Exciting Room Themes for Little Boys

Looking for a fun and exciting theme for your little boy’s room?  How about doing something different for your son’s room? The trick to having a themed room is to not overdo it. Otherwise it can become overwhelming and start to look redundant. It’s not difficult to work with a theme. You can simply mix up colors and patterns for a successful design.

Sports

The most common theme that comes to mind is sports. Luckily there are plenty to chose from, which is good for creating a unique look. Pick one, two or even three! Painted words, sports balls, equipment, team names, logos, flags and more look really great on solid colored walls.

If you choose to do all of this on the walls, pick a solid color for the bedding and add sports patterned pillows. Chose painted or light stained wood furniture. The light wood can remind us of wooden baseball bats while the painted furniture is great to add a pop against the solid colored walls. For a finishing touch, try framing some pictures of your little guy playing his favorite sport!

Sailing

Maybe you want to stay away from the common sports theme room. Well, what about sailing? Little boys love blue and what theme could possibly have more blue than sailing?

Striped, dark blue bedding and decorative sailing pillows are a great place to start. Pair this with white furniture, Paint the walls a light blue. Hang up sailing prints or even mount a lifesaver on the wall. Finally, add a dark blue lamp base with a white shade, sailboat accessories and photographs of your rugrat boating with his family.

Construction

For my last suggestion, what about creating a real manly man theme such as construction? Little boys love cement trucks, dump trucks and tools, so why not bring this into their room? I recommend painting the walls a solid light color with construction images. Add construction theme bedding and pair it with solid colored decorative pillows. Finally, keep the lamps, accessories and stuffed animals of a non-construction theme to change things up a bit.

Starting from the Bottom Up: Green Design

When construction begins on a facility we rarely think about the foundation work. After all, it basically gets buried on the outside by the earth. And on the inside, we turn it into a recreation room with drywall or paneling. A new foam wall system has improved foundation. It uses two layers of foam with reinforcements and the cement is poured between the layers. Before this system, the forms would be pulled away from the concrete wall. Now we leave the foam in place as additional insulation to the lower level of our facilities.

Nudura is a new product that moves this technology from the lower level of homes through the entire building. In locations that are prone to hurricanes and tornadoes, this technology may save lives and prevent
property damage. The walls can withstand winds up to 250 mph and have hurricane anchor systems suitable for roofs. The anchoring elements are surrounded by cement in the concrete walls, so the roof will not break away from the home.

The basis of their product uses foam walls with one concrete wall between to form the foundation all walls within the home. Because the walls are made of highly insulated concrete, they reduce air infiltration that can occur in traditional wood stud homes and reduce sound transfer into the home. They also increase the fire protection over wood built walls for up to 3-4 hours. Concrete would not allow for moisture to get caught between the walls. Once they are cured, they are impervious to moisture and molds caused by moisture forming in the walls.

The wall systems are manufactured with recycled material and produce little waste during the construction phase. Most of the waste during the construction phase of buildings goes directly into landfills. The foam forms are non-toxic and do not emit CFC’s or HCFC’s. They are able to design their forms with 45-degree angles or curved walls so the building materials do not hamper the design. This means a precise layout, reducing costs on labor to layout. Another reduction on costs is in the delivery of the forms because they are able to be shipped flat, so almost twice as many can be shipped on one truck transportation costs and fuel usage is reduced.

In areas of high humidity, winds and termites, the Nudura product would be a logical building material. What do you think? Is your home built with this material? How does it hold up to traditional foundations?

Crown Molding! The Decorative Benefit

One of my biggest pet peeves in newer home construction is the lack of detail in the design of the interior. More often than not there is no crown molding, baseboard, base shoe, or even a simple chair rail throughout the home.

It is something that I have overlooked, as it was a common feature in my home. I never really appreciated it until I had the experience of seeing so many homes that lacked this character. For those of you who live in homes that lack this woodwork, charm, and dose of character, read on to learn how simple it can be to install!

Why bother? What will it do for you? It will never have a structural impact – only decorative. Most of your friends and family probably won’t even notice it, but it will give you a sense of completion. You’ll be left with well appointed rooms that introduce a sense of charm and help make your house a home. Today’s crown molding can be traced to the late Renaissance, when designers adapted elements of Greek and Roman architecture to ornamental plaster and wood cornices used to disguise and beautify the juncture of ceiling and wall.

