House & Garden Supplies

I will soon have my credit to income ratio to the point where I will qualify for about a $150,000 home loan. Our income is not high enough to get much more than that. We will need a 3 bedroom home for our family of five, but there is very little in my price range with that may bedrooms unless I want to move an hour or more away from our jobs.

Would it be significantly more cost effective to build our own home? Where can I get more information on this? Googling offers me alot of junk and useless information that doesn’t help. If I built my own I would have to contract out for the major things like foundation, roofing/trussing, etc. I may be able to reduce costs by doing my own drywalling, siding, etc. though. The question is wether or not it’s practical enough to be worth my time.

Building a home will be the biggest headache of your life!!! DIY’ers have no business building houses unless you have been a carpenter and been on a new home job site at least four or five times. I have worked for a general contractor for a number of years and allow me to lend you this example.

My construction company and a DIY’er began building 2 homes of similar size, my company finished 3 months earlier passed every inspection the firsat time and finished under budget. To build a custom 3 bdrm home will cost more than 150 large. You have to include the price of land, a water meter, machinery to make a spot for the house, a driveway and much, much more.

Now if I were you, I’d look for a home that is around 80,000. Build a room addition to make it suitable for your family. If you still want to build, hire a General Contractor to run the job for you. It’ll get done faster, it’ll get done right the first time.

Looking for something in the way of a simple outline program that doesnt need to be all singing all dancing.

Thanks in advance.

IKEA has free kitchen planners on their website that work pretty well. Don’t know if they also have one for bathrooms but check there.

I heard that some people actually do that and I was so grossed out.
Parents, have you ever done this?
Kids, how would you react if you found your parents doing this?

Lol there would be absolutely no point to doing this and I cant see why anyone would which makes me wonder if this is a real question

I have a property which the garden needs a total revamp. Anyone have any suggestions on where to look to find simple and easy to maintain garden designs (websites or magazines suggestions) would be much appreciated.

You can find all kinds of plans at the library.

I would pick out the plants you want to keep and then put up a sign for the ones you want to get rid of
"Free plants you dig"

This will help labor wise.

I am a sophomore in high school who is looking to pursue a career in interior design. Next school year, I am taking an interior design class. But I feel that it will not be enough. How can I fully prepare myself for whatlies ahead of me in college.

Sort of irrelevant but:
For college I would love to attend either the Cleveland Institute of Art, or Syracuse University. If you can give me any other suggestions, that would be extremely helpful.

the best help you can get for any career in try to get an internship somewhere because they will work with you to not only teach you but to help you gain experience. plus it will give you a glimpse of reality if that is really the career that you want. because who knows you might start doing it and hate it.

Say you already own your own land – Is a $150,000 – $200,000. budget realistic?

We plan on using as many odds/ends, recycled materials and hopefully go green as possible.
( we plan on hiring someone to build)

You can usually estimate that an average new home from standard blueprints will cost between $125 to $150 a square foot to build. I am not talking about a custom home with high end finishes or a unique architecturally significant home–just your average stick-built or block home like you can see in most suburbs across America.

Green Houses often cost more than that initially because the premise is to spend more on your initial outlay for sustainable and recyclable materials so that your overall energy and maintenance costs over time are much smaller. It may be even as much as $200 to $300 per square foot. For example, solar panels are heinously expensive to purchase new, yet, over time the energy savings are so great that you can reduce your power bill anywhere from 75% to even completely eliminating your need for outside power entirely (depending on how many panels you install). We’ve installed up to $80,000 worth of panels on a large home on a private island, but the trade-off for the homeowner was that he no longer has to be "hooked up" to a utility company. The home can be entirely cooled and heated and all the water pumped and heated with power from the panels. Huge trade-off for long-term cost savings. Previously, the home (which was a large-scale (4800 sq ft) green remodel) used approximately $600 to $700 worth of power monthly. The solar system will pay for itself in about 9 years.

Do not assume that using recycled products and sustainable materials is cheaper. It is not. Using cast-off windows, for example, may be cheaper up front, but will cost you in the long run because old windows are not thermally efficient. Buying brand-new highly efficient (and much more expensive) windows is the smartest choice because the added insulation will reduce your carbon footprint in highly increased energy savings. Windows, unfortunately for most homeowners, is one of the most expensive parts of any building project. When we remodeled our 1950’s mid-century modern home here in Florida, we replaced all the hideous and inefficient original aluminum windows with expensive Thermally insulated hurricane impact windows. The cost? 45% of our entire remodel budget–which included a completely new energy-efficient kitchen too. The savings? Our energy bill was reduced by HALF! The old windows leaked like a sieve…..now the A/C barely runs to keep our home evenly cool even in the hottest Florida weather.

Summary: building green is about long-term savings. It will not save you money up front.
With a normal type of home, a $200,000 budget will give you about 1300 sq ft of house. Period. If you want a larger, greener house….you’d better increase your budget substantially—or think about living in a much smaller house.

I am completly re-decorating my bathroom and bedroom and was wondering if anyone has any good ideas. I wanted to do them in more of a modern design. So anybody know of any good websites for bathroom and bedroom designs? Or any good programs to help with the design process to help visualize the final product?

The best design usually comes from you. Look at some design sites (ikea IS good) like west elm and crate and barrel for modern design. Go to the library/ bookstore look at architectural design magazine for the latest trends. Pull out ideas of what looks good to you. Take them to one of the free design services like Expo or go to your local college to see if they have a design program, there will be lots of new design students who will enjoy giving their opinion, for free.

I have two boys 10-1/2 and 13 (both with ADHD). I would like to organize their rooms so they can keep them clean, and we would also like to redecorate them with maybe a theme.

I got those MDF cubes and got plastic baskets to go in them. I labeled the baskets : cars, blocks, books, legos, etc.
We painted the cubes to match the room, in a light blue… you have to prime 1st, they DRINK paint! There was also a double cube that had a shelf in the middle, so it was 24" long, with a shelf at 6"… great for games.

I would paint a soothing color and pick out a wallpaper border that they both like… either run it aroung the middle or along the ceiling… low cost, big impact, easy to change.
Don’t buy unpasted… way too much work… also had one that was a long sticker… it came off… best to go with pre-pasted. Easiest.

Good luck.

I have some of friend and relatives asking for design their home garden. Honestly said since I do learn the subject and practices it, kind of common sense when you use to hang with the thing again and again. May I know what is the problem your’re facing when you’re try to do you own landscape/garden design

Scale is the biggest problem. Most people plant things like they will never get bigger. Consequently they plant them too close to the house or too close to other plants or they plant too many plants for a given area. If a person can imagine what the plants will look like in 10 years, that’s the best way to design, unless you have been trained.

My dears, I have to interior design a bedroom for newly weds and it has to be something not so cliche’ rather sexy .Can you please throw in some great ideas or website links will be much appreciated.

Hi this website has a photo gallery of different kinds of interior design and maybe here you can find some ideas to help you out good luck! http://www.newyorkgeneralcontractor.com/interior_design.shtml