Rule 1. Rule 1: Every home needs a dining room. One of the biggest pitfalls people fall into when decorating their home is being afraid to change the purpose of a room. Sure, a kitchen is always going to be a kitchen, but dining rooms, formal living rooms, and bedrooms are ripe for repurposing. Like many folks, we don’t make much use of a dining room. While we enjoy visitors, we don’t throw many formal dinner parties, and our eat-in kitchen works just fine for daily meals. Meanwhile, our living room is lovely but not particularly spacious — a piano, fireplace and stairway limit the amount of seating we can add to the room. Our solution was to extend the “living area” into the adjacent dining room. Suddenly, we doubled the amount of space we have for casual entertaining, while creating a spot for a flat-screen TV for watching movies. The result is a cozy, calming room that the British would call a “snug.” We think that describes the space perfectly. This layout — and giving up a dining table to get it — may not be the right fit for every family, but it more closely aligns with our needs and could easily be switched back by the next homeowners. Rule 2. Rule 2: Dark colors make a room feel small. You’ve heard it from designers on TV. You’ve heard it from real estate agents. Neighbors. The guy working the paint counter. “A dark wall color will make a room feel smaller.” I have two responses to that: Not necessarily. Even if it does, is that always a bad thing? In many instances, a darker wall or ceiling color will have no effect at all on the perception of room size. Very dark colors can, counterintuitively, make walls and ceilings appear to recede from the observer, creating the illusion that the room is deeper. So, the jury remains undecided. What dark rooms inarguably do is create an environment that is cozy, elegant or romantic. While your eye may initially perceive a space as smaller, it will not actually be any smaller. You can fit just as much furniture and as many people into the space as before. So maybe it isn’t a problem at all. Our adjacent living room (and much of the house) has stark white walls and big windows to bring in sunlight, so we decided to paint our dining room-turned-snug in Black. Nothing subtle about that, but once we filled it with artwork and furniture, everyone commented on how big the room seemed. Rule 3. Too much furniture in a space will make it cramped. As designers and furniture manufacturers, we talk with clients about furniture layouts every day, and choosing too large a sofa in their home is a recurring concern. While it’s true that the scale of furniture matters, you can often get away with putting more into a room than you might imagine. It’s all about placement and maintaining pathways. Our snug is a great example of this. It measures merely 13 feet by 10½ feet, and has a wide opening to our living room, a door to our kitchen and three big windows. Into the room, we fit a 10½-foot-by-8½-foot sectional sofa, a barrel chair, three small tables, a bar cart, a large wall-mounted flat-screen TV and tons of artwork. Despite squeezing in seating for a big group of people, we haven’t compromised the critical pathway running from the living room back into the kitchen. We absolutely love our cozy, compact lounging space and don’t miss our dining room at all. Our unconventional choices may not make sense for your lifestyle, but keep them in mind as you find the best way to live in your home.
How Breaking 3 Design Rules Made Our Home Feel More Like Us.
Rule 1. Rule 1: Every home needs a dining room. One o...
Method 1. Deep Clean. Your home simply cannot be too clean to sell. Invest in a deep cleaning, either by using your own elbow grease or hiring a professional cleaning service. In addition to the regular cleaning chores of dusting, vacuuming, and mopping, be sure to tackle rarely cleaned areas including vents, baseboards, cabinets, blinds, and doorknobs. Steam-clean the carpets, wash the walls and windows, and replace any broken windows or screens. Method 2. Improve Your Kitchen. Improve Kitchen Cabinets. One of the things buyers look for above all else is a great kitchen—but remodeling your own can cost a lot. Instead of a complete overhaul, change out the little things. Ugly cabinets? Paint, new hardware, or even resurfacing costs less than a full replacement. Method 3. Paint Panache. Choose a Neutral Paint Colorю You may love your red walls but chances are that a prospective buyer will not. Add a fresh coat of interior paint in a neutral color, such as white, sand, or putty. A semi-gloss paint will make the walls seem brighter; an eggshell finish can be used to hide minor imperfections, such as drywall dents or small plaster cracks. Method 4. Improve your storage system. Add storage solutions. Storage space is one of the top items on buyers' wish lists. Make use of all the closets and pantries you have by buying and installing inexpensive organization systems. This is especially important if your home is old and closets are few and far between. Method 5. Check for Hardwood Floors. Refinish Hardwood Floors. Hardwood floors are a very desirable feature—and they're often hiding right under your wall-to-wall carpeting. Pull up a small corner of the carpeting in an inconspicuous area to check the condition of the floor. If there is hardwood underneath, you can remove it and restore the original floors—much more cost-effective than replacing the carpeting or installing new floors.
