Tag Archives: ~Home

Choosing the Right Plan for Your Dream Home

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Whether you are shopping for “The One,” you are building a new home from the ground up, or you are remodeling the home you already cherish, the decisions you make along the way can both be intimidating and highly rewarding. It is natural to feel overwhelmed when you wonder about how to logistically turn your dreams into reality, whether that reality will be as good as it was in theory, your budget, your timeline, or anything else. To help start you off right, here are a few key thoughts to help guide your next steps.

1.  Practical Considerations

Before you design your live-in masterpiece, make sure it is compatible with your lifestyle. The absolute last thing you want is to build your dream home only to find out it doesn’t suit your needs. 

The Ins and Outs of the Home

Ultimately, your home needs to be livable. For example, if you are looking to expand your house for more rooms for a growing family or for more overnight hosting for guests, do your goals to add rooms accommodate adding extra people, with comfortable space, adequate privacy, and enough bathrooms? If you’re planning for a multigenerational home, are you considering safety, accessibility, and versatility with your family’s changing needs?

Similarly, when you consider your house’s exterior, consider the type of materials used, including choices in facades that are suitable to the climate you live in. After all, if you live in an area that is prone to hurricanes, it would be best to factor in durability for extreme storms into your choice of materials such as paneling and tiles before you get blown away by an idea that will, too.

Design Code and Permitting

Before you pull out the blue tape, make sure that you’ve gone through the red tape. While working with licensed and bonded teams will help with quality control and legality, it is helpful to first make sure that what you are considering is feasible. For example, many municipalities require additional permits for Accessory Dwelling Units; additionally, understanding that expanding your home will require changes to your electrical wiring and installing extra pipes, which could lead to additional inspections and fees for hook-ups to water and sewage. On the other hand, your plans may qualify for tax breaks and other federal or local incentives! Planning for these contingencies can help spare financial and legal heartache, and help you anticipate delays in the timeline.

2.  External Influence: Upping your Curbside Appeal

There are many great reasons to invest in exterior architecture and home exterior makeovers. Not only is your home’s outside the first impression you make to yourself and others, but putting the extra effort into the outside of your house can definitely boost your home’s value! Alongside practicalities like maintenance and, if you are or will be in a planned community, HOA restrictions, consider your personal aesthetic: do you want quirky and playful? Timeless and elegant? Hoping to accentuate a cultural tradition, such as a classic Southwestern abode or a Scandinavian seaside town? Designing with the front end in mind can help you also consider which parts of your design matter most. From there, you can make more empowered decisions on who to contact in terms of contractors, specialists, and/or agents.

3.  Insider Information: Your Interior Design Mind

While curb appeal is important, your living room’s spaciousness, kitchen surfaces, and staircases matter as well! Consider, for example, that you already have an idea for your ideal amount of natural light, both for your own personal tastes as well as ways to add eco-consciousness into your enhancements. Even more, for kitchens, laundry rooms, hobby rooms, and bathrooms alike, consider which practical elements you want to make the focal point, such as a countertop that is a conversation starter, or a porcelain sink that sets the tone for the room.

Whether you are designing the whole house, or looking to modernize one room, once again, start with a theme or favorite piece of furniture you want to design around. 

Start Building Your Team!

Once you are ready to hammer away, make sure that when you are collecting your bids, you are also looking for compatibility with the folks who will help you achieve your housing dream. After all, whether you are working with a real estate agent, or you are working with an architect, making sure that your people are also ready to execute your vision is at the front and center of everything you do. While budget and reading quality reviews will always matter, make sure that you also feel comfortable with the people you are working with. So, here’s to happy dreaming and even happier doings!

Tips for Designing a Functional and Stylish Home Office

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Link: https://unsplash.com/photos/macbook-air-beside-gold-colored-study-lamp-and-spiral-books-MNd-Rka1o0Q

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly one-third of Americans work remotely from home on at least a part-time basis. If you fall into this category, you need to have a home office available to you that is both functional and stylish. If you haven’t gotten around to putting one together yet, make it your mission to do it soon. Here are some tips on how to create the perfect home office.

Look For a Good Place to Put a Home Office

First things first: When you’re preparing to put a home office somewhere in your house, begin by thinking about where it should go. Ideally, you’ll want to stick a home office in a place where it’ll always be nice and quiet so that you can get your work done throughout the day. If you happen to have a spare bedroom in your house you aren’t using right now or if you have an empty corner in your finished basement, these would both be fantastic places for a home office.

