Monthly Archives: January 2010

Bathroom Renovation: Which accessories are necessary?

Posted on by Scott
Famousdecor

There are just two important places in every house which you normally use all day long. One is your lounge and the other is your bathroom. Both these places must contain high quality decorative and fancy stuff. For the lounge, you can easily use some decoration pieces or just use a beautiful glass sink. When it comes to the   bathroom then you have a wide choice like you can use modern bathroom vanity, neo angle shower and also the shower panel. This article will tell you that how you can renovate your bathroom using modern bathroom vanity with beautiful shape and design.

Bathroom vanity is the most important accessory not only for your bathroom but for the whole house. So make sure that you have the fanciest and modern bathroom vanity. This is not at all true that the vanities which just arrive in the market are expensive and their rate gets lower after few months. Actually after few months they are not at all new and are out dated so that is why their price decreases. It is better to buy the modern bathroom vanity immediately when it arrives in the market. You can check the online stores selling home improvement accessories like neo angle shower, glass sink and modern bathroom vanity.

If bought with a good looking faucet with pleasant colors, modern bathroom vanity can solely renovate your bathroom. The other side accessories like neo angle shower and glass sink also play a role in the bathroom renovation but the main one on which you must keep your full concentration is modern bathroom vanity. There is no compulsion of fixing the vanity at a particular place in bathroom, you can place it anywhere considering the position and space of the bathroom.

You will usually find two types of bath vanities in the market. One with a single faucet and the other with a double faucet. The reason for the modern bathroom vanity being available in two types is because not all the bathrooms are equal in size. And for bathroom renovation, you really need a modern bathroom vanity which will fit perfectly both position and size wise in your bathroom.

Renovating your bathroom with your own ideas is the best thing. Most of the people hire interior designers to fix the home improvement accessories in their homes however, there is no such need to hire a designer and pay him/her few hundred dollars when you can do everything yourself. Just combine your two different ideas and make one. After that you can apply it anywhere in your home.

Marie

When Seeking Bath Comfort, You Should Try a Bathtub!

Posted on by Scott
Catty

After a long day of hard work, the next best thing for you to do is to have a cool or warm soak before laying your exhausted body on bed. But what could be worse when you see your bathroom set-up so potholed to use? Surely, when such thing happens, your day will just end up with an increased apprehension level.

The best answer for such dilemma is for you to get rid of that stinky, dirty, and rusty bathroom set-up or shower area, and shift to a more relaxing and lavish bathtub instead.

Bathtubs are very ideal for persons who want to take time to unwind while immersing their body on a choice of cold or warm water. The sleek and colorful designs of any of this bathing facility add to the soothing ambiance. Moreover, it does not only bring comfort, but bathtubs, especially nowadays, are designed in such a way that your body will also experience therapy or stress-relief.

So how do you choose your very own bathtub?

If you want to have your bathroom to experience a 360-degree turn on makeover, the best thing you should opt is to place a bathtub. This bathroom piece may stand-alone or may have some showers or water sprinklers for add-ons.

There are so many types of bathtubs being sold in the market today. There are those, which are intended for baby use, some are called “walk-ins” bathtubs that are created for the use of elderly and people who have limited ambulatory movements. There are some that are crafted with the use of some high-quality materials, like acrylic, and fiberglass, but there are also other pieces that are made from less expensive, yet durable materials, like cast iron, steel, enamel, or in some instances, a very good quality of hard wood.

The designs and colors of bathtubs being sold in the markets today ranges from light colors such as pink, yellow, white, baby blue, red, yellow green and other pastel colors to dark colors, like navy blue, wine red, pine green and black. There are some that have printed designs, and are perfect if your comfort zone is constricted on arts and crafts.

In choosing your personal bathtub, you should consider which material and design suits you and your budget. Always ask for professional advice on which one is the best.

After putting your own bathtub at your desired spot in your bathroom, you will now be guaranteed that your bath life will be as relaxing as you want it to be. If you want to spice up your stress-relief practice in your bathroom, you can add some instrumental music, light a scented candle, and shift your environmental lightings from too bright to a little dimmer, while submerging your body on your bathtub. Your choice of warm or cool water is up to you, but it is recommended that you should try a lukewarm water, especially if you had struggled a long and demanding workday.

Bathtubs are indeed one of the greatest inventions of the past that most of us, the present inhabitants of the modern world, are taking pleasure from. Life won’t be complete without a revitalizing experience on it.

Warren

Shower Door Leak?

