When you buy real estate you never know exactly what you are getting into. Sometimes there are people who come out of the woodwork and stake a claim on the home you just bought. Sometime other things have occurred before you bought your home that will give you problems later on. One way to deal with this is to fine a good title insurance company.

Title insurance will help you to cover all of these unexpected events and keep you safe from any past claims to the property. title insurance companies will do extensive background searches on the title of your property to find out exactly what has happened in the past and if anyone has a claim to the property. Yes people may pop up after you have bought the home and maybe fixed all of the problems. People are like that.

Sometimes though you can’t find everything but it’s still a good process to go through. Some examples of things that they may not find are non-public documents like forgery’s, impersonations and unknowns errors due to bad records. Even with these risk I would still recommend taking this step. I believe many real estate agents do this anyway, but if your buying on your own you may want to check title insurance out.

I love lighting, I love how you can change the look of a room just by changing what light are on or where they are located. The best part about lighting is the environmental benefits LEDs or  light-emitting diode are lights that can not only save you some cash they can also help the environment.

Some of the benefits of LEDs are:

Save money on electricity

Produces light the color of daylight

Use only 2-10 watts of electricity (1/3rd to 1/30th of incandescent or CFL)

Long lasting – up to 60,000 hour bulb life

Cool running (warm to the touch) – little heat compared to standard bulbs

Works with most dimmer switches

Instant on/off

Work in cold weather

Can sustain moderate power surges

Durable bulbs with no fragile filaments to break from shaking and rattling

Directional lighting generates less wasted light

Works with sensor activated lights

What exactly are LED lights? Well think of a children’s toy that lights up. those lights never die just the batteries right? Well those are LED lights, yes this technology has been around for a long time. The reason we have not seen more of these is because it has been expensive to produce. LED lights are extremely bright and run on much less power then other types of lights. They can also come so close to the light of the sun that they have actually improved moods and helped to keep winter depression at bay.

When used for design purposes they are wonderful in the fact that they shine where you want them to. They are great for highlighting a picture on the wall or under cabinetry. Of course they are also great for use in any other part of your home as well. You can use them for Holiday decorations, I’m sure you have all seen the LED Christmas lights I tried to talk my mother into buying them this year, it didn’t work, maybe next year.

LED Light.com has some wonderful charts and pictures that show the benefits of LED lights. Check it out if you would like to know more about these great lights.

Technorati Tags: Benefits of LED, Environmental design, green lighting, LED lights

I love modern design, but I don’t think I would live in a modern home. That said a modern vacation home would work well for me. This is the same case with a women that I met the other day. We were waiting in line at the food court in a hospital nearby, she was there for the birth of her granddaughter and I was there for my sisters surgery.

We started talking and she asked what I did for a living. My first response right now is always that I am a student and I’m going for interior design. The second I said this she started asking me all these questions. Apparently she had just bought a vacation home that was a modern design and had no clue what to do with it. I’m willing to give out tips right now, since I can’t hand over a card and say come in to my studio and we’ll see what we can do. I did hand her the card for this blog though!

There are many great ways to find furniture that will fit into your homes theme sometimes searching modern furniture is not the way to find furniture you can actually buy. Try searching for furniture stores in your area instead. Like furniture stores in Houston or furniture in Detroit. Most stores sell different types of furniture. So they may not com up in a modern furniture search.

If your going into the field of interior design remember you will always get questions from people. You have to make sure though that you answer them with just enough information to make them happy, and bring them back to you for a job. You don’t want to offer to do anything for free. Since many people will expect you to do it again.

Technorati Tags: furniture stores in Houston, modern design, modern interior design, people

I’m very sorry this is so late. I had some family things to deal with since Friday and was not able to complete everything on time. So it’s now furniture Sunday! (one time only) I am going to try to have Furniture Friday the third Friday of every month. I you don’t want to miss out subscribe to my feed.

The Bookshelf

When people first started writing words down they did not store these documents on shelves, they put them into cases and carried these cases with them. The cases were made of animal skin or wood. Eventually as the collections of these documents grew usually in wealthy homes or religious centers these cases were traded in for cabinets. a Most of the time these documents were piled up on their sides or rolled this is very diffrent from how we store them today.

When the printing press was invented doors were gotten rid of and the modern bookcase started to emerge. These bookcases were usually made of Oak as the people of the time thought that this was the best wood for a stylish library.

Some well known bookshelf makers were, Chippendale and Sheraton  they had great ornamentation and were considered the best of the best for that time. Even today a authentic Chippendale is a well respected piece of furniture.

Today we make bookshelf’s out of almost anything, boxes, plastic, wood and metal. They come in all different shapes and sizes. Some are round, some are square and I have seen a few that were all curves almost like they were a scribble on the wall. Bookshelf’s have become once again works of art. In a much different way then they were but they still have the same great style and function.

Technorati Tags: bookshelf, Furniture, history of the bookshelf

Good interior design can only happen if you love the home your in. Finding that perfect real estate is the hard part. Sometimes you go though so many that are okay or are very good. Sometimes though they just are not good enough. There is usually something missing or there is more then you need in the home.

I haven’t had the pleasure of house hunting for myself yet, but I have gone with other people and I have helped them look online, You can search for anything online like Houston real estate or homes in Texas. Of course finding the right city will not help you if you can not find the right home.

The most common problem is that people can not picture themselves in the home. Either the home there looking at is empty or there is way too much stuff in it. I understand that many people don’t have the eye to see how things could be, but there is a way to work on that. If you look at the room around you, close your eyes and picture what you would like, if the room comes close to fitting into that picture, your doing well.

The thing to remember is, if the home is cheep and it’s nice on the outside you can always fix the inside. Of course you can fix the outside too if your problem is the other way around. Don’t look at a home and see it for what it is now. Look at it and see it for what it could be.

Technorati Tags: homes, house hunting, people, Real Estate