Is the exterior of your home needing a refresh? Looking for some ideas for a little curb appeal? While there are many ways to boost the curb appeal of your home, for the most dramatic transformation, painting the exterior of a house is hands down the best way! See how paint and some elbow grease can boost your curb appeal, personally I fully suggest working on your landscape or garden first, try out playground turf, it’s almost a free maintenance improvement.
However, if you want to have a relaxing place in your home, you might need to have a veranda in your backyard. Veranda decking is a more eco-friendly option than traditional wood decking. It’s a nice feeling to spend an afternoon sitting on the veranda and reading books while sipping coffee.
Last summer we decided to take on the big job of painting the exterior of our house …. ourselves! It was LONG overdue and we had been putting it off for a couple years. We decided to jump right in and get to work!
We were able to save thousands of dollars by painting the exterior ourselves and I’m so glad we did. Yes, it was a lot of work, but it was so worth it! We’ve never been afraid of a little bit (…ok A LOTTA BIT) of hard work.
We love the way it transformed our home, but we aren’t the only ones who love it. Our neighbors are constantly telling us just how amazing our home looks now.
Before Painting the Exterior of our Home
But, Steve was dead set against doing anything to the brick. I even toyed with the idea of removing the brick and adding rock. I’m ambitious, but not that ambitious.
So, in order to update the exterior of our home I would use paint. Paint is the most economical way to update your home. While this project was a lot of work, it was so worth it to me!
Should I paint the exterior of my house myself?
Let’s be real here, depending on the size and height of your house and the condition of the existing siding, preparing and painting a house on your own can be a tedious, difficult job. So I suggest that you hire a professional painting company.
Don’t paint your house yourself unless you have the time, tools, skills and stamina to do the work. I also recommend hiring London Pest Control services if you encounter bugs in your home on a daily basis.
I had most of the tools, I’m not afraid of a little hard work and I wanted it done!
Our home is a single story. If it was a two-story, I would have hired it out. I’m afraid of heights, so the really high parts on the front of the house Steve had to do.
26
Photoshop it!
Photoshop it!
Not always as easy as you think.
The term ‘Photoshop it’ is used very freely these days, sometimes getting bad press, notoriously, the over airbrushed images of fashion models and celebs, making them appear super slim and blemish free. None the less, it is a brilliant application enabling us to make the impossible possible (most of the time!). We often get asked ‘Can’t you just Photoshop it?’ Our designers use Photoshop on a daily basis and can create all sorts of amazing affects from removing unwanted background objects to complete image manipulation. With technology and programmes becoming more accessible to edit your photos easily we find more and more people doing their own photo editing, which often makes life easier… other times not so easy. Here’s a few amusing images that we’ve come across in magazines, on the web and in the papers illustrating how not to ‘Photoshop it’.
Car with Moving Wheels
Shadows that don't match
- Where has the wheel gone
Beemers & Braces #1 – Justification
Here we unravel a bit of design talk (technical jargon) and reveal a few interesting design(ish) facts!
Did you know?…
JPEG, an image file type which you
take with your digital camera or phone camera stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.
HTML is the basic building-blocks of
a web page and stands for Hypertext
Markup Language.
PDF which you use for viewing
documents electronically, stands for Portable Document Format.
24
Taking a better photo
OK, so I’m no Derren Brown… but I bet I can guess how tall you are, even though we’ve never met, just by looking at photo’s you’ve taken.
There are so many ways to take better photos, but you can start without even getting into what your camera settings are.
Most people take their photos at one height, theirs. If you’re 5’ 10” all your images are taken from that height. Want better photos? Vary the height, vary the angle.
In the example shot I went for a really low viewpoint to emphasise the dramatic sky in the shot, which looks great, but I’m sure I’m still finding sand in unmentionable places!
Kneel down, stand on something (solid!), lay down, crouch – anything to change that view. Really think about where you take the photo from – and don’t be afraid to experiment. The days of 24 pics or 36 are long gone (yes I’m showing my age – I used to shoot film) so there is no excuse for not being a bit more adventurous – after all you can just delete any that don’t work…
With photographer Niel Stewert.
And remember – have fun!
Categories
Recent Posts
- Superb interior design and photography take centre-stage
- A technical website delivered with simplicity
- **SPOTTED** 315 feature in the latest edition in Yorkshire Life
- Reasons Your Corporate Event Entertainment Is Important for Success
- A website with functionality
Archives
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- September 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- June 2014
- May 2014
- July 2013
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- April 2011
- October 2010
- January 2010
- September 2009