5 Cheapest Ways to Boost Your Home's Value.
Method 1. Deep Clean. Your home simply cannot be too...
Nowadays, to see a person on a bicycle or while running is not something unusual, although not long ago it was not in trend. In this article you can find out when and where the first messages on a healthy lifestyle appeared. The fashion for a beautiful body and strength went back to ancient times, namely, from the time of Plato, Socrates, Pythagus, who glorified not only with their great work but also not small achievements in sports. The revival of the fashion for a healthy lifestyle began at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, and an important factor in this were bodybuilding, bodybuilding and fist fights. In Europe, for example, this image was distributed primarily through circus art, in which the best strongmen of the continent took part, and amazed everyone with their abilities. Moving from city to city, they showed what the human body is capable of. In 1896, the first Olympic Games of our time took place, and the fashion for sports spun with renewed vigor. America became the homeland of fitness and gyms. After the war, doctors began to sound the alarm: more than half of the children in the 50s had poor physical fitness and could not cope with the standards, and until the 70s the US population began to suffer from obesity and cardiovascular diseases. After the authorities took up the popularization of sports and fitness, the number of people who began to go to the halls increased 4 times. Although sport in the Soviet Union has always been in demand and assistance from the authorities, at the turn of the 80s and 90s people were not up to fitness. Only since the 2000s has this trend entered the mass consciousness. Along with improving people's well-being, the penetration of Western culture into our lives, it also becomes important for us how we feel. At the given moment, sport is in the first place for a lot of people, since they realized that a beautiful body does not only attract opposites of a full lock of a healthy mind. Have a nice workout!
Fitness story
Nowadays, to see a person on a bicycle or while runnin...
Sleeping Beauty Castle Inspired by Neuschwanstein Castle, a picturesque 19th-century castle in Germany, Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, reaches nowhere near its European counterpart’s 213 foot height. Yet, despite its more intimate scale, the 77-foot-tall structure seems to tower over Main Street, thanks to the fact that design elements like the bricks in the walls get progressively smaller as they reach greater heights, imposing a forced perspective that exaggerates the castle’s size. This iconic symbol of the park dates back to opening day in 1955. The interior of the castle, which opened to visitors two years later, includes dioramas that tell the story of “Sleeping Beauty.” Fanciful features include imposing arches, a French-inspired golden crest (a rendering of the Disney coat of arms) above the entry, a drawbridge that has been lowered only twice, and below it, a moat known as Lake of the Swans. Enchanted Storybook Castle Opened in 2016, the Enchanted Storybook Castle at Shanghai Disneyland Park offers walk-throughs of exhibits representing all the Disney princesses and is the tallest of the six Disney castles, reaching close to 200 feet. Hewing to the mantra “authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese,” the tallest of the eight towers is topped with a golden peony finial symbolizing China above a stream of shooting Disney stars; one of the remaining spires has a gold finial shaped like a magnolia (an important flower for the Shanghainese), and another carries a crown representing the Disney princesses. Phantom Manor The Disneyland Paris equivalent of the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World and other Disney parks, this dark-ride attraction opened in 1992 in Frontierland in the French park in Marne-la-Vallée. Though it promises glimpses of 999 “happy haunts,” its imposing exterior is forbidding enough to give visitors second thoughts about dropping by. Built in the Victorian Second Empire architectural style, the house also took inspiration for its deliberately dilapidated look from the Fourth Ward school building in the old mining town of Virginia City, Nevada. Tokyo Disneyland Hotel Opened in 2008, this Victorian-style accommodation in Urayasu, Japan, is the largest and perhaps most striking of the three Disney hotels in Tokyo Disney Resort. The nine-story hotel with a sweeping entryway and ornate dome manages to blend the early 20th-century Victorian architectural style that Walt Disney embraced throughout his career with that of World Bazaar, the first themed land to greet guests as they stroll into Tokyo Disneyland. Flo’s V8 Cafe Patrons of Disneyland in Anaheim can fuel up at this retro diner in Cars Land that opened in 2012 and serves up American classics like fried chicken alongside architectural eye candy. A replica of the eponymous cafe in the hit Disney film “Cars,” itself named in honor of the V8 engine, the car-themed canteen incorporates design elements resembling pistons, spark plugs, and even an air filter.
