If you have a basement that’s damp or even is so wet it has running water entering it (I’ve seen this several times), chances are the basement wasn’t built properly in the first place. I discuss how to build it right in my article about  Building a Basement. This article is about fixing an existing condition.

Let me state here that simply “handling” the water that enters your basement. Pumping it out is not really a solution. It does not fix the actual problem. It only deals with the symptom, not the illness.

The secret to a dry basement is to make sure the water never gets in, at all.

Let’s look at ways to cure the illness and not just the relieve some of the symptoms.

Probable Causes of a Wet Basement

If you have a wet basement, I can almost guarantee you do not have proper grading (slope of the soil) around your house and you probably do not have proper waterproofing on the exterior of the basement walls, either. Chances are you do not have a functioning footing drain at the base of your foundation wall, either. These are the usual suspects.

You probably have places where water can collect around your house walls where the final grading (slope of the ground) during construction did not provide the right slope to get the water to flow away from the house. Or the soil has “subsided” and sunken due to improper soil compaction of the soil during construction. This happens a lot. The builder simply dumps loose soil back into the space next to the foundation and the loose soil compresses over time and creates a depression on the surface. Or your might have an excessive buildup of mulch or root mass from your landscaping that causes water to puddle next to the basement walls and be unable to drain away from the house. Do any of those sound familiar?

Fixing the Problems

The most important and least costly steps you can take toward fixing a wet basement are to correct the slope of the ground around your house. Before doing anything else, you need to make sure water is draining away from the basement walls. You need to clean, fix, or add gutters and downspouts to your house. If you hate gutters and downspouts, you need to install some sort of river stone or gravel trench at the drip-line of the eave to catch the roof run-off and install a perforated pipe within the stone or gravel that slopes away to an outfall. You can’t depend on the water hitting the ground and running away on its own.

It’s best to have the downspouts discharge the rainwater, either with surface or underground pipes, far from the house and not end on simple splash blocks. Or worse yet, have the downspouts discharge right on the ground, right next to your basement wall. Any water that collects near your house will seep into the soil and eventually find its way into your basement. Water always finds a way.

Digging Up Your Yard

The second and more difficult step toward fixing a wet basement is to dig up the soil around your house, re-waterproof the basement walls, add drainage stone, and install drain piping. This is the sure method for resolving your wet basement problem. But it will be very expensive and messy. All this digging will also force you to replace your landscaping.

But if your wet basement problem is severe and you truly want to do the job right, this may be your only option. If your home is recently built and your builder left you with this problem, he or she has an obligation to fix the cause of the problem. They need to make things are the way they should have been from the start.

Once the soil has been dug away and the exterior of your basement walls is exposed, the walls must be power washed to remove all of the dirt. When the walls are clean, a high-grade waterproofing system such as  Tuff-n-Dri  should be applied. The traditional, painted-on black mastic that might even be on your walls already, is not good enough. Think of it as “window dressing” to make everyone feel like they waterproofed the walls. It simply is not waterproof. In fact, this product is noted as “damp-proofing” and specifically not “waterproofing” on architectural drawings so as to avoid misrepresentation and lawsuits.

The best of these higher level waterproofing systems like Tuff-n-Dri coats the wall with up to a 40 mil. asphalt emulsion that sets up to a rubbery consistency. Over that, a semi-rigid board of pressed fiberglass is installed. This board helps insulate the wall. But its more important function is that it acts as a drain, breaking up the hydrostatic pressure pressing against the wall and allowing the water to drain down to the foundation drain system. Do not let your contractor talk you into a lesser system.

Fix a Wet Basement without Digging

If digging everything up is not a good option, there is another solution for a wet basement. You can coat the inside surface of the walls with a waterproof coating. There are paints for this, but I prefer a product called Xypex. It is a cementitious material that is troweled onto existing concrete block or reinforced concrete. It bonds to the concrete at a molecular level and forms a crystalline formation that is too dense for water molecules to pass through. In other words, it makes the wall completely waterproof. It was recently used to fix the leaks in the Neptune Pool at the Hearst Castle in California.

Unlike other waterproofing paints, Xypex can be applied to wet surfaces. The finished surface will be a light grey, stucco-like surface. The product is fairly expensive, but nowhere near the cost of digging, etc. And you can apply it yourself, if you want to save some costs.