Posted on by Scott
Chad Walker

I have responded to a lot of calls to look at leaky showers over the past 13 years. Almost all of the showers that I have inspected have leaked at the door or metal track that holds the glass. The leak itself is not always noticeable, but the damage it causes over the years is obvious. The result is rotted baseboards, water damaged Sheetrock, and mold where the shower meets the floor just outside the glass door. The good news is that when faced with signs of water damage isolated to outside the shower door, almost all leaks have been the result of an original installation error.  The error is in the way the shower trim was sealed with silicon caulk. The mistake is compounded over the years by handymen and DIY’ers adding more caulk to the inside of the shower as a repair or part of home maintenance. Don’t worry, it is a common impulse to keep adding caulk to the shower in anticipation that the leak will eventually stop. Not only is this installation error common, I have witnessed it in 100% of showers with the same water damage pattern.

The most important lesson when sealing with caulk is “less is more”.  As it is very important to thoroughly caulk the outside of the metal shower trim, it is equally important not to caulk over the “weep holes” inside the shower. These are little drain holes in the bottom of the metal track inside the shower and on pre-made acrylic shower pans. These holes allow the condensation and water inside the metal track to drain back inside the shower instead of being trapped and eventually finding an alternative escape route. For the system to drain properly, I also suggest not caulking inside the track at the corners. The faster the water can flow down the track and out to the shower drain, the quicker the shower will dry. This reduces the chance of mildew and mold growth tremendously.

The type of caulk you use is also key to a long lasting sealed shower trim. 100% silicone caulk is the only caulk that has stood the test of time for me. It doesn’t shrink or crack unless it is in direct sunlight, and it stays flexible for a long time. Acrylic caulk hardens, cracks, and is less successful in keeping out mold and mildew. As a rule of thumb, it’s easier to match clear silicone to the metal trim and plumbing fixtures while white or grout color matched silicone is easier to match the corners of walls, shelves, and benches inside the shower.

Last but not least, check to see if all of the rubber seals are still in place and in good shape around the glass, the sides of the shower door, and the sweep at the bottom of the shower door.  These are there to help shed water down the inside of the shower and help keep splashing through any gaps in the door to a minimum. These items can be inexpensively replaced at a glass supply shop.

Shannon

How Do I Seal A Leaking Pond Membrane

Posted on by Scott
Derek Rogers

If your pond membrane is leaking there are three main ways to fix it: the blanket method, the mixed blanket method, and the Sprinkle Method. Once you decide on a method you will need to test your soil to determine what the application rate of your sealant needs to be.

Testing the Pond’s Soil:

Testing your soil is something that you must do to find out what kind of soil you have at the bottom of your pond. Take a can and perforate the bottom of it and then fill the bottom with about two inches of gravel. Cover the gravel with six inches of soil from the bottom of your pond and then tap it. Elevate the can so that the bottom is open and then fill the can with water.

The sealant you choose should have directions on how much should be used per square foot of soil on the bottom of your pond. Typically these application rates differ depending on what kind of soil you’ve used.

The Blanket Method:

This is the most effective method for sealing your leaking pond membrane, but you will need to take more care when applying it. After you prepare the surface that needs to be sealed, remove between four and six inches of the soil at the bottom of the pond. Fill any deep crevices or holes with your sealant-the mixture should be one part sealant to five parts of soil, then smooth everything over with a drag or a roller. After that, cover the area with your sealant-make sure that the sealant layer is even and that there aren’t any thin or bare spots. When the sealant is as even as you can get it to be, replace the soil you removed, but take care to not disturb your layer of sealant.

The Mixed Blanket Method:

Prepare the area that you need to seal just like you did with the blanket method. If the soil is dry then you will need to add enough water to moisten it lightly and then disc or plow the bottom of the pond between four and twelve inches deep and then drag or roll the surface until the surface is smooth. When everything is smooth, apply your sealant in the correct amount. Mix the sealant with the to four to twelve inches of soil by hand raking, tilling or dicing until it has mixed uniformly, and then compact the bottom of the pond by tamping or rolling.

The Sprinkle Method:

You should only use the sprinkle method when you can’t drain the pond or if there is an isolated leak in which spotted treatment might be an alternative. This is the least effective method because the accurate and uniform application of the sealant is hard and because the bottom of the pond might not be clear of debris. Simply sprinkle the appropriate amount of sealant onto the water’s surface and allow it to fall down into place and plug the leaks. The particles will be drawn to the leaks naturally and will repair the leaks without much effort on your part.

Pat

Do You Actually Know What’s Inside our Tap Water?

Posted on by Scott
Alvyn Khoo

It seem to be so normal when we turn on the tap, fill the glass with tap water, drink it or just use it for cooking purposes. Besides consuming the tab water, take shower in it, water the plants with it, wash our clothes and basically our life can not live without tap water. It is so important that we can’t live without tap water nowadays because our life depends so much on the tap water. However, have you ever wonder what’s inside our tap water?