The Architecture of Disney: The 5 Most Magical Structures
Sleeping Beauty Castle Inspired by Neuschwanstein Cast...
A few small and very useful tips for home care that will help you quickly and for a long time to make it clean and comfortable. 1. Bag without smell Need to eliminate bad smell in your bag? Put an unused tea bag in it for one day. 2. Pipes without blockages Use salt to clean the drain pipes. Pour it into the pipe and rinse with boiling water. 3. Tanning marks Often, an artificial tanning of the skin causes uneven skin lightening, that is, the presence of spots. To avoid this, you need to use baking soda, a small amount of which is applied to problem areas with a sponge. 4. Clean iron. The soot on the sole of the iron is easily cleaned with a mixture of ammonia and vinegar. Soak a soft cloth in the solution and wipe the iron. 5. Vegetable soup In soups made from fresh vegetables, do not put spices - bay leaves, black pepper and others. It is better to sprinkle the prepared soup with herbs - it is healthier and tastier this way. 6. Hygiene in the kitchen Be sure to process wooden kitchen boards with a solution of water and vinegar. It is necessary to cut food on a perfectly clean surface. 7. Salad with oil. Vegetable oil should be added to the salad only after salt, vinegar, and pepper have been added to it. Remember that salt in oil does not dissolve. 8. Cold compote To quickly cool a hot compote, place a saucepan with it in a larger bowl with cold salted water. 9. Delicious buckwheat. To cook delicious buckwheat porridge, the water should be twice as much as cereals. Cover the pot in which the porridge is cooking. Cook the porridge first over high heat and then over low heat. 10. Odorless fish When cooking such fish as flounder and cod, an unpleasant specific odor is emitted, which can be eliminated by adding parsley root, celery to the dish. Onions added to the dish will be useful. 11. Flowers in the room Wildflowers will last longer if you add a couple of drops of detergent to the vase. The main thing in this matter is not to overdo it, since the opposite effect is possible. 12. Cleaning to shine. In order to obtain a snow-white bath, it is necessary to prepare a special solution for cleaning it: soda ash (2 tablespoons) + drinking soda (2 tablespoons). Next, rub your bath with this mixture. The bath must be wet. Wait 5 minutes (it is important not to wash off the layer) and apply the following mixture: vinegar (50 g) + bleach (50 g). It remains to wait half an hour and wash off the layers. 13. Snow-white curtains. If the windows in your home are equipped with white synthetic curtains, then after washing during drying, exclude direct sunlight. 14. Clean entrance hallway The floor of the hallway is characterized by rapid staining. To eliminate this undesirable phenomenon, you need to get a shoe stand. As a stand, a tray and cork substrate are perfect. You can buy them at almost any building materials store. 15. Laundry bags They are indispensable when washing delicate fabrics. However, you should not rush to purchase them in the store, since you can make them yourself. A regular duvet cover is suitable for this purpose. 16. Economical cooking. If you decide to treat your relatives and friends with small pasta, then do not strive to cook them until fully cooked. Immediately, as the water boils, throw in the pasta, stir, turn off the gas and be sure to cover with a lid. They will be ready in 10 minutes. 17. TV on site Place your computer monitor and TV in an evenly lit location as needed to optimize brightness and contrast adjustments to a lower level. At the same time, electricity savings will be achieved - up to 5% monthly. 18. Air freshener If you suddenly run out of perfume, then do not rush to throw out the bottle from them. Remove the dispenser, pour ordinary water into the bottle (1/2 the volume of the bottle) and release the wooden sticks there. They will absorb the scented moisture and spread it throughout the home.
Mistress to help
A few small and very useful tips for home care that wi...

We only need two ingredients in a 1:1 ratio, these are butter and washing powder.

