Here are a few of our favorite things.

 

Email us with your favorite home design tips and resources, and please send all your comments and questions to info@design2share.com.

 Do your homework before hiring service professionals. We recommend finding a web service like Angie's List (www.AngiesList.com) to look up peer advice about service providers in your community. It's good to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly from other homeowners, and we like Angie's multiple-city look-up system -- 500,000 homeowners making their comments about service folks in 124 major metro areas around the United States. If you're looking for interior design and decorating help, look up the resources and read the comments. And there are dozens of service categories, from where to get hurricane shutters and fireplace help to plastering, decks and patios, and even piano tuning. It's a small fee to join, but well worthwhile. Reports are thorough, with an overall letter grade given for each service provider and a breakdown of letter grades in the areas of Price, Quality, Responsiveness, Punctuality, and Professionalism. We give this useful resource guide an A.

  Use recycled materials when remodeling. In our Design2Share Q&A podcast episode on kitchen remodeling, we made a variety of recommendations that respect the environment. The first tip here is to recycle old materials. Look for kitchen cabinets, countertops, islands, hardware, and other materials from salvage yards. Old metal cabinets can be stripped of paint and even wire brushed with a power drill to look high tech and lustrous. The payoff is not only for the environment, being great to recycle old materials whenever possible, but also in reducing your remodeling budget. Splurge on more expensive new materials by adding old elements to your job.

When selecting new elements for your kitchen remodeling, GO GREEN with your countertops. They're a great place to start plugging in newer and more responsible solutions. Rock countertops, once mined from the Earth, are depleted resources, so look for alternatives that are friendlier and more appealing. (Note that these are all countertop materials, so you can use them anywhere you're putting in new countertops: kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, mudrooms, etc.) Here are a few resources we can highly recommend.

CaesarStone and Silestone are composite countertop materials. They're not natural stone, but they have a stone look you might be going for. Visit www.CaesarStoneus.com and www.Silestone.com.

Richlite and ShetkaStone countertops are made from recycled paper or paper from certified forests (for eco newbies, those are forests not composed of slow-growth hardwoods, so they're renewable and sustainable resources). Visit www.Richlite.com and www.ShetkaStone.com.

EnviroGLAS and IceStone are composite material countertops made of recycled glass. They're like chips of glass embedded in concrete, and they give a very dramatic look to your kitchen in a wide range of colors and treatments. Visit www.Enviroglasproducts.com and www.IceStone.biz.

You've got a party and want to serve a special wine without busting your budget. We recommend Big House Pink 2005 California Pink Wine for your next special occasion. It's a great value and, with the winery's play on their "big house" or prison theme, it's "criminally delicious." We first fell for the wine label (we're design freaks, so the outer packaging is important to us; need we say more?). But then we fell in love with the wine itself. It's dry, crisp, and fragrant with a lot of bright cherry, strawberry, and watermelon flavors. You can't go wrong with this wine if you're serving your guests, family, and friends some fish, pasta, or salads. Visit www.BigHouseWines.com.

  Look for closeouts and end-of-season sales. Before you say "duh!" to this Design2Share tip, let's explain further. It's an art to wait and pounce on end-of-season merchandise, and we advise you not to follow the herd and charge at the beginning of the summer to buy your patio furniture or kit out your deck in style. You'll pay those early seasonal prices, and they're bound not to be bargains. Wait patiently and scoop up the best buys when the weather turns colder. Buy items on closeout or clearance and you'll be smarter than your neighbors. You will also have furnishings and accessories to put out next season, earlier than anyone else. Smart shopper!

We also recommend you go to resources on the web like www.Amazon.com, www.Overstock.com, and www.Buy.com. They have frequent house and garden item changes that other sites don't have. Much of their merchandise will be fashion related, closing out the hot colors, patterns, and styles of the moment. If you don't mind catching the latest "thing" at the end of the trend, if the items are clearly desirable to add to your interiors or outdoor rooms, then by all means bag these bargains.

You will also find clearances and closeouts at www.PotteryBarn.com, www.CrateandBarrel.com, www.Frontgate.com, and www.SmithandHawken.com. We recommend these websites for good buys, closeout specials, and tips on the latest home furnishing fashion trends.

One wine we rave about, for both its taste and value, is House Wine from K Vintners' The Magnificent Wine Company of Walla Walla, Washington. This great blend of cabernet, merlot, and syrah is a lovely combination that is bound to impress your family, friends, and guests. We like to serve it at parties and give everyone a great red wine experience while we laugh all the way to the bank. Okay, superficial design-related Design2Share staffers love the wine label, too. You forced that confession out of us, didn't you? It's a black-and-white line drawing of a house with a very generic-looking "House Wine" label, and we couldn't resist picking it up out of the big lineup of all the other wines at our local wine store. Hey, you have to stand out in a crowd. We're not going to pick up the bottle if you can't attract our attention with the label (and a good recommendation from our store proprietor didn't hurt either). Visit www.kvintners.com. 

  Balance your do-it-yourself efforts with professional design help and resources. If you live in an urban area, many designer showrooms are open to the general public and you can shop there even though you might not be working with a professional designer. Showrooms are great places to gain access to the latest and greatest resources for your DIY project. But be aware that showrooms will charge you retail prices, although sometimes you can develop a good relationship with a showroom and get a discount. Some showrooms will accept credit cards, which is a good way to build up those airline miles.

Professional interior designers will get a discount for designer showroom resources, but you have to pay professionals their commission on top of the price of whatever you purchase from the showroom. That is the fair way that you pay for a professional's expertise and experience.

You can buy paints, for example, that are not available in a typical Big Box discount store at some designer showrooms. Once again, you may or may not purchase these paints through a professional painter or designer. Be realistic: the end result of your project will be different for your DIY efforts versus what the pros can achieve. Weigh your options and see if you want to tackle the painting (or the overall project yourself) or enlist the help of professionals. What does your budget allow? Can you afford to do it all yourself and live with the end results? (Do some soul searching . . . .)

Design2Share recommends doing as much as you can by yourself if that's where your budget and inclination lead you. "Knock yourself out!" advises Nicola and Irwin. But we feel it's good to bring in a professional to help you pull it all together artistically. Sometimes you can get too close to a project to see mistakes or poor design choices. If your budget permits, you can learn a lot when you hire a good interior designer. Learn as much as you can, then apply that new design knowledge to your next design project.

  Look into green resources for your home, and save the planet. It's no longer cliche. You shouldn't ignore the "inconvenient truth" that we need to act responsibly with our home design purchases to extend Earth's natural resources. One of our best tips is to explore both the print and online versions of National Geographic's The Green Guide. Go to www.thegreenguide.com for more information. If you're thinking of remodeling your home, check out the articles and videos that cover informative topics ranging from eliminating harmful bedroom chemicals that may be depriving you of a good night's sleep to finding the highest Energy Star rated appliances. See how homeowners tackled renovation projects, some on a shoestring, and managed to Go Green. The Green Guide is filled with inspirations galore and a room-by-room guide to greening up your home.