Scientifically, tap water is made of Hydrogen and Oxygen, to be more precise, it is a combination of 2 hydrogen molecules and one Oxygen molecule; H2O. Lots of the H2O make up the water and it keep in the cycle transforming from H2O (liquid form) to Hydrogen & Oxygen (gas form), and back to H2O again. So, these will go on and go on for as long as we live.

When it rains, the water is being gathered in a damp or water catchments which will be channeled to the reservoir. Water then will be filtered and treated before it reach our house as tap water. During the water treatment by the water works or local municipal, chlorine will be added to water because of low cost and high efficiency in killing just about everything hazardous in the water. Chlorine reacts with water-borne decaying organic matter like leaves, bark, sediment, etc. to create a family of chemicals called trihalomethanes and other highly toxic substances. Trihalomethanes, or THM’s, include chemicals such as chloroform, bromoform and dichlorobromethane, all of which are extremely carcinogenic. So, you know now what’s inside our tap water.

The chlorine is always at its highest acceptable level in order to be affective. Periodically, test will be carried out to ensure the chlorine level is safe for human consumption, but unfortunately there are still many ways where the tap water will be contaminated before reaching the household. When chlorine level is not sufficient to do its jobs, bacteria can re-infect the water anywhere along the distribution system within hours. It could happened in the main pipes or even the plumbing in your house, the water tank above your house or apartment, or even neighboring pollution, occasional contamination from animals either dying or defecating in the source. Those old distribution using lead and asbestos-lined water pipes, is interjecting lead and asbestos into the water supply. Sadly to say, truly what’s inside our tap water, is partly contributed by the tap water distribution networks.

Another ” what’s inside our tap water ” main concern is the presence of chemicals in our tap water. The existence other chemicals even only in trace amounts, are highly toxic and harmful to human being. Leaking underground storage tanks for gasoline or industrial solvents such as TCE (trichloroethane) end up in the groundwater or in the municipal supply through breaks or cracks in the main water pipes. The biggest family of these toxics are VOC’s or volatile organic contaminants, including various plastic, gasoline and petroleum products.

Next is the herbicidal group such as dioxin (2-4D) and lindane, used as a defoliant in modern logging operation and found in many wild and rural areas, do not neglect DDT, malathione and other toxics used in insect eradication and control. Also, the THM’s mentioned before are a big pollutant because of the amount of chlorination used nationwide. They are a separate class of chemical from chlorine itself. So, it’s so scary to know what’s inside our tap water!

I am very sure if you really aware of what’s inside our tap water, you will think the need to install a whole water filtration system is so important to purify the tap water prior to consuming it. Do not take it likely when our utmost health and wellness is concerned when find out the truth about what’s inside our tap water.

Clyde

Budget for bathroom renovation

Posted on by Scott
Ravisankar

Budget for bathroom renovation

How have you thought you could renovate your bathroom? Use external help or do it yourself? Renovation of a bathroom is often a neglected activity that gets shoved under the carpet for a variety of reasons. Budget is an important criterion that holds this back, as the amount that is normally required is not that low, and hence lot of people feel that a bathroom does not require to be renovated for an amount that they feel is not worth it.

Budget often becomes the first step towards a successful completion of any project, and bathroom renovation is no different. Adhering to the fixed budget and making sure you do not shoot more than fifteen percent of what has been planned is a key to the formula. Many house owners do not want to take care of the hassles associated with this work and hence outsource this work to a contractor. In such cases, there are a few steps that you need to be careful about. Make sure that the contractor has relevant licenses to carry out the activity. After this is ascertained, ask him to submit a quote with a detailed plan of work. This plan should contain stages for completion with dates clearly mentioned, which he has to adhere to. You can also ask him to submit the break up of the price quoted, which should clearly have details about the prices of materials to be used for the renovation.

Another option is ofcourse the self help option. This option is successful only if the work to be taken up is of a very aesthetic nature and does not require too much of construction activity. In such cases, you should make a list if items that you intend to change or repair, research on prices of different brands available in the market, choose good shops that offer you good deals and make the purchases yourself. Here, you can utilize a local laborer or plumber or even an electrician to do related jobs as piece meal. The biggest disadvantage in such circumstances is that since you are not an expert in such jobs, you might not be able to calculate the requirements to the correct level and end up ordering less than the actual requirement. This leads to shortage of materials which in turn holds up work. In these cases, since you pay the laborers on a daily basis, the wage bill might be higher than expected. Shoddy work can also be a result, as you might be taken for a ride by these plumbers or electricians.

If you have good knowledge about the materials required and places to shop these for, then it is a good idea to hand over the labor contract to a licensed contractor, while you take care of the purchases. This helps you keep the budget tight while ensuring that you do not have to deal directly with the workmen.

Edgar