Installing crown is only slightly more complicated than running baseboard. The variety of different joints and saw cuts, including a coped corner joint, an outside miter, a square cut, and a scarf joint, are best done with a coping saw and power miter saw. With practice, you should be able to make tight, long-lasting joints. Start measuring.

1. Determine how much molding to buy, measure each wall, round up to the next foot, and mark those measurements on a plain-view sketch of the room you’re working in. If one wall measures within a few inches of the length of a full piece of crown, buy the next longer length.
2. You will want to find a Miter board – or make it (ask about this at your hardware store). You will begin to get into some geometry and this tool will help save you time and a lot of unnecessary cuts when you are trying to fill a corner of a room.
3. The first piece will be square-cut on each end. Each piece will typically have one end that is square cut and another end that is coped or mitered. In some cases, the end opposite the cope will have to be mitered to help make an outside corner. When a length of molding is coped on one end, cut the coped end first. When you find that the coped end fits tightly, mark and cut the opposite end (whether it’s a miter or a square cut). Think of it as cutting an angle on a pretty piece of ribbon – what is left on the roll is now an exact mirror image of the piece that you just cut. This is exactly what will happen to your wood.
4. Place a length of crown upside down on the miter saw so that the molding’s bottom edge (the edge that will sit on the wall) rests against the fence, and the top edge (the one that goes on the ceiling) rests against the table.
5. To create a snug-fitting joint, hold a coping saw at a 5-degree angle away from the face of the molding and carefully cut along the pencil-marked edge. Check for a tight fit by bringing the molding to the wall and sliding it into place. To measure a coped piece of molding that ends at an outside corner, make a mock-up of the corner from two 12-inch-long molding scraps.
6. Repeat this process for the second scrap piece, but rotate the saw blade to the opposite 45-degree angle.
7. Glue and nail the pieces ends together.
8. Hold the mock-up in place and mark the ceiling where the two pieces of molding come together. Then measure for and cut the butt end.
9. Align the piece on the wall, spread glue on the surfaces of the miter, and nail the molding into place.
10. If the ceiling height changes and the molding must end in the middle of a wall, cap it with a return.

It is a great idea to sort of mock up the pieces and join at least two sides creating a corner together before you attempt to hang them. It will help in the frustration department. Trust me.

If this isn’t for you, make sure you hire a professional. Try to find someone in a local lumbar yard. They will probably know someone, if not themselves, to help you.

Do you have a crown molding? Are you a do-it-yourselfer? Tell us your story!

Do It Yourself: Paver or Not

I have always loved the look of pavers. My husband, being the pragmatists that he is, refused to tear out a “perfectly good” concrete sidewalk. FINALLY, one winter and spring, the frost heaved the concrete walk into various pitches and cracked a couple of slabs. Now it was time to tear it out and replace it with concrete again, or with my choice, pavers. I spent many weekends looking in landscape yards at the pavers they had until I finally settled on black edging pavers with a random sized paver that resembled something you would find in a back street in Rome.

The fun part of the project was deciding how it would look. We designed our layout and I began dreaming of replacing our landscape timber stairs down to a steeply sloped grass hill into paver steps and a sidewalk along the side of our house to the backyard. Little garden boxes on the side. Ahh…but first to get the sidewalk in.

After the layout came getting the concrete sidewalk out. After a few swings with the sledge, my husband and I decided it was time for children assistance. Our sons came over and broke up the slabs. Since I am all about recycling and not filling landfills, we moved the broken pieces to the wood garden and used the pieces as edging.

The boys returned home to their families and my husband and I began the excavating. The total depth included the depth of the paver (3 1/8”) plus the depth of the sand/slag layer (1-1 ½”) and then the gravel bed (4-6”) below that, equaling (10 5/8”). We used edge pavers so we didn’t have to excavate extra width than what we needed.

Want to guess how many weekends it took us to get this depth and width we chose? Three full weekends. All that excavated earth went into other raised gardens we had. We then ordered the crushed gravel, in which I came home to on a Friday afternoon and thought “Oh, how daunting!”

Saturday we started moving the gravel to our sidewalk. It was recommended that we add the gravel in 2” levels and tamp to compact. We started by hand tamping. This was not working so we rented a machine tamper, which vibrates the stone material until it is compacted.