1. Mix soft butter with powder until smooth.

2. Apply the paste to the area with paint.

3. Rub with your fingers until the paint dissolves

4. Rinse with water and wash with powder in the washing machine to avoid oil stains.

Rule 1. Rule 1: Every home needs a dining room. One of the biggest pitfalls people fall into when decorating their home is being afraid to change the purpose of a room. Sure, a kitchen is always going to be a kitchen, but dining rooms, formal living rooms, and bedrooms are ripe for repurposing. Like many folks, we don’t make much use of a dining room. While we enjoy visitors, we don’t throw many formal dinner parties, and our eat-in kitchen works just fine for daily meals. Meanwhile, our living room is lovely but not particularly spacious — a piano, fireplace and stairway limit the amount of seating we can add to the room. Our solution was to extend the “living area” into the adjacent dining room. Suddenly, we doubled the amount of space we have for casual entertaining, while creating a spot for a flat-screen TV for watching movies. The result is a cozy, calming room that the British would call a “snug.” We think that describes the space perfectly. This layout — and giving up a dining table to get it — may not be the right fit for every family, but it more closely aligns with our needs and could easily be switched back by the next homeowners. Rule 2. Rule 2: Dark colors make a room feel small. You’ve heard it from designers on TV. You’ve heard it from real estate agents. Neighbors. The guy working the paint counter. “A dark wall color will make a room feel smaller.” I have two responses to that: Not necessarily. Even if it does, is that always a bad thing? In many instances, a darker wall or ceiling color will have no effect at all on the perception of room size. Very dark colors can, counterintuitively, make walls and ceilings appear to recede from the observer, creating the illusion that the room is deeper. So, the jury remains undecided. What dark rooms inarguably do is create an environment that is cozy, elegant or romantic. While your eye may initially perceive a space as smaller, it will not actually be any smaller. You can fit just as much furniture and as many people into the space as before. So maybe it isn’t a problem at all. Our adjacent living room (and much of the house) has stark white walls and big windows to bring in sunlight, so we decided to paint our dining room-turned-snug in Black. Nothing subtle about that, but once we filled it with artwork and furniture, everyone commented on how big the room seemed. Rule 3. Too much furniture in a space will make it cramped. As designers and furniture manufacturers, we talk with clients about furniture layouts every day, and choosing too large a sofa in their home is a recurring concern. While it’s true that the scale of furniture matters, you can often get away with putting more into a room than you might imagine. It’s all about placement and maintaining pathways. Our snug is a great example of this. It measures merely 13 feet by 10½ feet, and has a wide opening to our living room, a door to our kitchen and three big windows. Into the room, we fit a 10½-foot-by-8½-foot sectional sofa, a barrel chair, three small tables, a bar cart, a large wall-mounted flat-screen TV and tons of artwork. Despite squeezing in seating for a big group of people, we haven’t compromised the critical pathway running from the living room back into the kitchen. We absolutely love our cozy, compact lounging space and don’t miss our dining room at all. Our unconventional choices may not make sense for your lifestyle, but keep them in mind as you find the best way to live in your home.
How Breaking 3 Design Rules Made Our Home Feel More Like Us.
Rule 1. Rule 1: Every home needs a dining room. One o...
Method 1. Deep Clean. Your home simply cannot be too clean to sell. Invest in a deep cleaning, either by using your own elbow grease or hiring a professional cleaning service. In addition to the regular cleaning chores of dusting, vacuuming, and mopping, be sure to tackle rarely cleaned areas including vents, baseboards, cabinets, blinds, and doorknobs. Steam-clean the carpets, wash the walls and windows, and replace any broken windows or screens. Method 2. Improve Your Kitchen. Improve Kitchen Cabinets. One of the things buyers look for above all else is a great kitchen—but remodeling your own can cost a lot. Instead of a complete overhaul, change out the little things. Ugly cabinets? Paint, new hardware, or even resurfacing costs less than a full replacement. Method 3. Paint Panache. Choose a Neutral Paint Colorю You may love your red walls but chances are that a prospective buyer will not. Add a fresh coat of interior paint in a neutral color, such as white, sand, or putty. A semi-gloss paint will make the walls seem brighter; an eggshell finish can be used to hide minor imperfections, such as drywall dents or small plaster cracks. Method 4. Improve your storage system. Add storage solutions. Storage space is one of the top items on buyers' wish lists. Make use of all the closets and pantries you have by buying and installing inexpensive organization systems. This is especially important if your home is old and closets are few and far between. Method 5. Check for Hardwood Floors. Refinish Hardwood Floors. Hardwood floors are a very desirable feature—and they're often hiding right under your wall-to-wall carpeting. Pull up a small corner of the carpeting in an inconspicuous area to check the condition of the floor. If there is hardwood underneath, you can remove it and restore the original floors—much more cost-effective than replacing the carpeting or installing new floors.
