Category: Home & Garden

Cats are pets which, to some people, are a bit of an enigma, especially those who have never owned a cat. One minute they will see a cat snuggled up on the lap of its owner, and then a few minutes later they will see it entering its cat enclosure with an air of confidence and independence that cats display regularly.

The fact is, it is not just cats that need time alone and a place where they can be undisturbed, all animals do, including humans. For a cat, the reasons for it being in its cat enclosure can vary, with some of the most common being:

• For Peace And Quiet
• Recovery From Illness
• Recovery From Injury
• Expecting Kittens
• To Be Introduced To Another Cat
• To Play
• To Rest
• To Sleep
• For Safety And Security

Not every cat will necessarily experience all of these but just being able to have its own space, such as a cat enclosure, where it can relax and feel safe, will be appreciated by any cat. If you do not yet have a cat enclosure the next question is, ‘How do you choose one?’, so here some important questions you should asking yourself before buying one.

When building or renovating a home, one of the significant decisions you or your designer or builder will make is choosing your building materials and locating a reliable supplier.

Whether you are looking for fencing, cladding, insulation or partitioning, it is always important to find the right building materials supplier at the right price.

A fence is essential if you plan on having a swimming pool. Glass pool fencing is quickly becoming one of the trendiest options on the market. It is seen by many as a modern, stylish option and can be used with pretty much any landscape and home design style.

One of the best aspects of glass balustrading is its low maintenance and durable design. They’re made from a rigid material like glass combined with durable stainless steel or aluminium fittings, so they usually have a minimum lifespan of at least ten years.

Glass pool fencing is a great lifestyle choice that can brighten your pool area and improve your backyard design. Let’s have a bit closer look at glass and how it can be used as a pool fencing material:

What Types Of Glass Fencing Are There?

Glass pool fencing is highly customisable, so you can usually modify and change it to suit your needs. However, there are two main glass fencing styles, including:

Frameless Glass Fencing – Frameless glass fences are usually constructed with rigid glass panels secured to the ground with strong stainless steel fittings. They aren’t joined together and aren’t supported by anything other than these fittings. This means that they offer complete visibility, along with a minimalistic style.

Using a high-quality, reliable CCTV system is a great way to secure your home against fire, intruders and burglars. However, it can be expensive to get set up with security cameras and a video surveillance system, which means you should think very carefully before deciding to set up your home with CCTV.

In saying that, there are also plenty of budget surveillance options available for those who want to protect their freshly renovated home on some level. In general, we always recommend using whatever security options are available to you, even if they are a little on the pricey side.

With this in mind, we’ve put together the following list of things you should consider when deciding whether or not to use security cameras and CCTV surveillance.

Will It Lower Your Insurance Premiums?

Some insurance companies will charge you significantly less if your home is equipped with an approved security system. In many cases, you will be required to use CCTV video surveillance to qualify for these discounts.

If you’re not sure what sort of offers your insurance company has, consider giving them a call and asking them about it. In the best-case scenario, the reduction in your insurance premiums will cover the cost of installing CCTV or some other type of security alarm or surveillance system.

It doesn’t matter how wonderful your home is, if the surrounding area is left to its own devices the whole look of the place with be spoiled. Worse still, this neglect can really bring down the value of the property as well as inhibit your lifestyle. When the outside elements of the property are designed with care to reflect the kind of lifestyle you want, then the whole ties in together and you can really enjoy all that your back garden offers.

Landscape design needs a professional

Many people design their own gardens, or allow them to design themselves. Usually such a person has no idea or feel for landscape design and cannot envisage just how good it could be. They get caught up in their work or sports and hobbies and just use their home for relaxation rather than any of the outdoor parts of the property. This really reduces their lifestyle down to the essentials, instead of allowing them to expand and explore new ways of having fun and relaxation.

Rather than allowing your backyard to be bland and boring, you can really make it pop by having a professional landscape designer take a look and suggest ways to make the most of it. Here are some suggestions.

• Add a deck with an outdoor kitchen for alfresco meals and entertaining.
• Add a pool so that the children – and adults – can have great fun in the hot weather.
• Installing a shade sail over the pool or on the hottest side of the home so that you can enjoy being outdoors more often.
• Fence off a pool with glass fencing from Glass Pool Fencing Perth, so that the area is not made to look smaller than it really is. In fact, it will look larger since all the plants and features in the garden will be visible from the pool and vice versa.

It is a well-known saying that you get what you pay for. What it really means is when you try to save money by buying cheap, you will find yourself with a cheap and nasty product that either doesn’t do what it is supposed to, or it breaks within a year or two. So when choosing products for the home and even building materials, cheap is not the best way to go.

Not only will you end up with a home that has little value, all that money you saved will be spent replacing parts that don’t last or maintaining them so they last a bit longer. Plus, some building materials still cost a lot but don’t have some of the properties of stone and so you spend more on comfort – heating and cooling – over the lifetime of the home. That said, let’s look at the benefits of using Perth limestone products.

• Limestone bricks or blocks as cladding will give you a home that has a high value and thus, a high resale value even in many years time.
• Cladding your home with limestone will ensure that the temperature remains constant so there is less need for heating and cooling. You save money.
• A feature wall in limestone not only looks decorative and adds value; it can also have practical uses such as cutting glare, offering privacy and creating shade.

