How Wide Should I Make My Carport? Planning Your Next Project

Whether you live in a home with or without a garage, you might be thinking about building a new carport. You've came to the right place and by the time you're done reading this article, you should have acquired a little more valuable information for your next home remodeling project.

Some homeowners install carports in front of their garage, on the side of their homes or even in their driveway. Car ports can be built anywhere on your property, as long as you have enough room and access to these areas for a car to be parked safely.

The most important thing to remember, when building a carports, is the width that will be required to park your vehicle underneath it. You will need to allow plenty of room, so that you will be able to access your vehicle comfortably.

There are plenty of carports, all over the country that are built right next to something, like a retaining wall, the side of your home or even another garage. I myself have parked in carports that were too small and over a period of time became an annoying inconvenience.

The minimum width that I would build any carport would be 10 foot wide, if you're going to build your carport next to a building, I would suggest that you park your car, open your door and measure the width of your car, with your door open.

This will give you a comfortable width for building your new carport. This is the best advice I could give anyone, who is planning on building a carport.

Garage Building Tips

If you're thinking about building a garage and San Diego County, we would be glad to help, for more information click on this link San Diego Garage Building

Greg Vandenberge is working on the internet to promote the education for creating simple to follow guides and home building books to help professional building contractors as well as the weekend warriors. He has just finished a Home Buyers Guide to take some of the frustration out of home shopping.

Thanks for reading my articles.

Small Bathroom Design Ideas - Vanities, Mirrors, and Lighting

When you are working with a small bathroom, try focusing on design ideas that either create more space or create the illusion of more space. The most popular ways to do this is with vanities, mirrors, and lighting. By using proper sizes and spacing techniques, you can have a small bathroom that is just as functional as a larger one.

Vanities: One of the best ways to use a vanity to maximize space in a small bathroom is to install a wall-mounted vanity. Choose a vanity with a lot of storage space underneath and that includes drawers. This will allow you to remove towel racks from the walls and either install them on the inside of the vanity doors or simply store the towels in a drawer. Another popular option for creating more floor space is to select a vanity that fits in the corner. That way it utilizes what would otherwise end up as wasted space.

If you prefer a floor standing vanity, choose a small vanity or even a small pedestal sink. To recreate the storage space lost by doing this, install recessed shelving. These options will create the storage space you need while creating the clean look of more floor space.

Mirrors: Although you cannot use mirrors to truly create more space, you can use them to create the illusion of more space. Correctly using mirrors can add length, depth and width to your small bathroom. There are several ways to do this. Use the largest mirror possible over your vanity to reflect as much of the room as possible. This will create the illusion of more depth in the room. If you have enough space to do so, you can put two smaller mirrors on opposite walls, with the mirrors facing each other. This creates the illusion that the room does not end. If your room has a shower, you could even replace the shower door with a mirrored door.

Lighting: Proper lighting can be accomplished with windows, light fixtures, or both. Be sure that, whatever lighting options you choose, all corners of the bathroom are well lit. Having dark corners causes the bathroom to appear smaller.

When you are deciding how to adorn the windows in your small bathroom, consider using sheer or lace curtains. This allows more light in, making the room seem larger. If privacy is a concern, then try replacing the glass in your bathroom windows with frosted, etched, or stained panels.

You can also use several techniques with light fixtures. Try installing a strip of lights above the main mirror; this will proved fantastic light and create the illusion of more space. Recessed can lighting is also good. By sinking the lighting into the walls and ceiling you will maximize your wall space for that less is more look. You do not have to feel cramped in your small bathroom anymore. Following the tips above can help you create a bathroom that feels and looks larger than it really is. Add space and give it your personal touch.

Julia Ritzenthaler is Owner of boutique multiple online furniture stores, For more information about unique bathroom vanity ideas, visit us online or email us with your questions at uniquevanities@msn.com.

Plumbing Problems and Solutions - Repair Manuals

If you've owned a home for over 20 years, there's a very good chance, that you've had a water pipe break, a drainpipe clogged, a toilet that wouldn't flush right, or a water leak that damaged part of the home. If you don't know, what you're looking for and you have no idea what damage can be done, over time, this could mean trouble for the homeowner.

Plumbing problems like these have been around and will be around for many years. Knowing what to do about them, how to repair them and what materials will be needed, can be found in plumbing repair manuals for books. How would you like to have a professional plumber to advise you on your plumbing repairs. What if I told you that you could have a plumbing professional on hand at all times. Is this something that you might be interested in.

Well I can't guarantee that, so let's forget about what I just said and go to the next best thing. Plumbing repair manuals are full of tips and advice that when needed can sometimes be priceless. If water is leaking from the ceiling in your home and you have no idea, where the water is coming from or how to stop it from leaking, any information could be priceless and I mean priceless.

