Renovating your home is a great way to improve your quality of life. As this process requires a big investment, plan every little thing to avoid any mistakes. Keep reading to find sixteen actionable tips that can help you renovate your home the right way. 

Focus on efficiency

You should not let the home renovation plan take months to complete. Getting more comfort is the reason behind the renovation, and it’s not good if home renovation becomes uncomfortable for you. 

Get the home renovation work completed by overcoming the challenges you face. Hire a reliable home renovation service that can renovate your home without wasting your time, money, and effort. 

Choose comfort over looks

Home renovation is not all about changing the looks of your home. Your primary motive behind home renovation should be making your home comfier. Start your home renovation plan with your bedroom. 

Buy a new memory foam mattress for your bedroom if your current mattress is almost 10 years old. Avoid buying any items for your bedroom that look stylish but don’t provide comfort. 

Proper budgeting

Home renovation can cost you a lot of money if you don’t plan things accordingly. Start your home renovation plan after creating a proper budget. 

You can estimate the costs of the home renovation yourself, however, you should hire a contractor to estimate the costs. You should delay your home renovation plan if you don’t have enough money to get started. 

Set a timeframe

A simple home renovation plan takes about 7 to 10 months. But it might take more than 15 months if you remodel your home completely. After analyzing how much free time you have, you must start your home renovation plan. 

Create a proper schedule for renovation and stick to it. Hire a trusted home renovation service that can get work done on time. 

Do proper research

You will have to spend a ton of time researching if you choose the DIY home renovation route. However, you still have to research if you hire a home renovation service. 

Don’t make any hasty decisions unless you know enough about home renovation. You can do online research to gather the right information necessary for the successful completion of home renovation. 

Limits of DIY approach

A DIY home renovation plan has its disadvantages. It’s easier to make small changes to your home on your own. However, if you want to remodel your home completely, you won’t renovate it without making any mistakes. 

Make a list of what changes you want in your home. Hire a home renovation service if you can’t do things yourself. 

Choose the right services

Don’t hire any home renovation service that’s near your home. Hiring an incompetent home renovation service will result in a waste of your time and effort. 

Do proper research before choosing a home renovation service. Check online reviews of different services to verify their reliability. Choose an agency that can complete renovation on time. You should compare the quotes of different agencies to pick the most affordable. 

Store your tools carefully

Construction tools scattered throughout your home can cause injury. You have to place all your tools at a specific place. If you go down the DIY renovation route, place your tools carefully after completing the renovation task. 

The renovation agency you hire might leave their tools at your home. Keep pets and kids away from those tools.  

Stay safe during renovation

You can easily get injured during the home renovation if you are not careful. Stay alert during the home renovation to avoid any unnecessary injuries. Keep your kids away from renovation tools and materials. If you don’t stay in your home during renovation hours, you should send your dog to a pet boarding service to ensure their safety. 

Use proper tech tools

Tech tools can help you plan home construction the right way. You can create a 3D model of how your home will look after renovation. Using social media can help you link up with good home renovation services. Budgeting tools can help you create a proper budget for home renovation. Spend some time researching tools that can make the renovation process easier for you. 

Get approval for renovation

Improper renovation might result in personal injury or property loss in the future. It’s important to get approval from local authorities before renovating your home. Getting approval ensures that renovation work done in your home doesn’t violate any safety standards. Contact the office of local authorities to get approval before you start on home renovation. 

Proper schedule for cleanup

Set some time aside in the daily renovation schedule to get rid of the renovation mess. Choose the right tools for cleanup and don’t ignore your daily renovation routine. If you don’t have time to clean up your home, you can ask the renovation service you hire to clean your home. 

Plan according to weather conditions

Improper weather conditions can ruin your home renovation project. Check the short-term and long-term weather forecast so you don’t waste your time and money on renovation. Ask your contractor if they can continue the renovation project during harsh weather. However, if there are chances of snowfall or heavy rain, it’s better to postpone renovation. 