5 Cheapest Ways to Boost Your Home's Value.
Method 1. Deep Clean. Your home simply cannot be too...
Nowadays, to see a person on a bicycle or while running is not something unusual, although not long ago it was not in trend. In this article you can find out when and where the first messages on a healthy lifestyle appeared. The fashion for a beautiful body and strength went back to ancient times, namely, from the time of Plato, Socrates, Pythagus, who glorified not only with their great work but also not small achievements in sports. The revival of the fashion for a healthy lifestyle began at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, and an important factor in this were bodybuilding, bodybuilding and fist fights. In Europe, for example, this image was distributed primarily through circus art, in which the best strongmen of the continent took part, and amazed everyone with their abilities. Moving from city to city, they showed what the human body is capable of. In 1896, the first Olympic Games of our time took place, and the fashion for sports spun with renewed vigor. America became the homeland of fitness and gyms. After the war, doctors began to sound the alarm: more than half of the children in the 50s had poor physical fitness and could not cope with the standards, and until the 70s the US population began to suffer from obesity and cardiovascular diseases. After the authorities took up the popularization of sports and fitness, the number of people who began to go to the halls increased 4 times. Although sport in the Soviet Union has always been in demand and assistance from the authorities, at the turn of the 80s and 90s people were not up to fitness. Only since the 2000s has this trend entered the mass consciousness. Along with improving people's well-being, the penetration of Western culture into our lives, it also becomes important for us how we feel. At the given moment, sport is in the first place for a lot of people, since they realized that a beautiful body does not only attract opposites of a full lock of a healthy mind. Have a nice workout!
Fitness story
Nowadays, to see a person on a bicycle or while runnin...
Sleeping Beauty Castle Inspired by Neuschwanstein Castle, a picturesque 19th-century castle in Germany, Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, reaches nowhere near its European counterpart’s 213 foot height. Yet, despite its more intimate scale, the 77-foot-tall structure seems to tower over Main Street, thanks to the fact that design elements like the bricks in the walls get progressively smaller as they reach greater heights, imposing a forced perspective that exaggerates the castle’s size. This iconic symbol of the park dates back to opening day in 1955. The interior of the castle, which opened to visitors two years later, includes dioramas that tell the story of “Sleeping Beauty.” Fanciful features include imposing arches, a French-inspired golden crest (a rendering of the Disney coat of arms) above the entry, a drawbridge that has been lowered only twice, and below it, a moat known as Lake of the Swans. Enchanted Storybook Castle Opened in 2016, the Enchanted Storybook Castle at Shanghai Disneyland Park offers walk-throughs of exhibits representing all the Disney princesses and is the tallest of the six Disney castles, reaching close to 200 feet. Hewing to the mantra “authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese,” the tallest of the eight towers is topped with a golden peony finial symbolizing China above a stream of shooting Disney stars; one of the remaining spires has a gold finial shaped like a magnolia (an important flower for the Shanghainese), and another carries a crown representing the Disney princesses. Phantom Manor The Disneyland Paris equivalent of the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World and other Disney parks, this dark-ride attraction opened in 1992 in Frontierland in the French park in Marne-la-Vallée. Though it promises glimpses of 999 “happy haunts,” its imposing exterior is forbidding enough to give visitors second thoughts about dropping by. Built in the Victorian Second Empire architectural style, the house also took inspiration for its deliberately dilapidated look from the Fourth Ward school building in the old mining town of Virginia City, Nevada. Tokyo Disneyland Hotel Opened in 2008, this Victorian-style accommodation in Urayasu, Japan, is the largest and perhaps most striking of the three Disney hotels in Tokyo Disney Resort. The nine-story hotel with a sweeping entryway and ornate dome manages to blend the early 20th-century Victorian architectural style that Walt Disney embraced throughout his career with that of World Bazaar, the first themed land to greet guests as they stroll into Tokyo Disneyland. Flo’s V8 Cafe Patrons of Disneyland in Anaheim can fuel up at this retro diner in Cars Land that opened in 2012 and serves up American classics like fried chicken alongside architectural eye candy. A replica of the eponymous cafe in the hit Disney film “Cars,” itself named in honor of the V8 engine, the car-themed canteen incorporates design elements resembling pistons, spark plugs, and even an air filter.
