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Painting your house is a fast and easy way to revitalize your home’s tired exterior or transform any room in your house. It can be quite a daunting task when deciding what type of paint color and finish to use when painting the exterior or interior of your home. Below, I’ve come up with several different paint colors and finishes that you may consider when painting your house, as well as descriptions highlighting each color’s best attributes.

Paint Finishes

Paint comes in a number of finishes, each suited to various purposes. You may want to consult a professional or a designer to find the right finish for every room of your home and bring out your home’s inner beauty.

Flat finish: This is typically used in bedrooms, living rooms and dining rooms because it does not reflect light.

Gloss finish: This reflects light and is frequently used on areas of your home where you want to reflect light or accentuate parts of your home such as the trim

Satin/eggshell: This reflects a small amount of light and is typically great for hallways and common areas that you want to brighten up a little

Semi-gloss finish: A slightly less reflective gloss coating that is easy to clean. Often used in kitchens and bathrooms.

Paint Colors

Equally as important as the finish is the colors you would like to use. Again, if you’re not sure about which colors will work in various areas of your home, it might be helpful to consult a professional. In general, bright colors like red and orange will make rooms feel more cozy, whereas cooler colors like blue and green will tend to help open up a room.

White: Surprisingly, a bright white will help open up a room and make it feel a bit bigger. You can also use it as a backdrop or accent to other more dominant colors.

Red: This is a very bold color that can really brighten up a room especially if used in conjunction with other colors.

Blue: Tends to be a very soothing color that can help bring some calm to your bedroom, bathroom or other areas of the house intended to be quiet and relaxing.

Always remember, you can always paint over a wall if you don’t like its color or finish. You change your paint colors as often as you like and it’s a cheap, and home-improvement drastic overhaul for any room.

All paints are pretty much alike, and you really do not have to worry about what brand name you get, as long as you find something that fits your budget, right? If you have made the mistake of simply picking a brand of paint off the shelf based on cost alone, you have learned that paints are not all created equal. It is important to know how to tell if paint is high quality if you are aiming for the most professional look possible in your home.

Thickness is one of the keys to understanding the quality of a particular brand of paint versus a different brand that is the same style and shade. A thicker paint will adhere better, the color is truer, and the overall result will be a longer-lasting and more durable paint. This often leads to fewer coats of paint, which can really save you a lot of time and money in the long run. Consider the following scenario: John Doe purchases 2 gallons of store brand paint at $15 per gallon. Since the paint does not cover well, he winds up purchasing two more gallons at the same price in order to complete the job. Name brand paint, higher quality, costs $18 per gallon, but covers in just one coat. In this case, it cost $60 to get the job done with a “bargain” paint, but only $36 with the premium brand; not to mention the extra work and frustration of having to paint a second coat.

Quality can also refer to the ingredients in the paint, and if the environment is a key concern for you during this purchase look for those with no VOCs. Volatile organic compounds, commonly called VOCs, are harmful to the environment and should be totally avoided if you want to make an eco-friendly choice. High quality paints often offer no-VOC, or at least low-VOC paint shades that are a better choice for you and your family. They might cost a little more initially, but it is worth the additional cost to get superior protection for your home and family.

Acrylic paint is a better choice than latex in almost every situation, and paints are considered much higher quality if they are acrylic-based. This is another situation where high quality usually costs more than average quality, but it is worth it if you want a paint that is durable and provides excellent coverage. It is harder to make a mess with thick acrylic paint, easier to clean up anything that mars the paint, and it lasts longer than the average latex paint. In the long run, even they cost more initially, you are going to save a lot of time and hassle than if you choose lower quality paint.

High quality paints should be designed to work in your climate zone, since this has a huge effect on the finished look of the painted surface. Heat and cold can ruin the look of your paint job if you use the wrong type of paint in the wrong climate zone. Speak with a home décor professional, such as at your local home improvement retailer, to find out what type of paint is best in your climate zone to avoid mistakes that cost a fortune to fix.

For the last three years I have teamed up with my nephew to make homemade wine from grapes. The grapes are fermented, pressed and transferred to demijohns with the extra going into gallon jugs. All this process takes place at his house and then I bring my share home.

Now the purpose of sharing this information about where we made the wine is important because for the last couple of years after I brought the wine home there has been a large number of fruit flies in my house. The fact that the whole process was not done at my home there shouldn’t be any or just a few fruit flies flying about. Fortunately this wine season the flies were not as bad as the last one. However, in the previous year my wife and I would be having dinner with a glass of wine and when we went to have a sip there would be a fly or two floating in the wine and or flying around the glass trying to dive in. These flies became very annoying. How do I get rid of these little monsters was the question that kept running through my mind. Then the idea came to me – make a homemade wine fruit fly trap.

I set up the trap and to my astonishment it worked fantastically. Every day the number of flies floating in the wine increased. As this was my first time doing this, I didn’t know how long to leave the wine before replacing it with fresh wine. To my surprise, after three or four days they had turned the wine into vinegar. I had heard this was possible and was one of the big reasons to keep fermenting wine covered. From that point on I would change the wine every two or three days. By end of the first week the number of flies that were being caught in the trap was decreasing and within two weeks they were gone. So this wine season just past I was all ready for these little pests.