Caulk the Gaps

This solution will stop water from migrating through the foundation wall. But it won’t address the problem of water entering through the gap between the wall and the basement floor slab. That should be caulked with a good silicone sealer. Caulk and cracks in the floor, too. These measures should fix your wet basement if it is caused by surface water seeping into the soil around the house and then into the basement. If your problem is due to a high water table, you might need some expert help. And the solution will not be cheap.

Do not kid yourself. There is no such thing as a basement that is only “a little wet” when you are planning on finishing it off and enjoying the added living space. Water in your basement will ruin your remodeling and plague you for years to come. It’s worth the effort and expense to solve the problem the right way.

Once the wetness problem is cured, you’ll still need to make sure your basement does not feel damp and smell musty. These are issues of air quality within the basement and really have nothing to do with water infiltration. I discuss this in my article about  Building a Basement.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post A Wet Basement Can Be Fixed appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Found mainly in the peninsula area of Michigan, the Petoskey Stone is not actually stone, geologically speaking, but fossilized coral.  Long ago, during the Devonian Era when glaciers were moving in the Great Lakes Region, rock beds and coral heads were chipped off and moved around. Over the centuries, and under the pressure of the ice masses, the coral heads became fossilized. Eventually, they became these beautiful coral-embedded stones. 

How To Use Petosky Stones

There are many ways this stone can be displayed and utilized in your home.  It can become a beautiful fireplace surround or unique backsplash. Accent the cabinets in your kitchen with Petoskey cabinet pulls. Countertops and floors have also been made using the Petoskey stone. 

Artisans use the Petoskey stones to create jewelry, carvings, lamps, and furniture as well.  Check with your local tile dealer, or your interior designer if you might want to include this natural beauty in Your Perfect House. There will be no end to the comments you’ll hear from your family and friends. Plus, you get to enjoy looking at it every single day.

A Pebble Can Become a Pearl

This “pebble” will become a “pearl” in your home. If you read my book, The Well-Centered Home, you will understand what I mean by that. Click on the link below to get yourself a copy.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Unique and Beautiful Petoskey Stone appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Microwave Ovens Get Placed at Awkward Heights

It is hard to find the perfect height for the microwave oven location. They are the most convenient to use when they are placed between the countertop and the upper cabinets. But that uses up precious countertop space. Sometimes people try placing the microwave in the base cabinets, below the countertop. This gets them out of the way. But when they are placed this low, it’s nearly impossible to see and use the controls without crouching down. And taking bowls and plates of hot food out of microwave ovens down this low is a recipe for getting burned or spilling the soup all over the floor.

If installing the microwave below the countertop doesn’t work, why not just put the microwave in the upper cabinets and just let it stick out? The bigger problem here is that now the bottom of the microwave is four and a half feet above the floor. That’s much too high for taking hot bowls of soup out of the microwave. It’s another accident waiting to happen. Creating a microwave oven location on a shelf lower than the upper cabinets makes the microwave easy to use. But it effectively makes the countertop below it unusable because there just is not enough space between the top of the countertop and the bottom of the microwave shelf to be useful.

A Combination Microwave and Range Hood Is Another Poor Solution

I really don’t like the combination microwave and range hood. On the face of it, this might seem like a good way to make the microwave less of a nuisance. But actually, it places the microwave even higher making it more difficult to use. With a microwave oven located this high, you won’t be able to see the food inside of it.

The Only Microwave Oven Location Options that Work

The only reasonable solutions are to either place the microwave oven right on the countertop or place it in a full-height cabinet with the wall oven, if you have one. If you put it on the countertop, you might be able create a recessed “niche” in the wall behind the microwave, giving you room to push the microwave back a few inches and get the door of the oven to align with the doors of the cabinets above it. This improves the appearance of the microwave and opens up about twelve inches of countertop space in front of the microwave that can be useful when taking food in and out of the microwave.

If you have a large enough kitchen and a wall oven, the microwave can be placed in the same tall cabinet as the wall oven. With a single wall oven, you should be able to place both the oven and the microwave at convenient heights, one above the other.

Built-in and Enclosed Microwaves

You can buy some nice looking microwaves that can be installed with a surrounding enclosure to give a built-in appearance. This will work nicely until the microwave breaks down and you need to replace it. Make sure your new microwave will fit within the enclosure you already have.

A Microwave Drawer

There is one other microwave oven location that is really quite nice. It is below the countertop but does not have the usual problems a typical microwave would have in that location. Consider a microwave “drawer.” These are specially designed microwaves that open and close like a drawer with a push of a button and a nudge of your hand. They open and close slowly and smoothly, so the food doesn’t spill off the plate or out of the bowls. And the controls are on the top edge of the drawer making them easy to see and operate. It is an elegant solution to a vexing problem.

