and will provide you with good concrete.

You can also make your own concrete blocks using hand made molds. This is a great home-business opportunity. Concrete blocks are always in strong demand everywhere and you can have a home part time business supplying them to building supply stores or directly to consumers.

Working from your garage your costs are very low and you can turn out a quality product at a very competitive price. When you reach the stage of needing increased production you can build a concrete block making machine from auto parts and sheet metal

This home built concrete block machine can turn out 800 or more blocks per day and is every bit as good as a commercial model which costs thousands of dollars. Plans and instructions for making the machine and the hand molds are readily available.

About the author: John Mowatt – Would you like to know how to make molds and a concrete block making machine? Would you like to have your own business manufacturing concrete blocks? See our website for lots of information and available plans: http://www.concreteblockmaker.comCourtesy: EzineArticles
photo credit: laser2k

Vent-free fireplaces often have up to three see-through walls, making them a spectacular design feature for any home, particularly a winter home. The top of the fireplace can also be left see-through, or an insulated top can be added, providing a valuable, functional horizontal surface on which to place a TV set, books, accessories, or framed photographs.

Surrounds for vent-free fireplaces can be adapted to fit virtually any interior design style, from traditional to modern to country, and everything in between.

Opponents Of Vent-free Fireplaces

Those who oppose the use of vent-free fireplaces say they are unsafe and unhealthy. These opponents point out that, while natural gas fireplaces may not emit particulate emissions, combustion of natural gas produces gas by-products that can be harmful to the environment. When these gas by-products are released indoors, the environment that they are harmful to is the air homeowners are breathing in their homes.

In addition to emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and sulphur dioxide, a vent-free fireplace also emits water vapor. In a damp climate, water vapor can collect inside the house, leading to problems with mold and condensation. In fact, the amount of water that goes into a home from a vent-free fireplace for every 100,000 BTUs of gas burned can be up to one full gallon of water. Unless homeowners have a system in place for handling all this water vapor, their vent-free fireplace might be doing them more harm than good.

Direct-Vent Fireplace – A Good Alternative

A direct-vent fireplace can be installed in nearly every application where a vent-free fireplace would also work. Furthermore, a direct-vent fireplace can be installed in a corner unit, so two sides of the fireplace are see-through. Direct-vent gas fireplaces are sealed, so all the harmful gases are released outdoors through the product’s venting system. In the outdoor environment, these gases can mix with other environmental gas naturally present in the atmosphere, reducing the harmful effects of these gases in your home.

In summary, vent-free fireplaces should not be seriously considered by anyone who wants their fireplace for more than just looks. A direct-vent gas fireplace is a safer alternative.

About the author: Percy Troughton runs his own garden center as well as running several shopping based websites. Check out these great Interior Design Online articles and guides.
www.interiordesignonline.biz

Article Source: EzineArticles

Home Design Software

A Floor Plan is a view of a house that would be seen if you were to take a knife and slice the house to see the walls, windows, doors, etc. from the top about mid ways down the walls. This is also called the dimensional plan. Depending on how much detail your builder or local building inspector requires, the minimum set of plans should include the floor plan, exterior elevations, foundation or basement plan, and a roof plan drawn to scale.

Just so you’ll know, a scale is nothing more than a shrunken ruler so that 1′ -0″ (12 inches) is now 1/4 inch long as far as your drawing is concerned. So here then is an example. If we use a scale to draw an 8′ line. in reality the line is only 2 inches long on the paper in real life.

So let’s see what’s included in a set of plans:

Floor Plans

Most floor plans are drawn at the scale of 1/4″ = 1′- 0″. It should include all the dimensions (measurements) of the wall, window, and door locations, door and window sizes, stair locations, room labels, locations of exposed beams, cased opening sizes and locations, bathroom layout showing sink vanity, tub, and toilet, kitchen cabinets with appliances & sink fixtures, and construction notes.

