House Design News

House Design News

Contemporary Residence with Impressive Swimming Pool in Peru

Posted: 18 Jan 2014 11:34 AM PST

This a contemporary home with about 2,786 square foot in La Planicie, Lima, Peru. This two level contemporary home has an impressive swimming pool and a highly modern layout. With about $150,000 of total budget, Studio Doblado Arquitectos has completed this contemporary residence. An elegant house with functional interior design, with the ability of maximizing the indoor space.

Contemporary residence in Peru

Some description :
"The house is built on a longitudinal lot, therefore most spaces have views that avoid the patios.The first level has a living room, dining room, kitchen, guest bathroom, master bedroom, master bathroom and service area. The second level has two bedrooms, lounge and bathrooms.The internal movement allows two independent circuits, by way of a promenade, entering through the garage (owner) or on the terrace (visitor)."

Contemporary Residence

Contemporary residence interior

Simple stairs design

Reference : freshome.com

5 Rarely Asked Crucial Questions about Mosaic Tiles

Posted: 17 Jan 2014 11:34 PM PST

Mosaic tiles add life to any part of your house. Its colors and designs are attractive and vibrant. Making mosaics is no easy feat though. It needs a lot of focus because of the nitty gritty details involved in creating it. Here are some questions that are rarely asked about mosaic tiles but are crucial to the process of creating it.

What specific precautions should I take when doing a Mosaic project?
Yes there are! One should always have eye protection on, such as safety glasses. When nipping glass mosaic tiles, shards can sometimes fly in random directions if your nipping technique isn’t quite perfect yet.
It’s always best to do mosaics in a well-ventilated area as you start gluing or grouting your project. Wearing gloves is especially important when you start grouting for several reasons. The grout can dry out your skin, you would not want to wash your grouty hands in the sink since the grout can clog your pipes, and it would be really difficult to remove the grout from your skin once it has dried.

What safety precautions do I need to take?
Making mosaics requires basic shop safety practices: Wear goggles when cutting mosaic materials or mixing grout. Mosaic materials are often sharp. Keep out of reach of children. Avoid breathing the dust when mixing grout. Wear rubber dishwashing gloves when grouting to avoid irritating your skin. Don’t overload patio tables with mosaic materials so that the table becomes unstable (top heavy). You should also make sure that the table frame can support the overall weight.

What is the best grout to use? Sanded or Premixed?
Sanded Grout A mixture of portland cement, sand and special additives providing a dense, acid and alkali-resistant grouting material. Colored Sanded Grouts also contain color-fast pigments. Sanded Grout can be used in virtually any application, indoors and out, even when grouting on floors. Sanded Grout is a porous cement, which means that it can absorb liquid materials after it has dried. This can be good and bad: you can stain your Sanded Grout after it has set with a colored grout stain, or it can be stained accidentally with spilled liquids – watch out for that red wine and grape juice! See the section on sealing your grout for information on how this can be prevented.

Premixed (Unsanded) Latex Grout Our special blend of water soluble materials and acrylic-latex additives. Premixed Grout provides a smooth joint, without the graininess of Sanded Grout. Premixed Grout is not recommended for use on floors. Our Premixed Grout can be used in mosaics in which the grout line is up to 1/4″ in width. If you are using unglazed non-glass tile (such as ceramic or terra-cotta) you may want to use the Premixed Grout. These tile are prone to absorbing the moisture from your grout mixture and may become discolored. Premixed Grout has less moisture than a Sanded Grout mixture. As Premixed Grout is a latex-based admixture, it is not as porous as Sanded Grout. This means that it is less likely to become stained and discolored, but it is more difficult to tint after your grout has dried and set.

How do I mount mosaics on a wall?
Glue your mosaic tiles to fiberglass mesh at your work table. (Make sure your table is covered with construction plastic or parchment paper, such as used in baking, so that you don’t glue everything to the table. Most people cut the mesh in smaller sections, usually 12 inch x 12 inch, because it is difficult to handle sheets of mosaic larger than 1 sq foot. Most people use Weldbond (sparingly) to attach tiles to mesh. When the mesh is dry in about 24 to 48 hours, you are ready to mount this assembly to the wall. This is done by spreading thinset or mastic or Weldbond on the wall itself and pressing the mesh onto the wall. After this cures, in about 48 hours, you can grout the mosaic in place.