Plumbers, usually charge over $100 an hour for emergency service. I've seen plumbers come to peoples homes, turn the water off to the house, stop the water from leaking and now it is no longer an emergency. The plumber quickly pulls out an invoice for the plumbing repairs and it could be over $1000, if you decide that this is ridiculous and choose not to pay it, the plumber can hand you a bill for stopping the water leak. Some of these bills are what I would consider quite ridiculous, for just shutting the water off.

You're not paying the plumber for the amount of time it took him, you're paying him for his knowledge. If you knew where to shut the water off, you wouldn't have an emergency situation and could contact a plumber during normal hours. This could save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

With a simple home repair manual or a home plumbing book, you could prepare yourself for a situation like this and other plumbing problems. Most home repair manuals have general solutions and advice and can solve most of the problems around your home. If they can't solve all of the problems, they can probably save you from major catastrophes like a water leak.

Most of the time it's not the water leak that will cost the most money, it's the damage the water will do to your furniture, carpeting, wood flooring, walls or ceilings. A little information and preparation can save you a lot of money in the long run.

Home Plumbing Books

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Greg Vandenberge is working on the internet to promote the education for creating simple to follow guides and home building books to help professional building contractors as well as the weekend warriors. He has just finished a home buyers guide to take some of the frustration out of home shopping.

3 Things You Need to Know About Shower Head Water Filters

When I told a friend the other day that I had bought three shower head water filters for my house, she thought I was going a little overboard. Filtering your drinking and cooking water she could understand, but filtering bath and shower water? Honestly, she told me I had turned into a nut case.

Once I told her what I'm about to tell you, however, she saw why I was so insistent that shower filters are no longer a luxury, but a necessity for anyone interested in their health. And also she saw why I was so interested in finding the best shower filters to use in my home.

Basically there are three things you need to understand about shower filters.

1. Your skin is an organ, just as your stomach or intestines are.
2. There are a staggering number of pollutants in our water.
3. Filtered shower water makes you feel like a million bucks!

Let's take these three truths and talk about them point by point.

Your Skin

I had never thought about it until I started researching water filters and shower water filters specifically, but your skin is just as much a living, breathing organ as your lungs are.

This is going to sound a little naive (especially for a college educated guy), but I thought of skin as more of a covering. Kind of like a really well fitting body suit. But there's much more to your skin than just keeping dirt out of your body.

For one thing, you release as many toxins through your sweat as you do urinating. That's one of the reasons it feels so good to exercise or work in the yard and get a good sweat going.

Conversely, you intake toxins into your body through your skin just as easily as you can through your mouth.

So, all of those pollutants, carcinogens, and toxins that are making their way into our municipal water systems easily get into your body through your pores, which open when you bathe in warm water.

Water Quality

Speaking of pollutants!

Just to make sure you're on board with this whole water filtering thing, anyway, let's make sure you understand the sorry state of your municipal water system.

Let me just cite one study done recently which took at look at trace pollutants in the water systems of 29 major American cities. 29 out of 29 (that is, 100%) of these cities had at least one pesticide in their water. Several had two or more pesticides present, and one major American city even had three!

Of course, that's not the whole story. The way we purify our municipal water in this country is at least fifty to one hundred years old, yet most of the pollutants we're trying to get rid of were invented in the past thirty years.

Even our method of purification--the use of chlorine--is highly suspect, and some scientists even think that it's this very chlorine that has given rise to the dramatic cancer rates we now have.

There's Nothing Like It!

I hope you're convinced of the need for shower head water filters on all your home showers.

So, now comes the best part. Showering in filtered water is like no other experience you can imagine. (Well, it might be, but I'm not allowed to write about that here!)

To learn more about shower head water filters visit my website!

R. Lee Cole is an avid health and exercise enthusiast who loves to make his research available to everyone via the Internet. Check out Lee's website for more information about this important topic.

Take Pictures of Your Growing Foundation Damage Or Cracks

I champion people and try to get them to look at their house, at least once a year. One of the easiest ways to inspect your home is to use a home inspection checklist and if you really want a good home inspection checklist, there's a good chance that you are going to need to purchase one. You get what you pay for and don't ever forget that.

Foundation repairs usually start with a small crack and that's no joke. If you notice a crack, take a picture of it and save it somewhere. If you think, that the crack is actually getting a little bigger or starting to separate, you can simply take another picture and compare the two photos.

I would like to give you an example of what I'm talking about. Sometimes we look at something and we think that it's getting larger, but we don't have anything to compare it to. As time goes on, we think that the crack is still getting larger, but our mind is creating an optical illusion. This happens to a lot of people.

If you had a picture, from a few years ago, you could refresh your memory and this could be very helpful in reducing your anxiety or jumping to conclusions about foundation damage. Trust me, sometimes, I'm like a medical emergency crew, going to visit a homeowner to relieve their foundations stress. People panic over foundation cracks and I'm the doctor they call for any one of their home emergencies.

