Once a prospective buyer enters your home, the key selling points are the kitchen and bathrooms. Great kitchens start with a great design so it is important that you highlight the best features of your kitchen. Windows can be showcased with new curtains, an island can be staged to illustrate its varied uses, and lots of storage capacity helps you  hide many of your belongings to create the appearance of boundless storage.

Preparing your home for sale is challenging. If you need to sell your home quickly and want to get top dollar, you should hire a home stager to help you remove clutter and personal things. They can also identify each room’s key selling features and help you rearrange furniture to create a feeling of spaciousness. READ MORE

How often do you take a bath? Most adults are too busy to sit and enjoy a relaxing soak, so the big question is whether you need a bathtub in the master bathroom? The challenge is homeowners who don’t take baths might prefer a larger shower … but wonder how the lack of a second bathtub (we’ll assume a 3 bedroom house has a second bathroom with a bathtub for the kids) might impact the sale of their home.

Unfortunately there isn’t a right or wrong answer to having a bathtub in your master bathroom. This article explores various opinions about keeping or letting go of the bathtub in a master bathroom dialog online, to help  you make your own decision. READ MORE

Bathrooms are the smallest rooms in the house. Maybe that’s why we like to update them more often, because we think small means less work. Bathrooms maybe small but they’re actually more difficult to paint than most rooms because you’ve got to cut around lots of things – the ceiling plus the bathtub/shower, toilet, vanity and more.

The same is true when laying tile. It might be a little more work to put down 8 feet of tile versus 4 feet but the hardest part is measuring and cutting tiles along edges and corners, so you’re not saving much with a smaller room. That’s why you want to consider what you’re trying to accomplish with tile and see if you can achieve the same results with fewer tiles. READ MORE

Do you know when National Bathroom Reading Week happens (keep reading)? Do you know why there’s a hole punched in the Farmer’s Almanac? According to ABC News/Entertainment, “… The Old Farmer’s Almanac still embraces the annual’s history as a commode companion … when the magazine would hang on a hook in outhouses.”

We’re all so busy that often the only quiet place we can sit undisturbed is the bathroom! Go ahead and laugh out loud (in social media parlance, LOL). We can laugh together and the best part is no one will hear us, nor does anyone really care what you do in the bathroom unless they’re waiting to get in but most homes have more than one bathroom today. READ MORE

Everyone has a bathroom or 2 but do you love your bathroom(s)? Have you added special features to make your bathroom fun and sexy? You picked the paint color, the towels and maybe you’ve updated the floor and/or vanity but how many of us think outside the box, and how many of us make make dramatic changes to give our homes sizzle?

We spend a lot of time in our bathrooms. Master bathrooms are becoming  retreats where we can relax after a long day at work. It makes sense to transform our bathrooms into places that soothe and inspire us. READ MORE

Bathroom design starts with a blueprint or floor plan. You need to layout where key features like the sinks, toilet, bathtub and/or shower will go, with enough space for doors to open and people to access everything safely. In new home construction, careful consideration is also given to which walls the plumbing and vents will run through, and ideally plumbing will go on interior walls when you live in a cold climate location.

Remodeling a bathroom must address similar needs when adding space or moving the plumbing. The cost of a bathroom remodel goes up significantly when walls, doors and/or plumbing get moved so the benefits need to outweigh the added cost. READ MORE

Bathrooms are getting bigger as we spend more time there, relaxing at the end of a busy day. Larger, glass enclosed showers, soaking tubs and steam baths are just a few of the latest bathroom trends for busy homeowners.

When you spend more time in your bathroom, that means you’ll need features to store more gadgets and don’t forget a refrigerator to keep some cool drinks on hand. Wondering how you’ll relax? Flat screen TVs are becoming a popular bathroom item along with sound systems so you don’t get bored while soaking or enjoying a brisk shower. Whether you want an in-home spa or work-out gym, check these features out.

READ MORE

Do you know how many decisions are required to outfit a new bathroom? There are literally 100s of decisions to be made. Having completed more than 10 bathroom remodels, I know the decision making can get overwhelming. After dealing with custom cabinets for 2 bathrooms, I once jumped at the chance to buy a discontinued vanity/cabinet combination to save myself lots of decisions.

When I learned about bathsimple.com, a website that simplifies the process of picking out the majority of your bathroom purchases, I had to check out their website and you should too! READ MORE

Decorating is much more than picking colors and finding bathroom fixtures that work together. Decorating is about making all the pieces come together to create a coordinated look and feel, a place where you feel warm and cozy. When I teamed up with an interior decorator to remodel two bathrooms in 90 days, I never realized how much I would learn.

My role was overall project manager and I focused on getting materials to the job site to keep everyone on schedule. Where I worried about the alignment of the plumbing for the new vanity, our decorator focused on the best hardware to dress up the vanity and overall bathroom. Here’s my first tip for you – take photos of different sections of a room you’re decorating. You’ll be able to focus on the details better. READ MORE

Bathrooms are the smallest rooms in a house yet they’re one of the most complex rooms to design, build and decorate. What makes a bathroom so complicated? Bathrooms have more fixtures per square foot than other rooms in the house although we often think a bathroom is a vanity with sink, toilet and bathtub or shower.

In fact we didn’t consider how many fixtures this small bathroom had when the owner said they wanted to go with bronze hardware which costs about fifty percent more chrome hardware. Want to learn how many different products you have to buy for a small bathroom? READ MORE