No one has found the perfect way to handle the awkward microwave oven. Yet most of us cannot live without one. So, when planning your kitchen design, be sure to give a lot of thought to where you will place the microwave oven.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post What Is a Good Microwave Oven Location? appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

What’s the Difference Between Factory Built Housing and Modular Housing?

Modular housing usually refers to houses that are standard plans and designs that are repeated, one unit after the next. Factory built housing, on the other hand, refers to any kind of house that is assembled in components manufactured in a factory and assembled on site. There are varying degrees of factory built house construction. The most efficient and customizable is a panelizing method where the walls and roofs are manufactured in panel section and assembled on site. Modular housing typical involves entire rooms or segments of the house being assembled in the factory and then shipped to the site.

Factory built housing does not automatically consist of inferior materials. Absolutely not. The quality of the materials and components can be at whatever level you specify. Factory-built houses can match anything you could have with a site-built house. But not merely match the quality, a factory-built house can exceed site-built houses in several ways.

Factory Built Housing Has Advantages

It mystifies me why more housing is not factory built. There are such clear advantages when compared to the traditional methods of “stick building” on site in all kinds of weather conditions. Here are some advantages to factory built housing.

First, factory-built housing is assembled in a controlled environment under roof.

Rain or snow can never sit on the wood. Temperatures never vary more than a degree or two so the materials don’t expand or contract. The construction personnel can work at peak efficiency. Building inside a controlled environment makes good sense. Just think about this. Would you want to buy a new BMW and have a crew show up in your driveway with cartons of parts and start assembling your car there? My guess is the rain, snow, and mud getting inside the car would be more than a little distressing.

Second, the work can be done more efficiently.

This is because the materials in a factory are moved to the worker. When building on-site, the workers have to move every piece of building material to the location where it is to be used. Nearly every piece of the house gets moved several times. There are no “rain days” in a factory. You never losing work days to weather. Even on days when work can be done, if it is raining, or freezing cold, or swelteringly hot, no one can work at their best. Working outdoors is simply less efficient. Work in a factory is always done efficiently. Optimum temperatures, optimum lighting, and safe conditions means you have a construction schedule that is predictable and faster.

Third, the cutting and fitting of materials will be better under factory conditions.

Lasers and jigs are used to ensure accurate measurements and the “squareness” of connections. Think of the BMW assembling in your driveway again if you want a disconcerting visual of skilled metalsmiths cutting and hammering the body of the car. No matter how good they were, their precision can never match what they could achieve in a workshop. The factory is their workshop.

Fourth is safety

Construction sites are always ranked among the most dangerous workplaces. Dangerous equipment, heavy materials moving around, and workers working high above the ground combine to create serious risks. Workplace safety is always a priority, but it is simply impossible to make an outdoor building site be as safe as a factory setting.

We Need More Factory Built Housing in the United States

We are strongly considering using a factory-built panelizing system for the construction of the house I am designing in Latvia. We’re talking to Ivars Reinhards and his company, WWL Houses. Now we just need a company like his to begin factory building houses in the United States.

Follow the Latvia house progress: 

• Architecture Traveling in Latvia
• Peteris Blum and the Wooden Architecture of Latvia
• Latvian Symbols in Art and Architecture
• The Hand Crafted Heritage in Latvia

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Factory-Built Housing Can Be Better than You Think appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Author Dan Brown brought the study of symbols to the popular culture in his mega-bestseller, The daVinci Code. The intrepid “symbologist,” Professor Robert Langdon. Followed a trail of ancient symbols to undo the dirty deeds of the bad guys. These were Christian symbols. Latvia is a Christian nation, but the history of Latvia can be traced back to their Baltic origins in 4,000 to 2,000 BC. At that time, religion centered around rituals honoring Mother Earth and the mysteries of the natural world which surrounded and sustained human life.

Latvian Symbols Link the Present to the Past and to the Cultural History

Many Latvian symbols, often abstracted shapes directly representing some aspect of nature, are key elements in Latvian decoration. There are symbols for the sun, moon, heaven, waves, serpents, and more. And these symbols carry meaning. For instance, the twin-peaked Sign of Jumis represents a double-spiked stalk of grain and symbolizes fertility and prosperity. The Sign of Zalktis, a serpent, is the guardian of wealth and well-being and is prevalent on women’s clothing and jewelry.