We returned the machine Monday morning and ordered it again for the next weekend. Two weekends later we had our 6” of gravel compacted and laid the sand slag material. We had our pavers delivered for the weekend and were able to get our outside edges laid.

The following weekend we set about laying our random patterned pavers. My husband rented a masonry saw, which we used to cut the pavers so they fit within our pattern. We completed laying the pavers, returned the Masonry saw on Monday and reordered the compacting machine for the next weekend. The final step was to push the slag/sand mixture into all the cracks between the pavers and compact this.

I love the finish look. The pavers dress up our entry way and I like the way the gardens grow on either side. However, my back and knees have given me fair warning about doing this along the length of the house. So until I save my pennies, it will have to wait.

Have you ever done a paver job? Do you have a dream of pavers for your home?

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something… Green? What is the Greenest Method – New Construction VS. Existing Facilities?

Green buildings are all the rage. New technologies and innovate thinking are turning the new construction projects of today into the most efficient and effective ever. But is this new and innovative thinking for new facilities looking over existing structures that their preexisting embodied energy?

Some of the most obvious positive features of new green construction and interiors are:

• Enhanced energy efficiency
• Responsive and conservational HVAC application
• Smart recycled content, rapidly renewable and recyclable material application
• Positive site selection, most available municipalities, planning for smart commuting, location planned for closeness of modern conveniences to reduce carbon footprint of space inhabitants
• Enhancements in water usage, application of rainwater collection, use of grey water reuse from sinks for irrigation and water closet flushing
• Possible implementation of site remediation, for the reuse of a site otherwise destroyed by contamination.

So with all of these positives in mind it is easy to forget that at the end of the day these are still construction projects, which means large equipment, lots of shipping, long construction schedules and virgin material use. Not to mention there are also the elements of site disturbance, depends on urban or rural planning, but either way it is either a site clean up or clearing out which can cause impact.

In comparison to the above, here are a few of the eco-conscience benefits of using existing structures for facility remodeling:

• Use of less virgin material
• Use of existing internal and external structure
• Existing infrastructure, parking lots, community lines and building footprint, etc…
• Reduced site disturbance
• Preservation of historical relevance

When using existing structures there will be the obvious use of existing space and materials versus new. However, it is possible to update mechanical, electrical, plumbing fixtures and irrigation – but by updating, are we truly making a facility just as efficient as if we were planning new from square one? Probably not. I think that there will always be a continual argument of something old versus something new, but I think there are a few key thought provoking questions to get a conversation going for a project:

• Is there an existing structure available that meets our user needs for space, location and commuting?
• If so, how old is the facility? How much of the existing structure can we use? Is it stable? Are we able to update the building systems?
• Does this existing structure meet most of our expectations?
• Does the facility hold any historical ties to the surrounding community? Is there an opportunity to beautify and celebrate the past?

If you answer yes to most of the above then maybe there is a way for you to reduce the embodied energy of your project – maybe there is a way to remodel a house versus build a new one? I think I am a bit biased, but I really do think using what we have already built is very important. Sometimes you can’t avoid building new, but I believe when you can you should.

What do you think is the more green solution – something old, something new? Because in the end we really are just borrowing this planet from the generation to come. How can we plan smarter?

What To Do About Your Ugly Baseboard Heating System

I was working on the renovation of a historic home and we had those really ugly old hydronic baseboard heaters throughout the house. The budget did not allow for updating the system so we looked at our options.

The owners loved their hydronic baseboard heating system. It provided them with much more warmth than the forced air system they had in their previous house. They especially like the reduced need to dust as the system was much cleaner. They liked the fact that there did not appear to be drafts in their home from the blowing of the fan and it was as comfortable to lay on the floor as it was to sit on the sofa. They also talked about the efficiency of the unit, how they didn’t need to turn up the heat as much to feel as warm. So the system was staying, but how to dress it up?

I did some research and found a system called OverBoards. This system is made from interlocking components cast from solid aluminum. This system could be installed quickly with a minimum of deconstruction and would give us a stylish finish that would match the architectural details that we already had in the home.

OverBoards come in four styles (Victorian, Colonial, Shaker and Federal). We went with the traditional Colonial look. To insure that the standard system would work for us, we took the height dimensions of the existing system. It could not exceed 8 ¼” in height and could not protrude from the wall more than 3”. Our system met those dimensions.