Focus on recommendations

It can become difficult for you to gather information about home renovation all by yourself. Ask for recommendations from your friends and family about home renovation. Their experience can help you make the right decisions about renovation and help you save money. 

Don’t forget about recycling

Dumping the material left after home renovation is not the right option. Most of the materials that are removed from your home during renovation can be recycled. Take a look at all the appliances and fixtures present in your home. Look for a recycling facility in your area and check if they can visit your home to take things that can be recycled. 

Buy products at affordable prices

You can save your renovation costs if you buy products at affordable prices. Don’t rely on the nearest shop to buy all the items you need for renovation. Compare prices of different stores online to cut your costs. Look for specific discounts and sales online. 

The post 16 Remodeling Tips to Follow When Renovating Your Home appeared first on Green Prophet.

Up to 30% of the wood sold in markets globally is harvested illegally, according to international agreements. This deforestation causes habitat loss and extinction (read about how your bank is burning the Amazon) and a new UN initiative wants to track the bad guys, or rather tell you about the source of your wood, through a new app. 

The cost of wood has tripled in the last year offering new channels for illegal wood to be harvested and sold on the black market. China, Canada, Germany and the USA are the top exporters of wood, globally. 

Jump here if you want to make your deck more sustainable

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations launched a new online portal providing information on forest-related laws around the world in order to help promote legal forest management, timber production and trade, and contribute to efforts to make forest resource use sustainable. 

The first such portal of its kind: TimberLex provides information on legislation relating to forest management, timber production and trade from 46 timber consumer, processing and producer countries.

Illegal logging and related trade are estimated to account for up to 30% of the global timber trade – or up to $100 billion annually – and impairs poverty alleviation, food security and climate change mitigation while undermining efforts to manage forests sustainably.

In an effort to address this issue, major wood-consuming countries are increasingly imposing requirements for timber imports to document their legal status.

“One of the challenges to promoting legality and transparency in the timber trade is knowing what regulations are in place that may impact actions along the value chain, as each country’s legal system is of course, unique,” stated Daphne Hewitt, Manager of the UN’s European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Programme.

“It can be very challenging for timber producers, exporters, importers and regulators in timber exporting and importing countries to find reliable information on national legal requirements around timber legality,” she added.

Legislation from major timber producing and consuming countries 

“The unique selling point of the portal is the user-friendly nature which allows easy access to national legislation in three languages,” said Blaise Kuemlangan, Chief of the Development Law Service of the UN’s FAO Legal Office.

The TimberLex portal points users to specific measures and verbatim citations within legal texts and allows easy and direct comparison between legal frameworks. Country profiles catalogue legislation around four clusters encompassing the different stages of the timber value chain considered critical to the legality of timber: land tenure and forest management; timber harvesting activities; processing, transport and trade; and taxes and fees.

The portal aims to enable more effective law enforcement and contribute to improving forest governance, curbing illegal deforestation and associated forest degradation, and promoting global production and trade in legal timber.

The database is aimed at legislators, policymakers, forestry departments and law enforcement officers, private sector producers, processors and traders, civil society and non-government organizations.

Reading about this and watching my cousin build a new deck at his nature retreat Kingfisher Bay in Ontario, got us talking about the price of lumber, composite decks and dock renovations. 

How to make your deck sustainable

Look for FSC Label

Order wood through a trusted source and look for the FSC label that the wood was harvested sustainably. FSC labels are used on products to identify that the product has been verified to come from an FSC-certified source. FSC labels can be found on millions of products around the world: from toilet roll to your favourite book, that milk carton in your fridge, and other food products. I have friends who were part of the founding initiatives of the FSC in Canada.

Read about its history here. Lumber can be treated with chemicals that are considered harmful to your health like arsenic and copper so not all “natural” wood is really good for you. 

Consider using vintage wood if it’s hardwood. The video below shows how you can build a new deck with old wood.

