Living

Get helpful advice on remodeling, home maintenance, and home security, plus tips on decorating, gardening, DIY home projects, how to prevent damage to your home, and more.

Living How to Live Through a Home Remodel If you’re thinking about remodeling or are about to break ground on your first renovation, odds are you probably know a bit about how the project is going to go. After all, you’ve watched a few TV shows, your cousin’s husband is a general contractor and the guy you sit close to at work tells you every detail of how his wet bar is coming together. So you pretty much know all there is to know?
Living Make Your Home Safe for the Holidays With all the cheer and celebration at this time of year, it’s hard to believe anything bad could happen. However, statistics show there’s a significant increase in home-related accidents, fires, and burglaries around the holidays. To protect your family, friends and property, heed these six suggestions:
Living How to Step Up Your Entry Design With a New Welcome Mat Right before the guests ring the doorbell or give the front door an old-fashioned knock, they step on your welcome mat. This mat serves two purposes: catching debris and adding style. Here are some ideas for how to give this entry detail a refresh before the hustle and bustle of the holiday season begin.
Living Holiday Décor Trend: White-on-White Luxe From a stunning mantel display to an elegant table setting, you can capture the magic of the holiday season in festive touches that are certain to make your home even more merry and memorable. The white-on-white design trend is definitely at the top of most luxury designers’ lists these days, and this extends to Christmas décor, as well.
Living Friend or Foe? How to Identify, Trap and Rid your Home of Ghosts How do you know when you have a ghost hanging out in your home? Signs include unexplained noises and voices, objects disappearing, electronics turning on and off by themselves, lights flickering, unexplained smells, or an uneasy feeling that you’re being watched. But how do you know for sure that it’s paranormal activity – and not the cat – causing these abnormalities?
Living Childproofing: Protect Your Family and Your Home from Potential Hazards While supervision is the best way to keep your children safe at home, you can’t watch them every second. Childproofing, to whatever degree you are comfortable, will go a long way toward keeping your littlest loved ones safe and healthy at home.
Living Keeping Up with the Joneses: The Great Paint Debate The vinyl siding of the 1942 Seattle Cape Cod fixer we purchased nine months ago had been sun bleached to the point of resembling a kind of soft lemon chiffon yellow you’d see on a cake your grandmother baked. Great for dessert, bad for today’s exterior home color. We wanted a charming, warm and inviting new exterior home color but were fearful about what it would cost to have a professional do it
Living First Day of Autumn Even though it happens year after year, the arrival of autumn is always a little surprising. Almost as if on a switch, one day late in the summer you feel it – a subtle crispness in the air. And before you know it, it’s pumpkin-spice-everything everywhere. We are suddenly swathed in sweaters, wearing boots, and bombarded by shades of orange, often even before the thermometer warrants it.
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Living Great Design Element: Why Awnings Are Making a Comeback Awnings are a valuable home design element that our grandparents knew all about. In the days before air conditioning, they were used to shade interiors and help keep homes cool. With the focus on sustainable design today, there’s renewed interest in the power of awnings.
Buying Relocating Your Home to Advance Your Career Many of us dream of getting a better job. But when a promotion or new job opportunity comes with a request to relocate, the result can be very disruptive to your home life. There’s a lot to consider when making this kind of move...
Living 8 Ways Your Kitchen Renovations Could Break Your Budget When you begin planning a kitchen renovation project, you may have no idea how much your ideal vision might cost. The answer will likely depend on several factors, including the size of your space, what you will do to it, and your budget. In the end, the price of a renovation should largely be driven by your own choices.
Design How the American Home has Evolved Owning a home has been an American tradition from the start. But the home itself has changed dramatically over the years. For example, you may be surprised to learn how much the size of the average American home has increased since the turn of the 20th century—especially when you compare it to the size of the average family during the same time period.
Buying Why So Many Americans Are Either Upsizing or Downsizing According to two recent surveys that took industry watchers by surprise, many family homeowners are putting frugality aside and upsizing to new houses that average as large as 2,480 square feet (an increase of as much as 13 percent from the year before), and sometimes exceed 3,500 square feet in size.
Living How Long Is Your Contractor Liable? Constructing or remodeling a home is a complex, expensive endeavor. Ideally, everything goes as planned, and when the dust clears, the homeowner can settle in and enjoy the new home — and never think about the building process again.
Living 6 Smart Home Gadgets Perfect for Summer Fun Tell your friends and families to clear their weekend schedules throughout the entire summer—your house is the place to be for fun all season long. If you sloughed through winter with visions of making your house the hangout spot of the summer, you’ll want to bookmark this page. We’re outlining the gadgets you’ll need on hand to turn your home into a modern entertaining destination!
Living 25 Ways to Make the Most of Small Spaces Suburban homes—with their large spaces, big yards, and separate bedrooms for every child—will always be popular with families, especially families of four or more. But there’s also a contingent today that’s eager to live in a dense urban setting: a high-rise condominium in the downtown core, a small home in an urban neighborhood, a small apartment, or even a shared housing arrangement.
Living 6 Alternative Flooring Solutions to Refresh Your Home Feeling ho-hum about classic hardwood floors? Here are six alternative floor solutions that can give any room in your house a fresh sense of personality, whether you’re starting from scratch or looking for an inexpensive DIY update.
Living The Timeless Appeal of the Equestrian Life It struck me, in the midst of a big bustling city where the only horses are the giant stone ones gracing the façades of old buildings and the few scattered cart horses pulling excited tourists through Central Park, that no matter who you are or where you live, the equestrian lifestyle has ubiquitous appeal.
Living Refinancing: What you need to know Thanks to all-time-low interest rates, the number of homeowners refinancing their mortgages is at an all-time high. Of course, no one should refinance just because everyone else is doing it. But, for many homeowners, the benefits are simply too hard to ignore any longer.
Living 3 Garden Alternatives for a Patchy Lawn I’ve met with more than one client while standing on a struggling lawn. “I keep trying,” they tell me, “but the grass won’t grow.” I tell them that maybe this means there’s another option, something even better than a lawn. Maybe it’s time for a garden. And it’s as if I’d just told them the secret to eternal happiness and long life.