We then began measuring the lengths of our baseboard heaters. We made note of all the end caps, whether they were right or left and the inside corner pieces we would require. On one of the walls the baseboard heater was off centered on the wall, making it awkward, so we added additional length to make the heater more symmetrical on the wall.

Our professional installers came in and within the day had completed the job. First, they removed all of the base moldings and then the end caps, corners, face panels and louver panels. This left only the back plate on the wall. They assembled the components on the floor and then hung the unit on the wall. It seemed to took no time at all to complete the installation. What was especially nice is that there was a notch in the base of each end cap which allowed for the floor moldings to be cut to around the OverBoards system. No mitering, just a nice straight cut.

Have you had ugly baseboard heater in your space? How did you dress them up? Have you had an experience with a system like OverBoards?

What were they thinking?! Bad Design Layouts

When you buy a home, you don’t expect everything to be the way you want, but you expect some thought to have gone into the planning. How about a home on the lake with no bathroom in the walkout basement? That’s right – everyone has to run through the basement and up the stairs to the bathroom or up through the deck, through the dining room and kitchen to the bathroom.

The bathroom, because it would be in the basement or walk out part of the house, meant that the toilet plumbing had to flush up rather than the typical gravity fed systems you find in homes. A great deal of research was done and pricing was obtained. The most recommended suggestion was the breaking up the basement concrete floor to put in a sewage ejector system, which means you break up the concrete basement floor and put in a plastic pit to use a sewage ejector pump to remove the waste. I was uncomfortable with this idea. And then we found the “Saniplus” system. It handled the toilet and sink. (In fact it handles four fixtures – toilet, hand basin, shower and bathtub.)

The pump, which was in a box fastened to the back of toilet, had to be connected. The toilet tank had to be connected to the water supply. The sink was connected to the pump using a 1 ½” plastic pipe, and the pump had an air pipe connected with the other end being put through the wall. It was connected to the electrical supply.

The “Saniplus” system is activated when the toilet is flushed. The micro switch within the pump box starts the motor, ultimately pumping the slurry up to a maximum of 12’. As soon as the water level in the pump box goes down, the micro switch deactivates and the toilet is ready for use again. It takes about 15-18 seconds for the entire flush process.

It was a day and a half job to get a toilet installed in the basement. It uses only 1.6 gallons of water per flush, so it uses less water than older toilets. Have you ever had a need for a bathroom in a lower level? What about any “What were they thinking?!” design problems have you run into?

What Was I Thinking?! My Bathroom Building Experience

We have the basement bathroom toilet installed. We could have just done a pedestal sink, but oh no. I wanted to have a cabinet so there could be storage for soap and toilet paper, some hand towels, you know the drill. And it couldn’t be just any cabinet; it had to be the one we used as our dry sink in the dining room before the new furniture because I am all about recycling and reusing everything I have. So we moved that bad boy to the basement and began the reworking.

There is the drilling of the hole in the top so the sink can discharge. Then there was the plumbing from the “Saniplus” system at a slight incline so we could determine where the plumbing would come up inside the cabinet. Then there was the connection between the bottom of the sink to the outflow pipe. Sounds easy right, well that part was, but because I wanted a glass sink to sit on the dry sink and a faucet that came out of the wall…things got a little tricky.

First, basement walls are typically poured concrete, so we built a fake wall. Now the wall couldn’t be a typical wall thickness because that would have made the room too narrow, so we built a 2” fake wall (just thick enough to hold the water lines). Because I wanted a faucet that came out of the wall, we had to figure out how to attach the faucet to a finished wall while having part of the wall unfinished to do the plumbing.

We dry walled only the top half of the wall. We attached the faucet to this part and dropped the flexible water lines down the wall. Have I told you how much I love flexible water lines? We would be still working on this job if we had to use rigid lines.

We then hooked up the water lines in the not yet dry walled area of our wall and proceeded to dry wall the lower part of our wall. That only took us a couple of weeks to figure out all of the parts and pieces to make it work.

The plumbing goes through one of the drawers in the dry sink, so we took the face off the drawer and permanently attached it to the dry sink.

Now I have 1 drawer and ½ of the dry sink for storage. It looks great and we have had a lot of complements on it. Have you ever thought up a project that ended up  taking a lot more effort and time than you originally thought it would? Tell me one of your “What was I thinking?!” projects.

You Want the Cornice How Big??

