vPre-Installed Dog Doors

Pre-installed dog doors are specially designed doors for pets to use. It can be removed by the owner as and when he desires. It is a self framing and energy conserving door offering easy entry and exit for dogs. Most have maintenance-free rigid metal frames with durable weather proof seals. Some doghouses also come with a pre-installed dog door.

Excellent quality and extreme functional plastic molded parts design are the major features of this door. It is very easy to dismantle and relocate. With a pre-installed dog door, you can decide when you want to let your dog out and when you want it in. Some pre-installed dog doors are electronic and are operated by a sensor or computer chip in the dog's collar. Most models come with a template and an instruction manual.

Usually, pre-installed dog doors are made from strong aluminum or high-impact thermo plastic or vinyl. These removable doors help to keep heat inside in winter months. It can be removed in the summer months to enhance interior ventilation. For extra security, it has heavy gauge steel interior lockable panels. Types of pre-installed dog doors include classic, automatic, electronic, and magnetic. Some of them have mesh screens and others have shatter-resistant tempered glass. Pre-installed dog doors can be placed in walls, windows, wooden doors, screen doors, French doors, and alongside sliding glass doors.

Pre-installed dog doors come in small, medium, large, and extra large sizes. Choosing the correct size will ensure the comfort of your dog. It is available in heavy-duty frame construction with dead-bolt lock and tempered glass. It also comes in a variety of colors including white, almond, and bronze. A range of wood choices are available including Masonite, pine, and cedar. Top quality pre-installed dog doors are available in a number of standard and custom dimensions.

Feung Shui - From Pig's Lips to Your Front Door

You have heard the expression, "that's scaffolding manufacturer like putting lipstick on a pig" in reference to wasting time beautifying a hopeless swine. Let's reserve judgment for a second though. If you did see lipstick on a pig (we are not talking your ex-wife or IRS agent here), would you notice her/him, more?

Probably. Why? Because a bright vermilion snout beacons us to lean forward, to take a second look, maybe even to laugh or shake our head in true wonderment: we have seen it all. It could be the last fleeting image traipsing across our consciousness as we take the plunge heavenward, who knows for sure?

What's this have to do with Feng Shui and your front door? Let's see.

By now many of you know that your front door in Feng Shui parlance is the 'mouth of Chi" or how imperceptible units of intelligent, life-affirming, spiritual mini mecca's (or teensy temples - yada yada) travel into your home. It can be considered the breath of God, the Life Force, good vibes, Holy Spirit... Encouraging Chi to your front door is a really wise choice.

Chi is a good thing and the more there is the more you want to enliven your home beneficially and blissfully. And yes, you can hang crystals, plants, flutes and all that good stuff to enhance it mystically. And do you really know what you are doing to your own state of consciousness when you employ a Feng Shui blessing or cure? Well, do ya?

Take This!

Try this exercise. Take a walk tonight around your block or housing complex, under your homeless bridge (God bless); home sweet home. How does it measure up? Does your heart open at first glance; is it easy to see your entry path and front door? Do you feel elevated or depressed? If you were to put some lipstick on that pouty pig of yours, metaphorically speaking of your front door Feng Shui challenges, with a wink and a nod that your home is naturally a palace, what would you do?

Take another step and see your front door as a dream symbol. What does it reveal about you? What are you telling yourself and broadcasting to every neighbor who peers? Are you acknowledged or avoided? Is there a sense of prominence or stability? Do you trip on your way out or in? Is there a tree blocking the door and potential opportunities? Does your garbage smell from the sidewalk or front door?

Wait a second you say, I had to move to this place and my real home should have a marbled terrace and sunlit lap pool. Perhaps and at some level you chose your dwelling, abode, residence, shack, palace, shopping cart, manor - for both challenges and gifts to grow, work out karma, give and accept love, develop resourcefulness, create beauty, establish better emotional and physical boundaries. Your home is truly a "Continuing ED" for Soul everyday.

Following Sherlock on the Feng Shui Trail and Honoring My Lineage

Your consciousness is the sum of your beliefs and your home telegraphs them, for better or worse, to everyone who drives by or drops in. And the more occupants there are living in a space, the more complex the karmic patterns and deciphering the Feng Shui house code. Like Sherlock, a good consultant follows the Chi hither and yon, and respectfully walks into the living consciousness of the home and therefore each dweller's state of consciousness, a couples' consciousness or the family's consciousness and sometimes, an uninvited guest's consciousness. All co-mingling big and little chi's vibrating with what each person thinks, loves, hates, believes and desires.