How do I polish my mosaic after I finish creating one?
After your mosaic is finished and your grout is dried, you can use mineral or olive oil to polish your tile. Using a soft cloth, sponge or chamois, apply a few drops of oil to the surface of your mosaic and rub it in. This should give you a nice, shiny wet look which will enhance the color and emphasize the design of the tile and grout for your floors. You may need to occasionally re-apply a coat of oil to restore this look.

How do I cut the precise shape I want from glass mosaic tiles?
Glass tile can be difficult to cut in a predictable shape due to the scoring on the backsides of the tiles. That is why you should cut the tiles upside down so that you can see how the embossed ridges might be affecting your cut. (Wear safety glasses as always.)

Here’s the more important information:
The pieces shouldn’t be perfect squares or triangle. The irregularity ensures a grout gap even when the tiles are pressed close together. More importantly, non-uniform squares will make the mosaic much more interesting visually than uniform squares. (Look at traditional mosaics if you doubt this.) Perfect squares make a mosaic look like it was made from a kit. A little irregularity makes a mosaic look more like hand-made art.

Tiles should never be “shaped” or custom cut. Instead, cut up about 4 or 5 tiles, and then select the piece that is closest in shape to what you need. You will find that you work faster that way with much less stress.

Author Bio:
Andrew James Stevenson is an architect based in England. He is also a part-time interior designer and a father 2 beautiful daughters. He plays golf during the weekends and design layouts during the weekdays.

Home Design Ideas

Diamond Comics
Wedding Invitation Packages Cheap
Wedding Invitations with Pictures
Wedding Planning on A Budget
Wedding Ring Sets

Diamond Comics

Posted: 18 Jan 2014 04:08 PM PST

Comic books have changed significantly since they first found their way into pop culture so many decades ago. In today's comic shops, consumers can find comic books featuring everything from classic super-heroes like DC Comic's Batman, and Marvel Comic's Spider Man to titles featuring nearly every subject in this whole universe.

The demand for comic books has been in rising since decades ago along with the popularity of many Hollywood super heroes movies, cartoon shows and television series. These super heroes fans from many different age are the reasons behind the spread of many comic shops and distributors around the world.

Diamond Comics

Diamond Comic Distributor

Diamond Comic Distributor is the world's largest distributor of English language comics, graphic novels, and related pop-culture merchandise, with a network of shipping and distribution throughout the world.

Diamond Comic was establish in 1982 by founder and president, Steve Geppi, to provide comic book specialty retailers with wholesale, non-returnable comic books, graphic novels and related pop-culture merchandise. Steve Geppi, who does not believe in second-place efforts, knows that Diamond Comic success comes from offering retail customer the best in products, in discount and in personalized customer service.

Diamond Comic's philosophy is to offer their customers with respect and bring the comic books, novels and merchandise they want at a fair price, and deliver it to the cutomers quickly, accurately and reliably.

Diamond's Comic Books and Graphic Novels

As in November 2012, Diamond Comic showcasing and distributing comic books such as All New X-Man #1-2, Batman #14, The Walking Dead #104, Captain America #1, Indestructible Hulk #1, Iron Man #1, Fantastic Four #1, Thor God of Thunder #1, Justice League #14, Amazing Spiderman # 698, and many more.

Beside super heroes comic books, Diamond Comic also have selection for children comic books such as My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #1, Superman Family #8, Monster Inc #2, Wink Club #5, Scooby Doo #29, Sonic the Hedgehog #244 and many others.

As their selection for graphic novels include The Walking Dead vol. 17: Something to Fear, New Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, Avatar: The Promise pt 1 and many more.

Diamond Comic Affiliated Companies

To provide customers with merchandise, collectible and other related pop-culture products, Diamond Comic works together with their affiliated companies such as Alliance Game Distributor Inc, Diamond Select Toys and Collectibles, E. Gerber Products and also Diamond International Gallery.