You might also want to consider investing in the construction of a room addition to provide you with space for a home office.

Paint a Home Office’s Walls With the Right Colors

Once you pick the best place to put your home office or, better yet, build a brand new home office from scratch by adding onto your house, the next thing you’ll need to do is paint the walls in it. Instead of simply painting the walls in a home office white, search for paint colors that are going to motivate you during your workdays and allow you to focus.

There are dozens of different paint colors to consider when you’re trying to decide which paint you want to put on the walls in your home office. Light blues and greens will have a calming effect when you incorporate them into your home office design. They’ll also make your home office look every bit as stylish as you would like it to be.

Link: https://unsplash.com/photos/macbook-pro-on-brown-wooden-table-kw0z6RyvC0s

 

Invest in High-Quality Home Office Furniture

While you’re waiting for the fresh coat of paint that you put on the walls in your home office to dry, start shopping for furniture for the space. You will, first and foremost, want to select a desk. This desk should fit nicely into your home office without overcrowding it, and it should also set the tone for your home office in terms of its style. Whether you decide to go with a wooden desk, a metal desk, or even a glass desk, choose one that will both serve its purpose and dramatically improve the appearance of your home office.

There are also lots of other pieces of furniture you will need to pick out for your home office. This includes a chair for your desk, filing cabinets for all your important paperwork, a bookshelf for any books you would like to display, and more.

Select Great Lighting for a Home Office

If you’re lucky enough to have one or more windows in your home office, you should adorn them with window treatments and make the most of them by leaving these window treatments open during the day. It’ll allow a lot of natural light to come into your home office and make it feel like a more pleasant place to work.

You’ll also want to look for great lighting for a home office. In some cases, this will mean choosing a single lighting fixture to hang up in the middle of the room or installing recessed lighting. In other instances, it will mean buying several lamps and strategically placing them throughout your home office. Either way, you’ll want to be able to take control of the lighting in your office at any time.

Add Decorative Touches to a Home Office

As long as you have followed the basic steps to prepare this work space, your home office should come together quickly and look amazing. But if you want to take it to the next level, you’ll also need to find decorative touches for it that will put its design over the top. You can buy office decor online so that you’ll be able to add things like pots for plants and vases for flowers to your home office. These small touches will have a gigantic impact on the look and feel of it.

 

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Maximizing Small Spaces in Your Home

URL: https://pixabay.com/photos/home-indoors-decor-design-creative-2618511/

Living in a small space is a valuable skill for anyone looking to find unique solutions to space limitations.

When maximizing the micro, just a few tactics can make your space feel bigger, brighter, and more beautiful. In this guide, we’re breaking down five strategies to optimize small spaces: using natural light to your advantage, exploring outdoor options, cutting clutter, choosing space-saving furniture pieces, and efficiently using wall space.

Take Advantage of Natural Light

Even a little bit of natural light can go a long way. Some of the most common natural light sources in residential spaces are:

  • Windows – Using sheer window treatments, hanging blinds, or even going curtain-free can help you customize and direct the natural light streaming through your windows.
  • Skylights – Skylights are excellent natural light sources for small rooms. They can fill an entire room with soft, bright light during daylight hours when well-placed.
  • Doors with glass – Front doors with sidelights, sliding glass doors, and French doors can all help homeowners harness natural light.

Letting more natural light into your space will make it feel airier, larger, and (of course) brighter. To maximize your natural light during the day, try to leave spaces around light sources clear; instead of putting a chandelier right next to a skylight, for instance, leave the ceiling area around it bare to let as much light as possible into the room.

Expand to the Outdoors

Feeling like you’re out of storage space indoors? Trying to curate a conversation-friendly, cozy space without eating up square footage? Consider expanding to the yard, balcony, or patio.

With just a few simple tactics, you can make an outdoor space furniture-, storage-, and fun-friendly:

  • Overhead coverage – Umbrellas, awnings, or even horizontal trellises can all create shade and offer some protection from the elements.
  • Outdoor flooring – Pavers and outdoor tiles are multifunctional: they enhance the aesthetics and functionality of a space, creating a level surface.
  • Lighting – Whether you install simple string lights or more sophisticated lighting in your outdoor haven, proper lighting will help you maximize your alfresco space.