My Feng Shui mentor and dear friend of 15 years, Louis Audet, who after reading this article may want to disavow any knowledge of me and I so understand, taught me to mystically 'unlock the house code' and thereby perceive the occupant's lives succinctly. Louis is a middle-aged white guy who is extensively Chinese and Kahuna trained; a self-effacing gentleman who works with oodles of Hollywood stars but never showboats.

Louis is the real deal who can take a smell out of a dwelling six feet under concrete or shift the energy in a room from dread to Mardi Gras in three seconds. The changes in the occupant's lives are always advanced - their home's Chi is enhanced and they change until the next growth opportunity arrives...

When Louis first Feng Shuied our home in Santa Fe, I couldn't understand why I was so lonely and almost haunted. Sure my husband traveled a lot but we had friends there and we loved the beauty. Aside from the fact that we later discovered we were living in a remodeled mortuary (more on that later in the series), there was not one wall without a picture or painting of a lone woman in some chrysalis of grief or wistfulness. Actually my mother downloaded them to me before she moved to Minnesota to capture the adventures of a new life. Who needed an art nunnery? As Louis helped me take them off the walls, I felt freer and happier except for a few ghosts...

Consciousness and Change: Oh, Flux It

Let me say it yet again: your entire home is an extension of your own consciousness. Your home reveals your thoughts, dreams, karma and opportunities like a holographic map of you. Each thing has a unique connection to everything else in the home to create a complex mold or matrix. You add something and it becomes part of the matrix, you throw something out and the matrix re-adjusts just like refining advancing and limiting beliefs in your own head. Whoa baby, your home is a living Rorschach that appears to be many things but is ultimately that thing that screams, "ME!" or "YOU!" and we can all see it (you) as plain as day.

Take intentional action such as hanging a crystal in the wealth area and we begin to adjust our thinking to include the possibility our wealth can be enhanced and we begin to resonate with the activated wealth area in our home, within ourselves and then to wealth itself because every belief we have is connected - they are all connected.

When we can no longer abide by our abode, we move. As long as you have a tacit agreement with your home and the things in it, you will stay there. And it can keep you hostage for eons until you choose to change your consciousness or you change the landscape of your home's consciousness and intentionally create something else.
Nothing like a Tartied Pig on a Porch signals Happy to See You!

Your front door telegraphs a lot about you. If you were the breath of God, would you meander right past your place to that sun-dappled, colorful front door across the street or make a honey bee-line for your door? Yes, Chi meanders - it wafts on currents of attraction either toward or away from your front door. If you had a lipsticked pig at your front door your life might not be filled with riches but you would get attention - maybe an eviction notice and I am not suggesting you get one. We are in metaphor land, folks.
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Little can say more about you from the outside than a front entry both wispy and hidden from view or ablaze in full glory. If you want fame, have a sense of it at your door (vermillion paint is not just for pigs, or brass knockers anyone? bright lights illuminating your path like the Red Carpet at Oscar time?). You want more energy, financial and otherwise? Plants and fountains enhance growth energy and absorb negative chi - a twofer!

Here's a simple tip from the spirit of your lipsticked pig: clear the debris, pull all the weeds, add color and beauty, soften sharp edges along the pathway to the door and feature your doorway as the important threshold it is: the main artery to your home's heart and head so whatever you most want in life, give it to your front entrance first and it will wind its way to you. Oink Oink!!

Interior Decorating Idea - How to Decorate a Small Bathroom

In view of the fact that the bathroom is one of the most personal and functional rooms of the house, innovative home decorating ideas are essential to making the most of this space. I am going to explore designs and concepts that will allow you to establish the type of bathroom that works for you and your household.

Early in the 1900's, the bathroom was viewed as a functional room only. They were typically very little rooms without a lot of attention given to style or décor. Basically, bathrooms in this era had three indispensable components--the basin or sink, bathtub, and the commode that were purely functional and using as little space as possible. However, trends did start to evolve in the 1920's and '30's resulting in more attractive, stylish decors.