Fortunately, even during the oppressive Soviet and Nazi occupations, this wonderful and important heritage of Latvian culture has been retained. You see many of these symbols in Latvian jewelry, clothing, and in the decorated architecture of the houses and public buildings. We’ll be using symbols that are meaningful to my clients’ family in the design of their new home.

This is the fifth entry in the Latvia project portion of the blog. Read the others by clicking on the following:

• The Traveling Architecture of Latvia
• Peteris Blum and the Wooden Architecture of Latvia
• Mezaparks in Riga, Latvia
• Modernist Houses in Historic Neighborhoods

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Latvian Symbols in Art and Architecture appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Here’s a suggestion. Use the method one of my clients used. She took the house plans I printed for her on large sheets of paper and spread them on her breakfast table like a tablecloth.

Each morning she would have her coffee and eat her breakfast with the drawings right in front of her. It “forced” her to look at every nuance. Each day she would sit in a different chair and look at the plans from a different angle. She kept a red pencil on the table to make notes when she noticed something she wanted to change or if she thought of a question she wanted to ask me.

The result was that she knew her new house plans better than any client I have ever had. She knew every note and every abbreviation on the paper. This greatly reduced the surprises as the house was being built.

It’s Like a Game

Try it yourself. You’ll find yourself getting immersed in your new house in your mind. So many things will become clear to you. And don’t worry about spilling coffee or food on the drawings. These are only copies, not the original drawings. We can always print more.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Understand Your House Plans (Karen’s Method) appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Clean the Wood First

After the siding is installed, it should be cleaned with “Problem Solver Wood Cleaner” (also made by Cabot). That will remove any bacteria or mold that may have accumulated while the cedar was stacked up in storage can be destroyed and removed. Once the wood has dried, the bleaching oil is applied. The stain within the oil tints the wood and then allows the wood to age gracefully in a uniform shade.

The entire process from application to the final driftwood grey look can take a good amount of time. But in a few months, the stain to settle into its long-term appearance. Some stains are clear, some are tinted.

Warning – the pigment in the stain can settle quickly in the paint bucket.

The stain must be continuously stirred to keep the pigment suspended in the oil to ensure the application of the coloring is fairly uniform. Anything less than continuous stirring will result in a diluted and uneven finish.

Not Your Typical Stain

Bleaching oil is a unique stain. It includes a grey pigment within the mix. The color gives the cedar a color similar to what it will ultimately become. The rest of the mix is made of chemicals that accelerate the natural weathering of the wood toward its driftwood color it would eventually become if left untreated and out in the weather and sunshine. In about six months, the initial stain fades away and the bleaching takes over.

A Beautiful Finished Appearance

In theory, once bleached, cedar shingle siding will need no future treatment. In reality, it will need some occasional touching up, particularly on the north side of the house where mildew is prone to grow. Bleaching oils used to contain chemicals to prevent mildew growth, but those chemicals were hazardous and environmental problems, so they were banned. The newer stains and bleaching oils are not as effective at stopping mildew. Nevertheless, bleaching oil on cedar shingles is the authentic way to get the look of the Shingle Style houses of the New England coastline and the Hamptons mansions. 

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

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Ogee – Ogee, pronounced like saying the letters O.G., refers to a shape seen often in architecture, woodworking, and even aluminum gutters, of all places. An ogee shape is a curved shape that resembles an “s” shape (on its side) as shown below. It has two opposing curves that make up its length.

The shape you see on traditional mouldings (crown moulding or otherwise) and baseboard caps is often an ogee. Also, some gothic and Middle Eastern archways utilize the ogee form – curving up one side and mirrored down the other makes an archway. Even though the word is uncommon, the shape is fairly common in architecture. It is so common, it is even the shape of standard rain gutters.

Go ahead and impress your friends. Identify a shape as an ogee, instead of calling it curved or “s” shape. Or better yet, use the word in a game of Scrabble. I would bet your opponent will challenge you on it.

Two Versions of Ogee Shapes

There are two basic ogee curves. The more common is a version with the lower portion bulging out and the upper portion curving in. The accurate name for this is a Cyma Recta. This is very prevalent in American Colonial architecture. The second and less common version is the Cyma Reversa where the lower portion of the curve goes in and the upper portion bulges outward.