Alliance Game Distributor Inc. offers the largest selection of hobby games products with an extensive selection of role-playing games, collectible card games, miniature games, anime, board games, brushes, paints, dice, and hobby accessories.

Diamond Select Toys and Collectibles creates unique and exciting collectibles for children and adults alike. The company hold licenses for a variety of top-rated pop-culture properties, including character from Marvel Comics, Battle of the Planets, Edward Scissorhands, and many more.

E. Gerber Products offering the the acid-free boxes and acid-free backing boards to collectors and publishing the respected Photo Journal Guide to Comics. The company is known to collectors and archivists around the world for its high quality storage and preservation products, including several varietis of Mylar bags nad sleeves, custom backing boards, and archival tapes.

Diamond International Gallery has regularly been in the heart of many significant opportunities to preserve, promote and present historical comic character collectibles, alongside original comic books, movie posters, premium and other toys, also displaying original works by such artists as Carl Barks, Gustav Tengren, Alex Ross, Murphy Anderson, Joe Shuster, Joe Simon and Charles Schulz among others.

Wedding Invitation Packages Cheap

Posted: 18 Jan 2014 11:44 AM PST

Are you going to get married? Well, it means that you are not staying away from thing that is called as "invite me" LOL. Invitation becomes important matter in the wedding. It is because the invitation could become very offensive to certain people outside of the wedding. Such example, if you forget to invite your uncle who lives miles away from your house, he can be very upset and think that you do not appreciate him as your uncle. Thus, invitation in the wedding party means a lot to your guests.

So, how should we appreciate them? Many people have different way to appreciate their guests. Some of people will showed their appreciation on the luxurious wedding invitation card. But some other culture will use the direct invitation. It means that the bride or groom or the parents of the bridegroom will come and visit the people that they invite to be their guests. Or deliver the guests with special packages. It can be the invitation card which is packaged in a special place and décor it. Or it can be the invitation is shaped in a special food delivery and many more. You can find such traditions in Asia.

Wedding Invitation Packages Cheap

So, I think that there is no different in any marriage that people use the invitation card to appreciate the guests. So that's why you don't have to be afraid to choose the design of the wedding invitations which will show your romantic side. Is it expensive if we want the luxurious design for our wedding invitations? Well, you don't have to be worry because there are so many wedding invitation packages in cheaper price. You can prove it by open www.amazon.com with the keyword Wilton Wedding Invitation Kits. For this December you can have discount for about 22% from normal price $34.99. So, you can have it with $27.34 and you can get it free with super saver shipping. This invitations – 5 – ½ by 8 -1/2 inch reply cards – 5 – ½ by 4-1/4 inch Programs – 3 – ¾ by 8 – ½ inch. These invitations include 50 invitations and mailing envelopes, 50 reply cards and envelopes, 50 ribbon and pre-tied bows, adhesives. I like this design because it is very romantic design with the ivory with natural paper wrap. In the Wilton design, you will not only see the pressed floral ivory design, but they also have wonderful design like the bride design. So, you will have invitation cards with the bride cartoon design with the white color. It is really cute wedding invitation.

Or you can choose the vintage ivy design. This design look so elegant and multi function. You can find that in this wedding invitation, you can also pack the reply cards inside of it. So, you don't have to be afraid that the reply card will miss or falling down when it removes from another place to another place. Or you can get the cheaper one with the lower price from another design of Happy Day. The price before discount is $24.99 and after 20% discount for this Christmas package, you can get it with $14.46 for set of 25 invitation cards. This design is in white with white/glittered vellum pocket.

If you want to know about this detail you can open the site and see the detail to put it in your wedding shopping list. Beside, you can get another design of the wedding invitation cards from many collections from another designer in cheaper price also. So, you don't have to be worry about the invitation anymore because you can get it with cheaper price but with luxurious and romantic design that every girl dream about it.