The secret to decorating small rooms is, most assuredly, planning. This ensures results that are not only tasteful but practical as well. Choices available are:

Pedestal sinks gives lots of room and diminishes the feeling of being cramped

Glass shower doors - provides openness to the room

Compact corner sink/cabinet - attractive and functional

Drawers - provides storage and tidiness

Mirrors - a well placed mirror will add length or width

Built-in shelving - provides organization

Skylights - provides an open feeling

Decorative basin - attractive and space efficient

When you decorate a small bathroom which is in the master suite, it is necessary to remain consistent in both rooms. More times than not the door is left standing ajar and just closing the door will not solve the problem if the two rooms don't complement each other in style and décor. The simplest means to connect the areas together is with color. Variations of the same color should be used in both rooms for your home decorating ideas to be successful.

Interior Painting

If you have finally gotten around to taking on the task of interior painting that you've been putting off for months (or years), here are some quick tips to help you get it done a little quicker and easier. This post will cover walls and previously stained areas such as baseboards or casings.

If you are going to paint that ugly brown stained trim, I suggest you start with that before you paint the walls. The reason for this, is that you won’t have to plastic molded parts worry about getting any paint onto the walls because you are going to painted over it. Now, first of all, don’t bother with trying to strip, sand, or bleach out any trim that has been previously stained. This would take way too much time, it is way too much work, and stain penetrates wood to such a point sometimes that it is almost impossible to get off unless you sand the heck out of it and deface the wood essentially damaging it. So once something has been stained, either you are going to paint over it, or you are going to have to replace it all. There is no reason why you cannot paint over something that has been previously stained providing that you take the necessary steps to do it correctly. If you just paint over stain, the stain will eventually soak through turning your paint job brown, and also the paint will peel very easily.

So, how do we go about painting over previously stained wood? First of all, using about a 200 grit sandpaper, sand off all the “shine”, or gloss that is on the wood. In some cases, there might not be an gloss, but usually there is. You don’t have to sand the heck out of it, you can even do it by hand. Just lightly sand until the gloss is dulled. It is an easy task. Once finished, get a wet sponge and wipe the dust off the trim.

Next, and this is the absolute most important step: prime the wood. I wouldn’t use any other primer than Bulls Eye water-based Interior Primer. This stuff is awesome. You can brush it on, it covers very well, and it dries super quickly. You will notice that once it dries, it isn’t very easy to scratch any of it off of the surface with your fingernail. This primer grips the wood surface far superior than anything I have ever used and provides an excellent sealer so the top coat of paint that you are going to use won’t have stain soak through it. It also provides a good surface for the paint to adhere to as well. Once everything is primed and has completely cured for at least several hours, or even a full day, lightly sand the surface with a very high grit sandpaper. This will smooth out the brush marks so they won’t show through the top coat.

You’ll still be able to see the brush strokes after you are done sanding, but they will be smoothed out so that they will hide well underneath the top coat of paint. The next thing you want to do is mask off any carpeting or flooring that is beneath the baseboards if you are going to be painting those. The best way to do this is to buy some paper at Home Depot and tape the paper onto the floor and tuck it into the carpet edge with a butter or puddy knife as best as you can. This should be sufficient enough to paint baseboards and avoid getting paint onto the carpet. Or, you can tape the paper to the carpet edge and tuck the tape into the carpet edge as best as possible. Although, I have never painted anything in my life where I haven’t gotten paint on something. But it can be cleaned if you get to it quickly enough.

Now, for the top coat. I recommend using a satin oil-based paint for the top coat. If you use a fine brush and go slow, you can achieve a good satin finish. Once the first coat is finished, you will need to lightly sand the top coat to reduce brushmarks, and then apply a second coat. Repeat again with a third coat if necessary. The reason for this is that it is hard to achieve a good satin smooth paint finish with no brush marks. But taking your time. Sanding and then re-coating can give good results provided that you use an oil based paint. Now, to make this process fly, and to achieve almost professional looking results, if you don’t mind spending $79, I suggest you get yourself a Wagner HVLP Control Sprayer. These babies are awesome. They will spray a nice looking coat very quickly with near professional results. And you shouldn’t have to spray any more than 2 coats. You can also spray the primer on with this as well to make it all go very quick. And if you use a sprayer, for trim, you can go with a high gloss latex paint if you desire. It still ends up looking pretty good, almost as good as the oil-based paint.