Pallets can be used to make a deck

Consider composite wood. It can also be used for decks. But never used it on raised beds for gardens, as it contains plastics and chemicals that can leach into your food.  Composite wood typically offers between 15 to 20 years life span, lasting way more than wood. Invented in the late 1980s, wood-plastic composite decking (also called “composite wood decking”) is made of wood fibers encased in plastic. Composite decking is readily available at big box home improvement stores like The Home Depot and Lowe’s, as well as local lumberyards throughout the US.

As more builders and homeowners learn of wood decking problems, many are turning to high-performance composite decking.

• Resistant to severe weather.

• Very minimal maintenance cost.

• Thanks to its plastic feature, it is highly mould resistant, irrespective of how exposed to moisture it is. 

• It is lightweight and has a lock style, making boards easy to figure out for a successful DIY installation

5. If you go for “wood” find wood that is harvested local to you. If the wood you buy is forested in Canada, sent to China for treatment and then sold to you in Texas it is not sustainable wood. Find local, just like strawberries.

Avoid treated wood for your health and for the fish:

Chromium copper arsenate, or CCA, according to the Environmental Working Group, was once widely used as a preservative and insecticide in pressure-treated wood. In 2001, tests by the group and the Healthy Building Network showed that wood treated with CCA could expose people to dangerous levels of arsenic, spurring the Environmental Protection Agency to force its removal from the market.

Copper-based chemicals replaced the arsenic preservative, but some of them are also hazardous. For example, alkaline copper quaternary and copper azole are extremely toxic to aquatic life and should never be used in areas where runoff can be carried to surface waters, marshes or coastal areas. Borate-based wood preservatives are also common, but they can leach out of wet wood, leaving the wood vulnerable to decay.

The post Is wood from your new deck killing monkeys and the fish? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Israel’s Mediterranean city of Bat Yam is pulling itself out of obscurity with one of the most unusual art spaces we’ve seen. Located just south of Tel Aviv –  the country’s most well-known seaside city, the Riviera used to be a thumping nightclub in the 1950s and 1960s. Now it’s a very yellow and open industrial-chic art colony and public gallery that features a sea sand floor and some seriously gritty street art. 

Derman Verbakel Architecture was commissioned by the city to revive the 1200 square meter space that was previously defined by a series of artisinal columns and beams. It had been left fallow for years.

The design team opted for a minimalist approach to the intervention and essentially left much of the existing space as they found it apart from adding some yellow paint and neon lights.

In order to create a fluid continuation between the open-plan gallery and the beach, the designers used sea sand to create a stabilized sand floor.

A sustainable addition to the former nightclub that almost entirely eradicates site disruption, the sandy floor is designed to encourage bikini-clad beach-goers to experience the art exhibition space as part of their daily sun-worshipping ritual.

This seems so much more organic to us than going home, putting on a pile of makeup and dressing in Versace in order to see scripted pieces on a giant white wall.

Other signs that Bat Yam is putting itself on the map – both architecturally and creatively – include the annual 72 Hour Urban Action architecture competition that invites talented young design teams from around the world to transform decaying urban areas in the city within just 72 hours!

Watch out Tel Aviv, Bat Yam is coming alive!

:: Arch Daily

Images via Derman Verbakel Architecture

The post Riviera Seaside Art Gallery Features a Sand Floor and Gritty Art in Israel appeared first on Green Prophet.

Not only were they prohibited from making any adjustments to walls and facades given the building’s historical nature, but glass louvers on three sides made establishing non-public areas an issue. Hit the jump to find out how the design team surmounted these obstacles to produce a fresh, industrial-chic space that both locals and visitors will enjoy.

Undeterred by the constraints of building regulations, Levin and Chehanowitz re-invented the 70 sqm space as a modern hangar by creating stacked boxes framed in various sizes and shapes and adorned with a slew of industrial materials.

The kitchen was placed in a recycled shipping container and the bathroom is surrounded by a raw timber box.

There was once a time when industrial materials were hidden from view, but now it’s fashionable to leave them exposed. The new cafe takes advantage of this trend with furnishings made from spruce timber, grey steel and chipboard – all of which lend a gritty but relaxed ambience to a fresh and well-lit space.