Cut Clutter

Clutter can imbue even the most sprawling living spaces with stuffy, stifling energy. While there’s something to be said for well-placed knicknacks, keeping your space as organized and clutter-free as possible will help make your small space feel more roomy.

There are a few tactics you can use to keep your small space organized and clean:

  • Use displays – Instead of lining up tchotchkes on the mantel, windowsill, or side table, display them in dedicated spaces to free up surfaces: in curio cabinets or wall shelves.
  • Create a schedule – If you struggle to stay on top of household chores and tend to let clutter pile up, consider making a manageable schedule — consider clearing one surface a day, for instance.
  • Purge as needed – Sometimes, you may not have enough room for your belongings in a small living space. Consider donating items you can’t find a place for.

URL: https://pixabay.com/photos/bedroom-indoors-interior-design-bed-6577523/

Choose Space-Efficient Furniture Pieces

Whether you’ve just bought your first home or you’re on your third move this year, furniture can make or break your living space layout and functionality. For people living in smaller spaces, choosing space-saving furniture is critical.

If you’re looking for versatile, space-efficient furniture for your home, consider freeing up space with:

  • Murphy beds
  • Fold-up chairs, tables, and desks
  • Collapsible or modular bookshelves
  • Pieces with built-in storage (e.g., ottomans with blanket storage)

Leverage Wall Space

Last, consider moving up instead of out while curating your small space layout — take as much advantage of wall space as possible.

For instance, wall shelves aren’t just places to display curios or store books. Get creative with your wall storage, using shelving to stow:

  • Clothes
  • Gaming consoles and A/V equipment
  • Barware
  • Snacks and pantry items
  • Cleaning and laundry supplies

For people living in small spaces, the ceiling is the limit — when you run out of floor space, don’t forget about the ample storage room available on your walls.

Small Spaces Demand Big Creativity

Throughout the last ten years, small-space living has become more popular and more common — but if this is your first time curating a smaller home, the tactics above can help you overcome floor space challenges.

Think of living in a small space as an opportunity to flex your creativity: finding new storage solutions, furniture pieces, and lighting tricks to help you thrive in your home.

Exploring The Concept Of Consumer Confusion In Home Health Care

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The concept of consumer confusion in the healthcare industry is worth understanding because it will help in both development and validation of the care process as well as help the home care agencies to improve the quality of life and the care process as well.

Over the years there has been a significant rise in the demand of home health care but with that there has also been a change in the concept of other different aspects such as:

  • Patient autonomy
  • Consumer sovereignty
  • Information provision and
  • All the essentials to decrease data asymmetries.

This means there will be no miscommunications between the patients and the healthcare service providers. However, care must be taken for greater availability of such third-party information sources because this can lead to customer confusion and negative side effects.

By nature, the patients can be confused regarding the type of care services to be provided as well as the cost of it. Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of the home care agencies to provide quality information to the patients to eliminate the chances of any confusion among the patients.

Consequences of a confused patient

According to the research conducted among a few competing health care providers it is found that such conflicting information causes a lot of patient confusion. This in turn affects the behavioral intention of the patients to choose a health care provider.

  • The present study confirms the model of patient confusion with reference to the context of hospital choice.
  • It also reveals the perceived overload of information and its similarity as well as its ambiguity which in turn affects the cognitive mechanisms of patient confusion.

When a patient is confused, they typically have an inclination to narrow down their choices as well as their available set of possible decision alternatives.

Finally, the customers should make an empirical analysis that will help them to know about the effective and cognitive elements that ideally leads to patient confusion. They will be able to mediate the perceived information overload, similarity, and vagueness of information regarding Home care jobs.

Care delivery at home

When it comes to delivering health care in the home it is quite different from a hospital or nursing home health care setting or any other institutional environment where nurses and home care aides work.

  • The home health care nurses work alone
  • They work depending on the support resources that are available from their central office and
  • They work on the basis of a nurse-physician relationship.

It also involves direct physician contact and in most of the cases it is found that it is the physicians who rely on the nurses to a greater degree for making proper assessments and analysis of the finding and also communicating it with the other team members.

  • The home health care nurses usually spend a significant part of their time on paperwork as compared to the nurses working in a hospital or a nursing home. They in fact spend a lot of time with the reimbursement issues.
  • There are also a few specific and distinctive characteristics that make the nurses working in a home health care environment much different for the other nurses working in different other settings. One of it is the safety, security and quality of outcomes.