Next, you are ready to roll the walls. Want to make this go a little quicker? Instead of edging the area near the ceiling and trim, go ahead and roll the walls first with a paint roller. Get as close to the trim and ceiling as you can with the roller without getting paint on them. Now, the work has been cut out for you. Because once you are done rolling, you can see how much edge work you need to do. Assuming the trim work has been completed, use a low stick masking tape to tape over the trim so that you do not get wall paint on the trim. Next, get a high quality sharp edged brush, and paint the edges near the ceiling and trim until it meets up with the areas that you rolled. Painting in this order seems to go a lot quicker. And if you are careful, you don’t need to do much masking on the floor. Just lay some plastic wherever your roller pan is at, and go to it.

And that’s it. You just saved yourself $500 - $2000 from having to pay someone to paint it for you. Using the methods above makes it painless, and rather fun to know how much money you are saving. It only takes about 3 days to perform, only working a few hours each day. All of the time is taken in allowing the paint to dry and cure for trim masking and second top coats. Meanwhile, you go and do something else with your day while the paint dries.

So when it comes to stained wood, don’t forget the Bulls Eye Water Based Primer. Do not use any other primer. It’s great stuff. And I highly recommend spending $79 for a Wagner HVLP sprayer. It can be used indoors, delivers a finish that is almost as good as a $1000 professional sprayer, makes the job go 10 times quicker, and you’ll have it to use again and again. When it comes to do-it-yourself paint projects, the Wagner was the best thing I had ever bought. For example, I had a lot cabinets in my kitchen that I had paid someone to professionally paint a satin cottage white. This guy did a good job and used a high quality professional sprayer to deliver a smooth oil based satin finish just like what is seen new homes. However, I was missing a couple of cabinet doors that the previous homeowner had removed in the process of turning the home into a fixer-upper. So, I had to have some new doors made and were duplicated to look like the cabinet doors that were originally present.

Anyways, the painter wasn’t able to paint them because they were still in the shop being made. So, once I got them back, I primed, and then sprayed two coats of oil-based cottage white paint onto them with my $79 wagner. They turned out great and almost matched the finish performed by the professional painter. The only way you can tell the difference is to examine each door very closely and feel with your hand. Both are smooth finishes, but the professionally painted doors have somewhat of a “thicker” finish or feel to them. But standing two feet away from the cabinets, one cannot tell at all which doors were painted with the Wagner and which ones were professionally. Basically, unless you told someone, no one could tell the difference at all. Even if you told them, it is still hard to pick out which doors I painted with the Wagner. It takes a sharp eye to recognize the differences in the smooth finish. In fact, some might even argue that the finish that the Wagner put on is better. Definitely a good investment.

How To Instantly Transform Your Home With Little Or No Budget

Your home is where you spend a big part of you time in, hence a lovely home is crucial to your well being and self-esteem. Your home is also a reflection of your status and what sort of person you are.

With home improvement, there are two ways you can work on - the expensive way or the do-it-yourself approach. Although you still need to hire helpers to do extensive works like cabinetry and plaster ceiling, you'll be surprised by how much you can actually achieve on your own.

Firstly, let's look at things that you already have to determine what sort of theme you will be employing. The reason for this is because you will want to stick to your budget and not forking out money to buy new furniture. Say for example you have an antique carved-wood couch and but you've selected a minimalist concept. Your couch is not going to fit into the picture so you've got to buy another one that matches. So the kind of look and concept that goes well with your couch (or any main piece of furniture in your space, for that matter) is the retreat, Balinese type of setting.

Sometimes your existing furniture may not fit into any specific look so the next best thing to consider is how to make subtle modifications to it. For example, if you have a plush couch that is in modern leather finish and you wanted a country look, simply cover a big portion of it with a drape that is in pastel tones to neutralize the leather's sharp effect. You may also leave it as it is but neutralize the leather dominance in the room by adding cheaper and complementing pieces, such as a beanbag, or a rocking
chair.

Some people has furniture pieces that totally do not match each other, such as antique upholstered Victorian dining set and stainless steel framed shelf. Just how do you make that work? Bear in mind that you can have different theme for different enclosed space in your home. You can have a colorful kids study room, a lavish gothic concept master bedroom and a French cafe themed kitchen. If there's really no way you can modify a particular piece of furniture, try placing it in another room that has a more
relevant theme.

Now that you've figured out the look you want, make a list of all the things that comes to your mind when you think about your concept or theme. If you want to achieve a minimalist look, you will have items such as transparent glass vase, white lilies and lacquered stools on your list. Likewise if you wanted to do a Japanese Zen look then your list will feature items like tatami mat, bamboo drawing, clay unfinished ornaments and pebble stones. You can also surf the internet to check out on things that is relevant to your theme. By now, you should have fresh and exciting ideas on how to incorporate these items into your space.

