I have several dogs – should I really install hardwood floors?

And the answer is: it depends.

How large are your dogs? Do they run through the house at full speed, drop toys and roughhouse?

Are you ok with seeing a few dents and scratches on your floors? Keep in mind that some floors can be re-sanded or screened before they need to be replaced. Some people are ok with the natural process of floors getting scratched and dented – after all it looks rustic and distressed.

What are your alternate options and your budget? Carpet traps animal dander, odors and urine spots can be difficult to clean well. Laminate floors can also be dented and dinged and can bubble if liquids (accidents) are not cleaned up right away.

Do your animals shed? If you have light colored animals hair will show up quickly on a dark wood floor and vice versa.

Hardwood flooring and animals can get along. Here are some tips for helping to maintain your hardwood flooring should you decide to go that route.

Trim your pet’s nails frequently!

Place area rugs in high traffic areas and at the entrance and exit of your home. This will help reduce the wear and tear on your floors as your pets zoom in and out of the door. Just be sure that they are made for hardwood floors.

Put mats down under water bowls to prevent spills and splashes on floors. After all, some dogs slobber.  With these tips, your hardwood floors will stay in great shape!

The temperatures are starting to drop. The leaves have turned beautiful colors of rust and gold. Cozy evenings by the fireplace, braised short ribs, roasts, harvest vegetables and red wine are starting to sound just right. It’s fall and it’s time to tidy away the patio furniture, carve some pumpkins and polish the silver for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s easy to celebrate this season in your home with a few simple and inexpensive decorating ideas.  Bring the outside in – A few boughs with dark red leaves make a brilliant centerpiece for a hallway or dining room table.

Exchange your summary throw pillows for ones in rust, chocolate brown or hounds

tooth – the trendiest fabric this season. Fill your favorite vase with pumpkin colored roses or mums. Pull up your braided summer area rugs and fill your home with richly colored ones.

Pumpkins and gourds brighten up an entryway. Use miniature pumpkins and gourds for

a mantle piece. Add autumn leaves or harvest vegetables for more color.  It’s fun and easy to make over your home for the fall season.

Is your garage a useful addition to your home or a hodgepodge of left-over supplies with just enough room for a couple of cars? For some people, the garage is too full to even fit a car inside. It might be time to make your garage cool, even if you don’t have a garage band practicing in it regularly.

Clearing out a garage is much like cleaning out a closet only bigger. Think of it as a four-step process. Don’t plan to finish it all at once. If you can get it done over several weekends you’re in good shape. This is also a time to solicit help from friends and family to make the process easier and faster.

To start, do you have a corner of your garage that looks like thIs photo? We’re not talking about just clutter here – storing paint, solvents and gasoline can be dangerous. Contact your municipality’s local waste disposal department to discover your options for disposing of hazardous waste. Then get this out of your garage as soon as you can.

Next, working with one wall after another, clear out the garage and give or throw away anything that you won’t be using again. Look for ways to store what’s left on walls or even hanging from the ceiling. Think in terms of organizing for easy retrieval and minimal material on the floor.

Take a look at this simple approach to storing tools. With just some pegboard and hooks, you can find everything immediately. To make the process even easier, use a sharpy to define each tool’s position on the wall, so you can see when something is missing and where it belongs when it’s time to put it back.

Larger wall hooks can hold bicycles and bins for sporting equipment. The more you can take off the floor, the better your garage will look.

Finally, once you’ve straightened everything out, consider either painting or resin-coating your garage floor. This will reduce cement dust on your home’s floors as people walk in from the garage. It also makes oil and other spills easy to wipe up. When you’re done, you ‘ll have a garage to make you proud.

Is it time for new furniture? Perhaps you’re moving into a home with more space, or it may be time to upgrade from family hand-me-downs to choices that more closely match your own style.

You have important decisions to make when furniture shopping. Here are a few suggestions to make your choices easier to make.