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Some floor plans include the electrical symbols showing the receptacles, light switches, light fixtures, ceiling fans, cable connections, telephone jacks, and meter base locations. These can be included in the dimensional plan but many opt to have it on a separate drawing.

Exterior Elevations

The  exterior elevatons include all four (4) views of the home which are front, left, rear, & right drawn also at 1/4″ = 1′ – 0″ scale. The are some plans that have the front elevation drawn at 1/4″ scale and then the left, rear & right at 1/8″ = 1′ – 0″ On these views are notes about what type of siding or veneer, the roof pitches (angles), grade locations, finished floor & ceiling locations, and a roof plan showing the house from the top view. The roof plan is usually drawn at 1/8″ = 1′ – 0″ scale or 1/16″ = 1′ – 0″.

Foundation or Basement Plan

The foundation or basement plan  is the same type as the floor plan showing wall types, footing sizes, floor joist or truss locations, support beams, pilasters or piers, and ventilation vents & openings. The foundation or basement plan is also a dimensional type drawing. Most of these plans are drawn at the scale of 1/4″ = 1′- 0″.

If the plan is more detailed, then we would see sectional details showing the wall and roof construction of the home, HVAC plan, plumbing plan, and cabinet elevations. Even more involved plans would show the types of mouldings, pediments, & trims in greater detail.

About the author: Tim Davis is a veteran Architectural Designer who teaches a full course in Residential Drafting with his new Ebook, “Learning to Draw House Plans in a No Nonsense Way” at http://homedesign.8m.com/101ebook He also has several ebooks out on similar subjects that can be found at http://receivedtext.org including a free ebook on Drawing a Simple Floor Plan on the Drafting Board.

Courtesy: EzineArticles

 To begin with, how can you tell when the damage has gone beyond repair? A visual examination should be enough to answer your question. If the cracking is deep and widespread, then look how even the matching surfaces are. If it’s obvious there’s been a good bit of settling, then any attempt at concrete slab repair would only be temporary. Significant settling is usually caused by heavily-loaded trucks, erosion, poor installment of the sub-grade, or maybe a combination.

In colder climates you also have to consider the possibility of “frost heave”, where freezing and thawing in the ground below the slab causes the slab to break and heave upward. If any of these is true, then it’s just time to replace your slab.

But if the slab only has surface cracking, or if the broken edges are still close together and even (indicating no settling or heave) then you still have a good chance of a lasting repair. In that case, you should certainly consider concrete slab repair as a viable option. Unless you’re already a “pro” at this sort of job, it might be a good idea to call a professional. But if you’d like to try to do it yourself, we can give you the basic steps right here.

1. Cleaning

It would be best to rent a power washer to thoroughly clean the surface of your slab. It’s vital that all dirt and loose residue be removed in order for the repair compound to properly bond to the old concrete, producing a lasting repair.

2. Prepare the edges

Using a chisel and hammer, cut the edges of the cracks to a backward angle. Clean dust and debris using a good stiff brush, either by hand or with a drill. If the crack is a deep one, then you must fill it with sand up to within 1/2 inch of the surface.

3. Apply the bonding solution

You may be tempted to skip this step, but that would be a mistake. The bonding solution helps the repair compound to chemically bond with the old concrete. Without it, your careful work might simply dry and pop out. So use a paint brush and apply a thin layer to the entire inside of the crack.

4. Apply the repair compound

Mix your repair compound according to directions, then use a trowel to fill in the cracks. Initially, you should fill the hole above the surface, then feather and smooth it until it’s even with the surface.

After you’ve repaired the cracks in your concrete, there are some concrete resurfacing options you can also consider, such as paint, sealer, texture, stamping, and others. Whatever you decide, though, you should wait at least 72 hours after the concrete slab repair is finished before using the concrete or applying any treatments.

So take a look at your slab with these options in mind. Concrete slab repair might save you a bundle.

About the author: Thomas Savenstock – For more options on cement uses visit http://cementfacts.com/