An important factor to consider in your design is your habit. Are you an avid movie fan? Or are you someone who does not bother to clean your room? This piece of information will determine how things will be placed in your home. A movie enthusiast will need to access his/her collections of DVDs frequently so storage must be easily accessible. In fact, storage should be planned in this order, giving priority to frequently used items. If you do not want the hassle of constant house cleaning, do not store your stuff on open shelves. Put them in nice labeled boxes so you don't have to dust them.

Other great storage ideas includes using wall mounted shelves and having an ottoman that doubles up as storage. You can also have a low cabinet that doubles up as a daybed. Just put some plush pillows on it. The possibilities are endless.

Want to have a wardrobe that fits exactly from wall to wall? You don't need a designer to do that. The most important thing is to have a horizontal rod and some simple shelves installed. Then, get sliding door contractors to do a sliding door across - voila! Most sliding doors are only six or seven feet tall so what about the top cover? Top covers can be in the form of wall mounted cabinets - this is not expensive but you need to get cabinetry people to come in. These top spaces are perfect to store seldom used items such as bed sheets, extra pillows and photo albums. If you cannot afford to do a sliding door, then a curtain is good enough. However, a sliding door panel can be in wood, glass, mirror-finished or a combination of these. Besides acting as wardrobe doors, they can spice up an otherwise plain room.

Furniture aside, the very thing that gives ambience to a space are the walls, ceiling and floor finishing, and not forgetting lighting. Yearn for the warmth of expensive wood laminated flooring instead of your cool marble floors? Rugs and carpets are good alternatives to achieve warm looks. Why not give your stone flooring a good polish? They will be gorgeously reflective and is cooling during warmer days. Wood flooring can be easily revived using a layer of shellac.

You can do wonders with walls without spending a lot of money. Put emphasis on a feature wall and paint the rest white - the cheapest color of paint you can buy. Invest in texturized wall paper for your feature wall and your space will instantly feel luxurious and classy. Another worthy investment for your walls is to have mirrors. Not only do they make your room look bigger, they brighten up a space as well. Walls and partitions, when done properly, hold the key to make a small room appear bigger. Use a slightly reflective or material to give the impression of more space beyond the wall. You may also use opaque or transparent material to indirectly emphasize the continuity of space after the partition or wall, and to eliminate the feeling of being confined in a small enclosure.

An empty wall can be compensated with a piece of art that reflects your living taste. If you cannot afford expensive paintings, print out your family vacation pictures in both color and black and white and place them in multi sized rectangular frames of a single color. Say if you want an ultra-modern pad, use matte stainless steel frame for all the pictures. When you hang them on your wall, hang them in a cluster in a perfect square shape. This itself is a work of art and it's uniquely yours too.

Lighting is an inexpensive way to instantly transform and set a mood or ambience for a room. Avoid glaring single source of direct lighting whenever you can. The secret to achieving a cozy look is to use indirect lightings - that is, lighting that is bounced off from another surface before it reaches your eyes. This kind of lighting is not irritating to the eyes as it is more diffused and soft. To achieve this, you can place lightings above a cabinet that is directed upwards to the ceiling before bouncing off to other areas of the room. Complement that with the use of pendant, table or standing lamps. Make sure you have several lighting sources, not just one primary light source, to bring about an air of coziness.

The color of a light source can influence moods as well. Warm colors with yellowish tint are good for general use, while colors such as blue can impart calmness and purple is usually associated to romance. These mood-enhancing colors must not be overwhelming and is ideally used as secondary light sources.

Finally, wrap up the entire presentation with soft furnishings. Your curtains can be layered with sheer fabric for a tropical look, or can be simply be tied to a curtain rod with ribbons. It is fine to use curtains with prints except in the event that you also use prints for your feature wall. Choose just one or it will be clashing each other. For a cleaner and minimalist look, forget curtains. Instead, go for blinds. Blinds can be in fabric (Roman blinds, roll up blinds), bamboo (Japanese blinds, Balinese blinds) or white nylon blinds for that modern look. Next, pick a color from your curtain print or wallpaper print to do pillow covers for small pillows you can throw around your couch.

Don't limit yourself to just a single design or color for throw pillow cushions. Have a few variations with corresponding colors and prints. This variety of pillow covers adds life to the entire space. This trick will unite the whole look as one harmoniously.