To start, figure out which pieces of furniture you need and set a priority list. When in doubt, start by purchasing the largest pieces such as a sofa or dining table. Then you can fill in with other elements as you have time and your budget allows.

Measure the space you have available. Remember to provide room for traffic and consider the proportions of the room. You don’t want the space to look crowded.

When you head out, bring your measurements and the tape measure with you, along with any flooring or paint samples from the room to be furnished. Be sure to measure every piece of furniture before purchasing it. The large space and high ceilings of most furniture stores can fool your eye into thinking something is smaller than it actually is and you don’t want to be surprised when you bring it home.

Test every piece of furniture before making a decision. This means sit on any chairs and open drawers and doors. Furniture has to be more than good looking, it has to work for you.

Most upholstered pieces are available in a variety of fabrics. In a number of cases, swatches of other choices may be attached to the floor model. Some stores have their own design departments with a rich selection of upholstery fabrics. This gives you the flexibility to find just the right color and fabric combinations for your home.

With a little planning and some careful shopping, your furniture purchases can be successful and the experience can be fun!

Does your bedroom closet resemble this one? Do you waste time every day looking for a specific blouse or pair or shoes? Take the time to redesign your closet to make the most of its space and allow it to work well for your needs.

To start, determine what needs to be part of your wardrobe and what should be given away, tossed or stored elsewhere. If your closet space is limited, look for another location for out-of-season or rarely-worn clothes. Let your bedroom closet hold only current wardrobe items and accessories.

Next, look for wasted space. This closet photo shows clothes that are a bit crowded, while there is a wealth of unused space underneath. This space could be used for a second clothes pole or low drawers or even shoe storage. Think vertical as well as horizontal when you’re arranging your closet.

While it would be nice to hire a closet design company to redo your space, you can also purchase additional storage elements and shelves from home improvement and discount stores. Just be careful not to make the mistakes shown in closet number one. All the storage solutions in the world won’t fix a closet that isn’t managed well.

Finally, organize your clothes in your space. Sort by purpose: for example, work clothes and casual clothes. You can also sort by color or organize outfits for a quick selection when you’re getting ready for work. Once you have your closet in shape, you may find yourself as happy as the man in the last photo, with a closet that relaxes rather than stresses him.

If you are like so many of our other clients, you may have stripped your home of carpet and installed hardwood, cork , tile or laminate. Pets, kids and our busy urban lifestyle may have made that the best choice for you. But, many of you wonder how do you add warmth and comfort into a room with all hard flooring surfaces? The answer is area rugs.

Area rugs can add a pop of color, a major design element or just a comfort factor to any room or hallway. Area rugs are the only flooring option that you can pick up and move around to suit your mood.  They can be used to define a space, bring out accent colors in a room or be the design centerpiece. For the now popular open floor plans, an area rug can create a conversation area, designate an eating space, welcome one into a foyer or usher your guests down a hallway.

Luckily, area rugs come in all different colors, sizes, styles and price points. They work for a modest design budget but they can also be incredibly expensive. It just depends on you. They can be an investment that becomes your family heirloom and is passed down from one generation to the next, or they can be practical and fun.

Area rugs can be a simple, beautiful, fast and effective answer to many of your flooring needs.

Urban Chic – it sounds so cool, doesn’t it? What is Urban Chic and what kind of lifestyle is it geared for?

Urban Chic is for those of us who hate clutter. We want a cool, streamlined, uncomplicated and unfussy kind of décor. While, we want our homes to look like this we may not actually live that way. Urban Chic Décor utilizes lots of storage and organizational pieces so that your counter tops, kitchen table and living spaces can look as though there is never a stray piece of paper laying around or a pile of bills that you meant to get to. If you hate low tech, high maintenance and kitschy knick-knacks than Urban Chic is for you.

Urban Chic originated during the Bauhaus art movement of the 1920’s and has also been called Contemporary. Its heritage can be traced to the 1930’s German and Scandinavian design schools. The look is a unique combination of industrial masculinity and refined elegance.