Hate the look of curtain rods? My solution has been to put a cornice over them. The cornice can be more architectural or a fabric covered box. When you use a panel of fabric that hangs over the rods, it is called a valance. I prefer a padded cornice that has simple lines with plain fabric. As our home is an eclectic blend of antiques, comfy (which defies description) and modern, my first foray into cornices was going to be simple.

We have 22’ window on the south side of our home. I did not want drapes. I just wanted a detail element on that wall that hid my honeycomb shades. Ever talk to someone about building a 22’ long cornice? They sort of snicker at you, if not outright laugh. I priced a custom-made cornice, hold on…$3.00 to $7.50 per inch. Yep, per inch (22 x 12 = 264 inches x $5.00 = $1,350.00).

So, how hard could it be? Once again my husband and I set about to figure out how to build a cornice. We drew out the length and then determined how far it needed to project from the wall and how we wanted the face to look.

We made our cornice out of pine planks to give it the stability we needed. Once the pieces were cut, we screwed the returns to the face and for added measure added metal L brackets on the inside. We also used these to connect the recessed top to the face and sides.

The fabric we chose matched our wall cover and we laid it face-side down on the floor. We then put our padding on top and set the face of our cornice on that. We now had a sandwich!

I don’t like to cut the fabric until everything is stapled on, so I set the top near the edge of the fabric, leaving about 2-3”. I began in the center top and stapled. I then pulled the fabric towards the edges and stapled every 2”. I only moved 6” in one direction and then moved from the center in the other direction. This keeps the fabric taunt on the cornice for a smooth finish.

If your fabric has a pattern, you will want to roll the cornice up and check to make sure the pattern does not become skewed. Once the top was completed, I repeated the process for the lower edge, making sure that it stayed tight.

Once the top and bottom are done, I then pulled the sides and staple them. It’s just like wrapping a present – you want the paper to be tight against the sides of your gift, so you should have a nice snug fit. I then used a box cutter with a sharp blade and cut the fabric, leaving about 2” beyond the staples.

We placed metal L brackets across the recessed top and sides and then we invited a couple of friends over so we could get this bad boy placed on the wall. We drew a line where the horizontal board would go with a level and up it went. A few screws later and it was attached to the wall.

Have you ever built a cornice? What type did you build, fabric or wood? Do you prefer cornices, curtain rods or something else?

How to Pick Your Drywall

If you have been reading my articles, you may have discovered by now that I am a bit of a “do-it-yourself-er.” I have had experience in selecting drywall in my professional life and now in my own bathroom. The difference is now I get to hang it myself!

My husband and I had some difficulty with a leak in our chimney, which caused some semi-severe water damage to a bathroom in our home. Selecting building materials can be challenging if you are not sure what to purchase. Drywall comes in all different thicknesses, sheet sizes and variations of paper components.

I discovered this wonderful product that worked perfectly for the situation that we had with the water damage. Typically, the drywall panels have a thick-paper wrapping that protects the gypsum core from impact and abrasion damage. But the paper readily absorbs water and can transmit it to the gypsum inside the panel. When this happens, the panel loses its rigidity and either falls apart or it becomes very mushy. For example, the drywall used around this utility sink should have been the special water-resistant drywall. Instead, the homeowner has had to initiate damage control by sealing the peeling-paint spots on the wall with clear urethane.

Green backerboard drywall has been in use for the past 25 years and many manufacturers have their own take on the components used to create the product. We were lucky enough to have time to research as we tore out the existing plaster months ago to allow the wall cavity to dry out as much as possible. We found this product to use and my oh my was I happy! Not only was it going to resist the spread of a mildew problem, it was light weight for lifting and installing overhead on the ceiling.

1/2″ Gold Bond® BRAND XP® Gypsum Board with Sporgard ™ was developed as an improved moisture resistant board offering the same advantages of a traditional moisture resistant board with added mold resistance in the core and paper. XP Gypsum Board panels consist of a specially treated, fire resistant, gypsum core encased in a heavy mold/mildew/moisture resistant, 100% recycled, purple paper on the face side and a heavy, mold/mildew/moisture resistant, 100% recycled, gray paper on the back side.

I highly recommend considering this type of drywall in rooms that contain plumbing fixtures: bathrooms, utility rooms, laundry rooms, kitchens etc.

Next, it is time for installation!

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