I would also advise you to take pictures of the rest of your home. How hard would it be to take about 300 pictures of your home each year and store them on your computer or on a disk, for easy access later? A picture is worth a thousand words and don't ever forget that.

Click Here for Some More Great Foundation Repair Solutions.

Greg Vandenberge is working on the internet to promote the education for creating simple to follow guides and home building books to help professional building contractors as well as the weekend warriors. He has just finished a Home Buyers Guide to take some of the frustration out of home shopping.

If you're really interested in basement remodeling and repairs, you should click on this link Home Repair Problems. Get some great home repair advice that can make a big difference on any of your home remodeling projects.

Ideas For Bathroom Vanity Furniture

The bathroom is an often overlooked room in terms of interior design, yet can be one of the most beautiful rooms in the house if treated and furnished correctly. The range of bathroom vanity furniture that is available these days allows some truly excellent design ideas to be incorporated into the room and not only is this to be enjoyed, but it can be a fantastic selling point should you wish to sell.

Of particular interest has been the rise in availability of stylish and innovative basins. These are available in a wide range of different materials, shapes, styles and colours, so if you want a traditional bathroom or a more modern look both can be accommodated.

Very popular at the moment are glass basins, these being made from reinforced and toughened glass that is shatterproof and hardy. They can be fitted to the wall, or onto the top of a stylish and impressive cabinet, and many are designed to give a stand alone look by appearing to simply be placed below the faucet or tap. This is a truly excellent way of making a bathroom look modern and contemporary, yet still remaining usable and practical.

If glass is not your thing these stylish sink basins can also be found in ceramics, painted or moulded to different colours and hues that add to the look of a contemporary bathroom design. The problems of the coloured bathroom suite - a long discarded idea that rendered many a bathroom ugly - are long gone as these colours are stunning, leading to tiled bathrooms that are colour coded to look stylish and chic.

For a more traditional look the old fashioned style of 'butlers sink' is proving very popular. These are large ceramic white rectangular basins that tend to mounted on a traditional style wash stand, yet are made to the exacting modern standards expected of today's bathroom furniture and are very beautiful indeed.

Adding a butlers sink to the bathroom created presence like no other, and is a very substantial and usable item that is both present day and traditional at the same time.

Further modern items include a wide range of wall mounted ceramic sinks, these designed to be either very modern in style - shallow dished sinks that appear to float from the wall - or very traditional, with the well known rectangular shape among the most popular on offer. White ceramic sinks are the most popular sellers, as they can be incorporated into any design.

Wash stands are a necessity too, with the old fashioned pedestal making way for more intricate supporting devices. The best looking of these are made to traditional styles from a variety of woods, and add grace and class to any bathroom design.

Faucets have taken on a design life of their own - the traditional mixer or split hot and cold taps, plus modern contraptions that supply water as a waterfall, a very effective and beautiful look - and are available to complement any style of sink basin that may fit your needs. Bathroom vanity furniture no longer needs to be a secondary consideration.

To learn more about choosing bathroom vanities, visit http://www.bathroomvanities101.com

Home Purchasing Checklists Provide Protection

Home purchasing checklists provide protection for consumers with useful information for future home repairs or current home repairs that will need to be done before the home is sold. Home inspectors often use checklists like these, while they're inspecting the home.

If more home shoppers used home inspection checklist while shopping for houses, we would probably have more satisfied homebuyers than dissatisfied ones. Recently just purchasing a home, we had our real estate professional, the previous homeowner's real estate professional and a mortgage lender, involved in the purchase of the property.

There was a home inspection report from the current homeowners, available for us to look at. It provided us with the damaged parts of the home that were repaired or replaced. Some of these repairs were from termite damage and it was stated so on the report. This was helpful information for us as we walked around the home inspecting it for damage.

The work that was repaired to look satisfactory and the rest of the home had minor damage. Listening to one of the real estate sales people that were involved in the transaction, you would've thought we would get in the deal of a lifetime and they had nothing but good news to say about the product they were representing. I easily understood that, this person could have influenced some one into believing that the home was in great shape, if they didn't have a home inspection checklist with them.

The home had been re-carpeted, painted and was in generally good shape. The problems with the home, were the old windows that were hard to open, the heating unit leaked gas, the tile flooring that ran through the kitchen and a large room addition looked great, except for one thing, they installed the tile over linoleum.

This eventually will have to be replaced as the tile starts to separate from the linoleum. While I'm writing this article, there's about 40 square feet of tile that needs to be replaced, because it's popping up and cracking.

A home purchasing checklist does not guarantee that you will find everything but can't eliminate some of the things that homeowners have the biggest problems with. If you could just eliminate one of these problems, the small price of purchasing, one of these checklists would be worth it.

Home purchasing checklists provide protection for the shopper and I would recommend, never shopping for a home without one.

If your looking for some more home inspection or home building ideas.

By Greg Vandenberge