Urban Chic involves simple surfaces, clean colors and geometric shapes. The look is linear, pared down and polished.  It balances form, shape, color and texture – texture from rough and smooth to glossy and matte. Think glass mosaic tiles, dark wood, stainless and lots of black and white.

Bring the Urban Chic out in YOU!

Redoing your kitchen? Have some questions? We’ve got some answers!

Do Kitchen appliances always come in standard sizes?

Answer: Yes, 98% of the time, but to ensure there are no surprises refer to manufacturer installation specifications for required openings and cutout sizes.

I want to be really green with my new kitchen, what are the most energy efficient appliances on the market?

Answer: Appliances, which have been labeled and endorsed as “Energy Star” products.

What type of paint is the best for kitchen walls?

Answer: Make sure to use good quality paint. If you foresee a need to scrub the walls, (and who doesn’t scrub their kitchen walls?), an eggshell paint should be used. Semi gloss paint can also be used, but it shows more imperfections in the walls than an eggshell paint. Eggshell will usually be sufficient for kitchen needs.

Is there a major difference in the material and the cost of solid surface countertops?

Answer: There are differences in the formulation of the materials and their compositions. Some solid surfaces are 100% man-made and some are blended with natural quartz and stones. Prices vary but are pretty consistent and typically include installation. Once you select the countertop material which complements the design and style of your kitchen, be sure to ask about maintenance and warranty of the product.

What is the most durable kitchen sink?

Answer: An 18 gauge stainless steel sink is going to be the most durable. Cast iron sinks that seem very sturdy can chip.

More questions? Just ask!

Do you find it frustrating to make a final choice when confronting numerous options? Sometimes it may seem as though the showroom, or the pumpkin patch, goes on forever and you worry that you may never find the right one to bring home.

If that happens, use the haunting technique to make your final choice. Here’s how to do it.

First, quickly review whatever options you’re considering, then leave the area. You can wander to other parts of the showroom or leave and shop for something completely unrelated. Go to lunch or get yourself a cup of coffee. You can even head home for the day.

As you do this, often one choice stays in your mind. You may find yourself dwelling on a particular tile, or imagining that carpeting in your own bedroom even when you’re focusing on something else. Well, congratulations, you have just been haunted by your actual favorite selection.

When this happens, go back and choose that flooring, or that seasonal vegetable accessory, and bring it home knowing that you found just the right one for you.

And when you stand back and admire how well your purchase fits the look and style of your home, it’s time to appreciate a type of haunting that doesn’t scare you, but helps you make a decision that you will be happy with for years to come, or in the case of your pumpkin, the next week or so.

You’ve spilled red wine on your carpet. It happens to all of us, during parties, girl’s night, Monday night football or just when relaxing at home. What can you do now to get the stain out?

The first thing to remember is to act as quickly as you can. Time is not your friend, as delaying tending to the spill may cause it to become a permanent stain. Blot the area with a clean white cloth; paper towels work well in a pinch.

For red wine first try a detergent solution to clean the spill out of your carpet. Don’t use a stronger concentration than this. Mix ¼ teaspoon of liquid dishwashing detergent with one cup of lukewarm water. It’s a good idea to test this solution on an area of carpet that is hidden to make sure it is not going to cause discoloring. Work this solution into the spill – gently – do not rub. Work from the outside edges of the spill to the center. Let the solution sit on the spill for a few minutes. Blot. Have patience. Continue to blot and use the cleaning solution until there is no more transfer of the spill onto your white cloth. If you cannot remove all of the stain with the detergent solution try this one – 1 cup white vinegar mixed with two cups of lukewarm water. Be sure to pretest!

When there is no more transfer of the wine to your white cloth rinse the area with cold water. Continue to blot until all the moisture is removed. You must be certain that all of the cleaning solution is out of the carpet, otherwise it will attract dirt.

If all else fails, call a professional carpet cleaner as soon as possible as they have powerful tools to help get even the most stubborn stains out.