Wedding Invitations with Pictures

Posted: 18 Jan 2014 07:40 AM PST

Setting the wedding invitations with pictures is a good idea to have instead of video wedding invitation that was made by my friend to invite their guests. The idea of video invitation that they made it was telling the dramatic stories that they have during their first meeting until they day the decided to married. It was real romantic and great wedding invitation that they made. But absolutely, they spend more money to set it up because they need to set up all the background and also invite people who are involve in their love stories and it cost more money and time!

So, I think we still can tell the people with another media to tell them how wonderful our love story is. So, design wedding invitations with pictures can be your great answer of it where you can paste your best moments with your couple in a lower price.

Wedding Invitations with Pictures

To fulfill the need of people of the wedding invitations with pictures, there are many invitation printing agents offer you the packages of this wedding invitations. You can get them easily both online or offline. But if you do not have more time to sort it out by visiting the agent to discuss about your wedding invitation, online shopping for this invitation can be a great answer for you.

Such example you may take a look for www.basicinvite.com. This site offers you many idea of wedding invitations with pictures. This site makes you possible to customize your favorite pictures of pre-wedding online and then in a short time they will deliver it to you if you sure that the invitation is what you really want. All what you need is just to see the templates that they have, then customize the color that you like, the font, the text, the type of the paper that you want and also the pictures that you want to use for the invitations. Don't forget also choose the background to make your wedding invitations become more wonderful. Then, after you deal with them you just need to wait it comes to you house. I think it will be very easy to do that. What about the pricing?

If we are talking about the pricing, it means that we must search all the designs one by one. But I think it won't be fair if you do not visit the link by yourself. It is because you will meet many templates that you can consider it to become the option of your wedding invitation that you need.

But for example, I will talk about of one template that they have. It is the Pheonix Wedding Invitations. This template offers you a package including direction cards, RSVP cards, Accommodation Cards, ceremony cards and also registry cards. And all of these cards are below $1. For Pheonix RSVP Cards you can get it for $0.49 per each, meanwhile for The Pheonix Ceremony Cards you can get it for $0.24 per each and for registry cards, you can get it for $0.16 per each.

Then, how many pictures that we need to send them for this wedding invitations? Well, it depends on you. Some wedding invitation might be use one or two photos of you, but some will need more pictures. If you only want a photo to be used in your wedding invitation, maybe you can choose the Scottsdale template. This template is simple but it is a nice template to choose. But then, how send them your photos? Should we send the photos by the email or what? You don't need to send them the photos by email or maybe letter. What you need is, you go online, and make sure that you already have photos to be used in your computer. Then, you go to their link and choose the template that you want. After that customize the text, choose the color and font. After that continues your process in photos. You will meet a place to drag your photos there. I think it is easy way to do. It is just like you Do-it-Yourself your wedding invitations.

Wedding Planning on A Budget

Posted: 18 Jan 2014 12:36 AM PST

Planning a wedding makes some people get scared of it. Believe it or not, many people run away from the wedding because of this. Then why does the budget become problem in the pre-wedding? Well, it is because these couples did not prepared the budget carefully, so when they want to get married they were surprised with the budget that they have to spend. So, if you do not want to run away from your wedding, you need a wedding planning on a budget.

What is wedding planning on a budget?

The wedding planning on a budget is how to plan our wedding in some budget – in this case to us whom the budget for wedding ceremony is lower. Is it possible to us to making the wedding planning on a budget? Of course we are. We can see that there are many people who live in poverty still can making the wedding, even though with the small party. So, I think to making the wedding planning on a budget is possible to all of us.

Wedding Planning on A Budget

How to prepare the wedding planning on a budget?

To prepare the wedding planning on a budget, we must cut cost in several parts in wedding. However, before we prepare the wedding planning on a budget, let's find out what we usually do in the wedding.

