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“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.”
- Flora Whittemore

Your front door welcomes all to your home. This declarative statement of your house — the exclamation point of your home — needs to sing out your welcoming note.

First impressions are not just for guests. Generally, we do not receive as much company as we think we do. We lead such busy lives and simply do not entertain or visit friends often enough.

Decorating your home to impress others is not as important as decorating your home for your own pleasure. Create a welcoming and warm retreat in which you feel great joy just to arrive. Do you feel happy when you see your home in the distance? Does your first glimpse of home bring a smile to your face?

A problem with many new homes is that developers do not provide a separate walkway to your front door. To make yourself and your guests feel more welcome than a car, provide a separate front walkway from the street to the front door. Don’t make guests walk around cars and trip on driveway edges to navigate to the entrance.

Feeling Welcome

Flowers lining the walkway provide a warm reception. Cheerful flowers in loud colors near the entry tell the world that you care about your home. Extras like water fountains, fishponds, cooing peace doves, and scented vegetation make all feel gladly received.

Sing Out the Address

Proud address numbers are bold and beautiful. Avoid tacky peel and stick numbers. Brass numbers need to have screw holes in them, not pronged ends that eventually work loose. As in the past, gold-gilded numbers look elegant on glass doors. Gold-gilded vinyl transfer numbers look especially exquisite in transom windows.

Welcoming Accessories:

Wind chimes add pleasure to our sense of hearing.

Potted plants such as soft ferns (shun unfriendly spiked plants and thorns near the doorway).

Floral baskets with bright yellow and white flowers show up better at night.

A pair of rocking chairs, a double glider, or a porch swing invites neighbors to stop and chat.

A doormat that not only saves your floors but also looks welcoming!

What Color Should I Paint My Front Door?

Unless your front door is a beautiful wood, paint it a joyful color. Your entry door should be a different color than the rest of your house. Warm happy colors include the shades of red and yellow: burgundy, claret, rust, terra cotta, deep amber, and sunny yellow. Cool happy colors of green include apple, sage, and forest green.

After spending time and effort creating a wonderful entryway into your home, use it! Why enter from the garage or back door? Treat yourself as well as you treat your guests. Come home through your welcoming front door!

(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.

Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips, reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhousefordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm

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Window coverings are important to the overall look and feel of a room, of course, but when designing window treatments, don’t forget to take into consideration what your overall design will look like from the outside of your home.

As a general rule, window coverings should all be of a similar coloring, which will significantly improve the look of your home’s exterior. For instance, a house with a blue-curtained window on one side and one with yellow curtains on the other won’t look harmonious from a curbside viewpoint.

Your window dressing colors should also harmonize with the home’s outside color scheme. For instance, white-lined draperies are generally too light for dark-painted exteriors, while small printed designs, such as white on white, can be effective for adding greater interest to the outside view of a plain house.

Draperies lined with light pale yellow make a house glow at night. If that’s your desired effect, even sheer white or lace panels can be tinted with a pale yellow dye. If you use a patterned material, lining patterned window coverings with a heavy lining fabric stops the pattern from shining through at night when the lights are on.

For privacy without bulky fabrics, etched or stained glass windows can also be great investments. You can learn the art of stained glass fairly easily, and though the stained glass windows my husband and I made for our home may not be perfect, those imperfections make them more special to us than the ones we had professionally made.

Incorporating jewels into windows adds sparkle and rainbow-like effects to a room. Etched glass designs, made with rubberized stencil paper and sandblasting, is easier to do than creating stained glass windows. Etched windows look great from the street, adding an extra touch of elegance and class to the exterior appearance of your home.

Creating great-looking rooms that make people feel warm and happy is an important part of decorating, but no matter what style of home you live in, you can greatly improve its overall allure by also paying special attention to how your window treatments look from the street.

Copyright (c) 2004 by Jeanette J. Fisher

Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips, reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhousefordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm

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Remodeling Plans

Making remodeling plans for a house helps you to ensure that your home meets all your needs. It also adds value to your home in the long term. After all, you will spend at least half your working life paying off the first mortgage on your houseby making remodeling plans, you ensure that your home evolves with the changes in your lifestyle and add value to the property.

When you want to improve or remodel your home, you cannot afford to proceed in a haphazard manneryou need to make a plan and adhere to it. For instance, you might find it troublesome to get your house painted every few years. Maybe you should get information on and try out Total Remodeling’s System 2000 and Elite siding systems, which include energy-saving options. You can consult with our designers at Total Remodeling to select the best color combinations in sidings and trims.

What if you find that the windows and doors in your home need to be changed? You need to create a remodeling plan with our experts at Total Remodeling and select doors and windows to maximize security and energy savings. Suppose you have a large basement, which needs to be waterproofed. You could create a remodeling plan with our experts at Total Remodeling to not only waterproof the basement, but also install an electric floor warming system and create a home entertainment center.

Within 10 or 15 years of purchasing your house, you may find that the wiring and pipes need to be replaced. Our designers and contractors at Total Remodeling can help you get new pipes and wires installed.

As your family grows, you will need to add more rooms, and as each child leaves home, you will need to change the use of various spaces in your home. You will need to make remodeling plans with our experts at Total Remodeling to build more rooms in your home and change the use of existing spaces. At Total Remodeling, we can supervise the work to be done for your home and co-ordinate with several contractors and designers.

You can add more value to your home by converting the master bathroom into a health spa and by changing the tiling, cabinetry, and sinks in the bathrooms and kitchen. You can also make your bathrooms and kitchen more comfortable in the winters by installing an electrical floor warming system, controlled with a thermostat.

Dan Noyes

Marketing Head

Remodeling Online

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