By the way, if you want to be architecturally accurate you will spell “moulding” this way with a “u” and not this way – molding.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Our Word of the Week – Ogee appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

The fact there are millions of colors in the world with very subtle differences in hues actually makes the task of selecting among them harder. With so many paint color choices, but with a hundred times more color possibilities, it often feels like the perfect color lies somewhere between one color sample and the next. For greys and beiges, this is particularly true. And just yesterday, a client of mine said she had gotten large paint samples of all 26 tones of white a particular paint company offers. How hard is her decision going to be?

Here are Some Tips to Help with Choosing Paint Colors

1. Find Something to Match

Sometimes it is easier to pick a paint color when you are not standing in front of many, many color choices. So instead of starting your search while standing in front of the rack of a zillion colors, start by finding an object, such as a throw pillow, a dress, some curtains, or similar that has the color you love. Take that object to the home improvement store and find the color that matches. Automatically, this will narrow your choices and make the selection easier.

2. Follow Your First Reaction

Take note of which paint colors are your “first blush” choices. Often, the colors that catch your eye initially will end up being your best and final choice. Spending too long pondering your decision can lead to you questioning your own judgment.

3. Try It Out at Home

Don’t make your final decision in the store. Take a strip of color samples (or several strips) that might be candidates home to evaluate there. This way you will see the colors in the context of your home and under the lighting conditions in your home.

4. Look at the Deeper Version of the Color

If you are choosing light colors, especially off-whites, look at the deeper colors, the paint colors with more color saturation, on the color strip that belong with the off-white color. This will show you the underlying tint of the off-white. Who hasn’t chosen a white paint color only to see it turn pink, or yellow, or greenish when the whole wall or room is painted with it. This is because the reflected light from one wall to the next will intensify the underlying tint or hue. By looking at the deeper versions of the off- white, you can more easily see the faint tones that are in it.

5. Eliminate the White Border

Cut the paint sample strip or fold it so that you can see only the paint color itself and none of the white backer card. Because our eyes gauge contrast, the bright white of the backer card will distort your perception of the actual paint color. You’ll get a better read on the true color without the influence of the white card.

6. Do a Small “Brush Out”

Finally, buy a small can of the paint color you choose, or a small can of a couple of possible colors. Then paint out a sample area (a brush out) of about two or three feet square on the wall at home. This small cost of the can of paint will be a worthwhile investment to get the color right before you spend a good deal of money on all the paint for the entire project, not to mention the time wasted if you have to repaint the room to correct a mistake.

Ultimately, It Might Be Worth the Cost of a Few Hours of Consultation with a Good Interior Designer.

One advantage an interior designer can have is they have used many of these colors on many projects. They have learned which colors they can “trust.” An experienced interior designer will have a dependable palette of colors they have used many times that won’t take on the wrong hue once the paint is on the wall and they will get the expected results. They will also know which colors can turn funky when painted in large areas.

Doing these things I suggest might take a bit more time than simply picking a paint color while standing in the store. But it will be worth it when the colors work out just as you had envisioned.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Choosing Paint Colors Is Challenging appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Often, folks decide to not get a permit for home improvements because they worry this will alert the authorities to the fact that their house will be worth more due to the improvement, especially if the finished living space is being enlarged. They are afraid their appraised value will go up and the tax office will raise their property taxes. That is probably true.

But is it Worth the Risk?

What’s the risk of not getting a building permit? You might think I mean the risk of getting caught. No. That’s a risk, but it is not the BIG risk. What you should really worry about is the risk that your home improvement project might cause damage to your house, primarily in the form of flood or fire. If your uninspected wiring job happened to cause a fire and burn your house to the ground, your insurance company would have a perfectly valid reason to deny you compensation.

Would you like to pay for rebuilding your home after a fire? of course not. Getting permits and the proper inspections will keep your homeowner’s insurance intact. Your insurance, or your contractor’s insurance, would cover the cost.

A Bigger Risk without a Building Permit

I would guess this isn’t on your radar, but someone could get injured or killed if there is a construction accident. Building permits, and the associated inspections, give you an assurance that everything has been done correctly and safely.

Personally, I don’t think skipping the Building Permit is worth the risk. And professionally, I say you should always get a permit for any work that requires a permit. Avoiding it is just plain dumb.

So please get the proper permits and have the work properly inspected. If you are hiring a contractor to do the work and he tells you he won’t get a permit, take that as a warning that he is probably not licensed. Get rid of him and find a licensed contractor.

Get a building permit for your project. Don’t turn your “How to Remodel Your Bathroom” project into a “How to Burn Down Your House” project. Getting the proper inspections will make your house, and you, safer.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

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