In fact, there is a very high degree of patient autonomy found in a home setting that includes limited oversight as well as experience of the informal caregivers as compared to the professional home care givers of the clinicians. All these are situational and are variable according to the unique situations in each home.

Reasons consumers err

Now, with all these benefits and variances provided by a home heath care giver or a nurse, the natural question that may come to your mind is why exactly consumers make a mistake in choosing the right care plan.

Well, the first obvious reason seems to be the open enrollment plan that is provided by almost every kind of health insurance companies.

  • There are millions of people who use Medicare plans.
  • There are others who choose any other type of health insurance that is sponsored by the employer.

In addition to that, there are also a significant number of people who choose a specific health plan from the Affordable Care Act or ACA marketplaces.

Quite naturally, the consumers encounter with a large variety of options. According to research, it is revealed that it is due to this large variety of option that is available to the consumers that creates a confusion and in most of the times compels them to make a mistake in making the final choice. Invariably, more often than not they end up paying more than that need to pay for a particular health plan.

Type of confusions created

There are people who select plans that come with deductibles that are too low. Well, you may think that this is a fine choice but in most of the cases when you choose a plan that has lower deductible will have higher premium. That means when you save on deductibles while receiving the claims, you pay a large sum of money while you continue to pay the premiums.

Such type of mistakes made is typically seen when bulk insurance is sold to the employees of a firm. They hardly have the knowledge and skill to distinguish between the 26 plans they are offered and all seems to be identical to them. This forces them to bad deals which in most of the times is influenced by the choice of the colleagues.

People have a variety of reasons to make mistakes like this.

  • Some do not understand the basic concepts of health insurance
  • Some cannot identify the basic cost-sharing features and
  • Some are highly predictive of overpaying for a lower deductible.

Therefore, there is no doubt that the consumers face a lot of confusing situation when it comes to choosing a health insurance plan as well as a health care provider. Add to that, the different programs offered by the Medicare Advantage confuse the consumers even more. This is why a proper research is essential before making any such choice.

3 Tips to Decide on Your Hot Tub Placement

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You can set up your hot tub in your home bathroom, backyard, or private patio. Then, which is the best place to install the same? It all depends on the type of home you live and your lifestyle choices. When it comes to hot tub shape and design, there are plenty of options available for you to choose from. Then, you cannot buy a huge tub for a small bathroom. If you have a spacious bath, on the contrary, there is nothing like it. In such a case, you can even set up a big Jacuzzi tub for that ultimate comfort and sophistication.

The hot tub also costs you. According to an article published on https://us.cnn.com, home décor and renovation is expensive sometimes, yet you can do much of bathroom revamping on a budget. You could opt for a bathtub sale and save up to 65 percent. Once you invest in one, here are three tips to decide on a hot tub placement in your home:

  1. Use

Are you contemplating to use your hot tub for a relaxing experience in quiet and peace? Will you use the same for amusement and romantic fun during festivities or parties in your house? Or would you use a hot tub for treating chronic pain? You need to answer these questions before choosing and installing a hot tub.

The proposed use of the hot tub plays a crucial role in its installation. For increased seclusion or soothing ambiance, you might like to set it up where you have some privacy such as in the private patio of your home. Similarly, if you would love to enjoy picturesque landscape views in an attractive setting, you might want to set up your hot tub in your backyard. Hot tubs for daytime use must be placed under a shade, and one intended for an evening bath should have some pathway, lighting, and steps to climb into the tub safely, especially if the hot tub is in your backyard. Remember these factors when installing your hot tub. Make sure you have custom hot tub covers to keep it protected when not in use.

  1. Appeal and aesthetics

When you invest in a new hot tub, it is essential to mull over its overall appeal and aesthetics. How will it look in a new place? Is it easy to build and uphold the aesthetic appeal with another furniture arrangement, decoration, and lighting in your bathroom? You can also install the hot tub as a standalone piece in your home bathroom. Make sure that your hot tub complements or improves the look and feel of your bathroom. You can place potted plants, colorful candles, and soap racks near the tub.

  1. Maintenance

Before installing a new hot tub, check the bathroom dimensions. How cozy is your bathroom where you want to place it? In case of a repair, make certain that you can easily reach the spa cabinet, electrical elements, and plumbing materials. If you install the hot tub on or close to the wood, protect the wood or keep it away from water.

Conclusion

You can install a hot tub anywhere as long as it feels comfortable and suits your lifestyle. You can set it up in your bathroom or private backyard based on your preferences.