Bridal shower; in some cultures like United States we have bridal shower custom. Bridal shower is kind of party for bride's friends. In this case, the bride's friends will come and give a gift for the bride. For me privately, it is look like a farewell party for the bride and friends. As the bride will also get many advices from their friends.
The places to get married; in this case, usually people will have to different places for the ceremony. Such as church and also places for party.
Food and beverages; no food no party. I think that the best description for a party. You can see this sample in one of Mr. Bean movie, where he invited his friend for a new year party. Too bad that he didn't have any food to serve to their friend. Finally, he cut a branch for the food. It is funny in a movie, however, if it is really happen to you, you can imagine that you afraid to walk on the street you used to.
Decoration; even though the decoration is not a really a must in wedding, but without decoration, it will describe that you are not ready with the wedding as it will look like that your wedding is not be blessed by your parents, so you married hidden.
Wedding bands or rings; you will need it of course. Even though it is simple thing but it is become an important part in the wedding. Besides ring, you need to remember that you need wedding dress in your special moment.
Guests; no party without guests. Even though you only invite your families, but in the party you will need guests. So, you will need some wedding invitation here to invite them.

Preparing the Wedding planning on a budget

After we know what we need to prepare in the wedding planning on a budget, we can start to cut cost the budget to make our wedding is possible to do. We can start to cut cost in the choice of the wedding bands. If you really do not have more money, why don't you get some silver wedding bands for your wedding? Then, for the guests, you do not need to find all people in the village if you do not have more money. I think invite your family is enough. Then, for the places to get married, I don't think that you need two or more places for this. To avoid this, you can host your wedding party in your garden.

Wedding Ring Sets

Posted: 17 Jan 2014 08:33 PM PST

Preparing the wedding ring sets is wonderful time to have because you can spend time together with your love one in choosing the wedding ring sets. Definitely it is so sweet and romantic moment when we step on our feet in some door of jewelries shop with our love one. However, in your moment of choosing the wedding ring sets can be so stressful and sensible. It is because usually you will argue with your love one because both of you do not have the same ideas on choosing wedding ring sets. Then, what should we do to choose the wedding ring sets which will be the best wedding ring for you and your love one.

Wedding Ring Sets

Check these steps to help you find the best wedding ring sets:

Decide the Materials

To choose the best wedding ring sets you have to decide what kind of materials of the wedding ring sets. There are many wedding ring sets materials such as; platinum, white gold, yellow gold, palladium and silver.

From all of the materials that are mentioned above, white gold and yellow gold are becoming the famous choices for many couples. It is because the white gold and yellow gold has many wonderful design and also available in lower price.

Silver is also familiar with the wedding ring sets design. It is because it has lower price. However, silver is not always become the first choice for every couples because the silver is including the lower quality of metal which also has the lower price.

Even though silver is also look great, however, many men are shy to giving their love ones the silver wedding rings. They are afraid of opinions-opinions that will come out from their friends or even their love one opinions. Even so, there are many people use this material. But usually they are already talking about it with their love one.

Platinum and palladium are the great metal materials. However, these materials do not become the first choice for every couple. It is because the palladium and platinum are the high quality of metal materials for wedding rings.

The Design of the Wedding Ring Sets

The design of the wedding ring sets will not affect to the price of the wedding ring sets. However, the design of the wedding ring sets usually symbolized something. The symbolization of the wedding ring sets are depending on the custom and culture of the local culture, such example the Irish wedding ring. The Irish wedding ring has designs which symbolize the love, friendship and loyalty. Also the usage of the ring will symbolize whether you are single, engaged or married. Based on the fact above the design of the wedding ring sets must be considered as the factor of choosing the wedding ring sets.

Gemstones

Some wedding rings are using the gemstones for the rings, however some of them don't. If you have more budget, you can use the gemstones as the additional, however if you don't have more budgets, you should not choose the wedding rings with the gemstones. Furthermore, in the choosing of gemstones you may consider about the carat, cut, clarity and also color. Those 4Cs will affect to the pricing of the gemstones.

Where to get the Wedding Ring Sets?

There are many wedding ring sets in the jewelries shops. However, if you want to see the sample of wedding ring sets, you can visit www.zales.com. You can see many wonderful designs of the wedding ring here. If you do not interesting to shopping online, you can use the designs as your ideas of wedding rings sets, however if you change your mind about that, you can shop it here.