On top of all this, loveat is an organic coffee shop. So patrons can feel good knowing that they are spending their money at an establishment that values the earth as much as they appreciate spectacular design.

Books are available to read, so nobody will be kicked out in a hurry, and window seating promotes people-watching – one of the best ways to while away the hours in this city of scantily-clad sun-worshippers.

A fantastic tribute to history and a striking bridge to the present, the design duo’s latest collaboration will impress even the strictest environmentalists.

All images via Eran Chehanowitz, Flickr

:: Dezeen

The post Loveat Jaffa: a 20th Century Orange-Packing Plant Turned Rustic Cafe appeared first on Green Prophet.

In 2010 Mark Dermul from Belgium led a tour of the remaining Star Wars relics scattered throughout Tunisia’s desert. It wasn’t the first time he had visited these sites, but on this particular occasion, accompanied by fans from around the world, he was dismayed to find Luke Skywalker’s Lars Homestead featured in Episode IV: A New Hope in a state of total disrepair. Thus began an epic journey to restore this small rounded hut (reminiscent of Tunisia’s troglodytes) to its former glory.

After his last visit, Dermul appealed to Star Wars fans on Facebook to help him restore the hut in Tunisia. To his surprise, he received an outpouring of support. In sum, he and his friends managed to raise $11,700 from 425 faithful contributors.

At this stage, what was originally a lofty joke became a serious venture and Dermul approached the local tourism authorities for permission to alter the building. The Jasmine Revolution that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings put this process on hold, and the Save the Lars Homestead team worried that the project would be derailed after all.

But in December 2011, the newly-installed government gave the go-ahead, and in May this year Dermul traveled with four friends to repair the crumbling building using cement infill and white paint sourced from local providers.

George Lucas and his production team built the Star Wars set in Southern Tunisia in the 1970s, bringing worldwide attention to a once-dominant Mediterranean country perhaps for the first time in modern history.

The Berbers who mostly occupy the desert region don’t always welcome the subsequent attention, as their towns have been overridden with buses of tourists, but certainly the influx has some economic benefits.

This new wave of attention could bring much-needed revenue, but travelers should be cautioned to pay deep respect to the locals who call the desert home.

:: Architizer, NPR

All photos via Mark Dermul / savelars.com

The post Star Wars Fans Restore Luke Skywalker’s Homestead in Tunisia appeared first on Green Prophet.

But GAD does more than that. Their deft transformation of this double-storey apartment is art in itself – from zigzagging oak floors to graphic wallpaper, their signature light touch both meets and enhances the eclectic vision of gallery owners Özlem Avcıoğlu and Murat Patavi to create an almost otherworldly experience.

The elite sensory experience begins at the street of this Tesvikiye district store, where the facade has been treated with an attractive melee of black steel and energy-efficient LED tubes. Five cantilevering steel steps later, which double as display cases, and visitors are greeted by the gallery’s entry level.

GAD made efforts to ensure that lighting infrastructure is flexible, which is crucial to any modern development. Ease of adaptability ensures minimal costs and refurbishments when changes need to be made – something that occurs frequently in gallery spaces.

The oak herringbone flooring is typical of residential Turkish architecture, but less usual is applying the store’s branded graphics to the wallpaper and screens – a kind of subliminal messaging system that compliments the rag chair, faux animal mounts, swirling gold lighting and other unique design and furniture objects.

Many elements of the existing building were left somewhat unfinished, including fluid carved shelving and upstairs walls peeled down to their base layer.

Of course, this renovation is not as green as a cob building or a date palm shack, nor quite so earthy, but it’s important to recognize that sustainability is often synonymous with minimalism, something that GAD hopes to achieve in a nation that has yet to fully accept the importance of restrained development.

all images via GAD

More on Turkish Architecture:

Cluster of Turkish Buildings Cool Off With Roof Pools

Selçuklu Evi Eco-Boutique Hotel in Turkey

Rebuilding in Earthquake-Stricken Turkey

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