The Architecture of Disney: The 5 Most Magical Structures
Sleeping Beauty Castle Inspired by Neuschwanstein Cast...
A few small and very useful tips for home care that will help you quickly and for a long time to make it clean and comfortable. 1. Bag without smell Need to eliminate bad smell in your bag? Put an unused tea bag in it for one day. 2. Pipes without blockages Use salt to clean the drain pipes. Pour it into the pipe and rinse with boiling water. 3. Tanning marks Often, an artificial tanning of the skin causes uneven skin lightening, that is, the presence of spots. To avoid this, you need to use baking soda, a small amount of which is applied to problem areas with a sponge. 4. Clean iron. The soot on the sole of the iron is easily cleaned with a mixture of ammonia and vinegar. Soak a soft cloth in the solution and wipe the iron. 5. Vegetable soup In soups made from fresh vegetables, do not put spices - bay leaves, black pepper and others. It is better to sprinkle the prepared soup with herbs - it is healthier and tastier this way. 6. Hygiene in the kitchen Be sure to process wooden kitchen boards with a solution of water and vinegar. It is necessary to cut food on a perfectly clean surface. 7. Salad with oil. Vegetable oil should be added to the salad only after salt, vinegar, and pepper have been added to it. Remember that salt in oil does not dissolve. 8. Cold compote To quickly cool a hot compote, place a saucepan with it in a larger bowl with cold salted water. 9. Delicious buckwheat. To cook delicious buckwheat porridge, the water should be twice as much as cereals. Cover the pot in which the porridge is cooking. Cook the porridge first over high heat and then over low heat. 10. Odorless fish When cooking such fish as flounder and cod, an unpleasant specific odor is emitted, which can be eliminated by adding parsley root, celery to the dish. Onions added to the dish will be useful. 11. Flowers in the room Wildflowers will last longer if you add a couple of drops of detergent to the vase. The main thing in this matter is not to overdo it, since the opposite effect is possible. 12. Cleaning to shine. In order to obtain a snow-white bath, it is necessary to prepare a special solution for cleaning it: soda ash (2 tablespoons) + drinking soda (2 tablespoons). Next, rub your bath with this mixture. The bath must be wet. Wait 5 minutes (it is important not to wash off the layer) and apply the following mixture: vinegar (50 g) + bleach (50 g). It remains to wait half an hour and wash off the layers. 13. Snow-white curtains. If the windows in your home are equipped with white synthetic curtains, then after washing during drying, exclude direct sunlight. 14. Clean entrance hallway The floor of the hallway is characterized by rapid staining. To eliminate this undesirable phenomenon, you need to get a shoe stand. As a stand, a tray and cork substrate are perfect. You can buy them at almost any building materials store. 15. Laundry bags They are indispensable when washing delicate fabrics. However, you should not rush to purchase them in the store, since you can make them yourself. A regular duvet cover is suitable for this purpose. 16. Economical cooking. If you decide to treat your relatives and friends with small pasta, then do not strive to cook them until fully cooked. Immediately, as the water boils, throw in the pasta, stir, turn off the gas and be sure to cover with a lid. They will be ready in 10 minutes. 17. TV on site Place your computer monitor and TV in an evenly lit location as needed to optimize brightness and contrast adjustments to a lower level. At the same time, electricity savings will be achieved - up to 5% monthly. 18. Air freshener If you suddenly run out of perfume, then do not rush to throw out the bottle from them. Remove the dispenser, pour ordinary water into the bottle (1/2 the volume of the bottle) and release the wooden sticks there. They will absorb the scented moisture and spread it throughout the home.
Mistress to help
A few small and very useful tips for home care that wi...