Many people love gardening but for some reason cannot have a garden. This may be because of their living environment or due to their health. However, most people can have at least one pot plant to keep them happy. If you have a tiny courtyard or room for just a few planters on your patio, it is important to get it right if they are to look pleasing. Using designer garden pots has several advantages.

• Visual appeal. Designer garden pots can be sophisticated or casual, but no matter what type they are they will add visual appeal to your surroundings.
• A pot plant can be enhanced by the pot it lives in; it will have much less appeal if you dump in into a black plastic pot.
• The pot that contains the plant provides at least half of the appeal of the whole. When your plants are not flowering, or when the display has gone past its best, the attractive pot below it will still provide something good to look at. Even if there is nothing in the pot at all, it can still provide an attractive focal point on the patio or in the courtyard.
• Courtyard and balcony plants often don’t have showy flowers; rather their appeal is in the shape and colour of the leaves or the shape of the plant. A designer pot has a similar subtle beauty that will set off those plants to the best advantage.

When it comes to getting landscaping done, whether it is residential or commercial, having landscapers in to do the job is really the best way to go, especially in places such as Western Australia where both the weather and soil type can pose challenges.

One reason why gardens fail

A lot of our garden plants and even the methods we use to garden have filtered down from England, a country where the weather is cool and damp. When you translate these plants and methods to a country known for its heat and dry climate it is no wonder that many gardens become disaster areas.

Landscaping professionals may have learned such methods, but since they are experienced in Australian conditions they know when to leave those tried and true – for England – ways of gardening behind and get with Australian methods. One of these is finding ways to conserve moisture in the garden rather than draining it away as is necessary in wetter climates. The addition of organic mulch or non-organic covers such as pebbles are both good ways to conserve moisture and the latter adds colour and interest.

What every woman dreams of is a modern kitchen that is smart, functional and looks amazing. Unfortunately, people with older homes are unlikely to have this unless they get a professional kitchen designer like Kitchen Professionals in to completely renovate this important room. With the advent of open floor plans, the kitchen is in full view of everyone, so it simply must look its best.

If you are thinking of making renovations on your kitchen, don’t settle for less than the best. Even new pre-made cupboards and appliances won’t do the job you expect. Once the excitement wears off you’ll realise that your kitchen is really just another kitchen and it most likely still has some design faults, albeit not the same ones –hopefully – that it had before.

What you really need for a modern kitchen

To truly bring that kitchen out of the dark ages what you need is a professional kitchen designer. And if they also supply the materials and install the kitchen, so much the better. It can be very difficult to tee up three different companies to do the work that is needed when you fully renovate a kitchen. Having one company do everything will certainly reduce your stress, especially when you know you can trust them to provide top quality materials and finishes as well as do a great job on the actual building/tiling/plumbing/electrical work and whatever else is needed.

Whether you are looking for some way to make your home worth more, or just want to enhance your own lifestyle, a kitchen renovation is considered to be one of the best investments. If you want to sell in the near future, it is the kitchen that all women look at first. If you ask someone like Colray Cabinets, the kitchen cabinets are old-fashioned and the kitchen looks drab, it is highly likely to turn people away.

But what if you are not planning to sell? Having a great kitchen will surely enhance your lifestyle. While all the house is important, the kitchen is a room where much work is done, where people gather to access the essentials to life; food and water. It is the room where food is prepared and from whence those delicious aromas emanate each evening.

The kitchen truly is the hub of the home, so it is important for it to look nice. If you have to be in an ugly room it is very difficult to feel happy and content. If that room is not very functional, but you still have to be there and use all the inconvenient parts of it on a daily basis, you will not be living the kind of lifestyle that you want. Rather, stress, tension, frustration and annoyance are the kinds of feelings that you will be coping with.

If your kitchen is drab looking and does not function as well as you’d like, renovating it will make a great difference to your overall enjoyment of life. You will look forward to coming home from work to create a beautiful meal for the family simply because the newly renovated kitchen is now a room you can enjoy being in.

But to get a truly great kitchen you need to have it designed and built by professionals. A cabinet maker by trade will be able to ensure that all the components in your kitchen not only fit together perfectly, but look good as well. You can collaborate with the designer to ensure you choose the best options available for your budget and lifestyle.

When renovating an older home, most people tend to look at what is visible to make their decision about where to start their renovations. However, it is often what is hidden that needs fixing first. Any qualified electrician will tell you that fires in older homes are often caused by faulty wiring. Electrical wiring is just like anything else; it wears out over time and should be replaced.

In addition, older homes are often not sealed very well and this allows mice into the ceiling cavity where they can chew on the wiring. Once the plastic cover is gone the live wires are exposed, with sparks from the resulting short-out setting the framework on fire. Before you know it, the whole house has gone up in smoke.

Even without rodents chewing the wiring it can simply degrade, especially in locations that experience a very hot climate. Eventually the protective covering wears away, leaving live wires exposed to do their damaging work. Some really old homes have been found with large rings of blackened ash around burnt out wiring. These are the lucky ones that didn’t catch on fire for some unaccountable reason.