To make a homemade wine fruit fly trap all you need is a short wide rimmed glass, plastic food wrap and of course homemade wine. Pour wine into the glass to a level of a quarter inch and tightly cover with plastic food wrap. Then puncture small holes (just big enough for the flies to enter inside the glass) in the plastic wrap in the center of the glass away from the rim of the glass. The reason for keeping the holes away from the rim is once the fruit flies are inside the glass they will walk on the plastic wrap staying close to the rim and you certainly do not want to give them a chance to escape.

Bed bugs, like the ones your Mom used to warn you about, are becoming a serious nuisance in metropolitan areas like Seattle. They first came to my attention a couple of months ago, and my initial reaction was something along the lines of a guffaw. “What’s next?”, I laughed, “an invasion of unicorns?” Sadly, and disturbingly, bed bugs are real, and they are nasty little bastards.

Essentially, bed bugs are like fleas that drink the blood of humans, as opposed to animals. They tend to live in your mattress and like to crawl onto their “host” in the hours just before dawn. Their bites leave pink or reddish welts, similar to mosquitoes or small spiders. Often, small bloodstains will be visible on the sheets or mattress which, along with their tiny egg sacks, are usually the only evidence to be found during the day without a thorough inspection.

(Ed. note…. I wish I could take my laptop in the shower…just writing about this gives me the heebie-jeebies…)

Bed bugs are highly contagious. They hop onto your clothes while you sleep. They can then be carried around the house, or dropped into a suitcase, if you happen to be traveling. It is widely believed that bed bugs are spread primarily by travelers who pick them up or leave them behind in hotels, which explains why most bed bug outbreaks occur in large cities. According to several pest control experts I’ve spoken with, the number of bed bug related service calls has increased 10 times in the past 2-3 years. Bed bugs calls are quickly becoming the majority of the business for many companies like Eden and Orkin.

(ed. note… after finally stuffing myself into my haz-mat suit, the heebies are subsiding… the jeebies, not so much…)

What can you do about it? CALL A PROFESSIONAL IMMEDIATELY! I recently worked with Eden to treat a bed bug infestation in an apartment building owned by one of my clients. They were fantastic. And green. They use a cedar-oil-based product that kills the bugs and smells like the hamster cage I had when I was a kid.

After several treatments with both traditional chemicals and green alternatives, the bugs finally gave up. It was difficult, time consuming, and incredibly expensive. Prevention is the key when it comes to bedbug treatment. Here are a few tips:

1. Do NOT buy used furniture. EVER. These things can live undetected for months in couches, mattresses, etc., even without food.

2. Inspect hotel beds end keep your bags up off the floor. Even though you rarely hear about it, hotels are one of the primary distribution points for bedbug migration. Horrifying? Yes. Still true? Yes.

3. Keep your house clean. This should seem obvious, but bugs, of any sort, have a much easier time hiding in dirty, cluttered spaces. So don’t be a slob…and encourage your tenants to clean up after themselves.

4. If you DO find bedbugs, call a professional IMMEDIATELY. They can give you all sorts of advice on how to get rid of them.

Rob LeRoy is the Marketing Director at Dwellings Seattle Real Estate and Property Management in Seattle, WA. He has been an active real estate agent in Washington since 2004, and currently works as a freelance Internet Marketing Consultant with real estate agents and small businesses across the country.

One of the most popular practices today in decorating your home is using Feng Shui. Feng Shui helps your home become a place of personal strength for its inhabitants both physically and spiritually. Feng Shui is the traditional Chinese art form of placing and arranging items in your surroundings to maximize the flow of Chi in the environment, thus bringing good luck and fortune into your lives. In fact most practitioners agree that Feng Shui is really a two-step method: avoidance, and remedy. Today that we are living in a fast-paced world where we are too busy all the time. We are busy fulfilling our responsibilities so that we don’t have the time to relax and unwind; which is why we need to create a relaxation practice through simple things like having a bamboo flute in our home.

Indeed using the bamboo flute remedy as a form of relaxation oftentimes is misunderstood. It is said that a lot of people believe that the Japanese flute provides a form of Chi push and enhances the energy in a room, as a result adding power, safety, peace and endurance. Unfortunately there is no hard evidence of this and it could just be a myth. Nevertheless the sound coming from a simple bamboo flute gives a mood of relaxation and a feeling of calm well-being to anyone who hears it. Imagine a busy afternoon with a long to do list, then stop and take five minutes to play a bamboo flute. The sweet and soothing sounds from the Japanese flute will help you feel Zen and relax at the same time.

If you go to a spa, you can see that some of the design elements often make use of the bamboo plant. They say that bamboo is an extraordinary plant – it is strong, tough, resilient, and grows in all sorts of conditions with very little maintenance. This plant symbolizes all the elements and characteristics that we wish to draw into our own lives. That is why more and more products are now made of bamboo plants.

A bamboo flute is also a great gift to give to anyone. Even if the person you want to give the bamboo flute does not actually know how to play it they can still appreciate it as a beautiful object. They can use the bamboo flute in a display or as a decoration in their living room. In short, the Japanese flute can be used in a Feng Shui design or just as a lovely ornament for your home.