If you are a creative person who loves interior design then you are sure to love finding out how you can make your very own home-made tablecloth. If you’ve just moved into a new house with your partner then you are sure to have already looked at various home design websites similar to ours. However, if you are still in need of some interior design inspiration, then we hope that you enjoy reading our quick guide to making your own tablecloth.

As the owner of a brand new house, you are sure to have already looked into insuring your property and possessions. Whether you are thinking about visiting http://www.rac.co.uk/home-insurance/ or signing up with Direct Line, be sure to look around and do your research in order to get the best deal. There is no better feeling than being safe in the knowledge that everything from your oven to your tablecloth will be covered under your insurance. Here’s how you can add a touch of glamour to your dining room by making your own tablecloth.

Equipment:
Tape measure
Scissors
Fabric marker
Silk or satin fabric
Iron
Thread

1. Begin by buying a few metres of lovely silk or satin material. Then measure your dining table and use the measurements to outline the shape onto your material using a fabric marker pen.
2. Add one inch to your measurements then carefully cut the shape out. Fold the extra inch of material over and iron it down to make a crease.
3. Sew the fold down using thread which matches the tablecloth. Then turn it over and iron out any other creases.
4. Add some glamour to your tablecloth by sewing on some sequins or some velvet thread along the hemline. You could even find an iron-on pattern for the centre of the tablecloth or even design your own.

As with most things in life there is rarely such thing as a free lunch! If it is you intention to find free plans for your dream home, then I wish you the best of luck.  You might even fare better than people who have forked out a fortune to architects and still have ended up unhappy with their home.

There are a few things you should bear in mind however.

• Like all freebies on the net, there is often a catch. There will be some cost to be incurred e.g. a watermark on drawing.
• Building Regulations country to country, state to state and also are updated regularly.
• House types and architectural styles can vary greatly even within localities. Good architecture will incorporate this.
• Free house plans rarely allow for even minor customisation. It is important to get “CAD compatible” versions of drawing, though these usually cost extra.
• As with plans from books, magazines or the internet, remember that the plan is not unique so don’t be shocked when you go for a drive only to discover that other people have the exact same design.
• Free house plans may not take orientation into account

Of course, if you design your own home from scratch on paper you will be able to do most of the work for free in any case.

Looking up “Free House Plans” can be very beneficial if carried out in the right context as part of an overall process. When starting a home design it is useful to gather and organise information. One useful method is to break the design process into steps or modules and assign a folder to each particular step/module.

You might have a folder for “renewable energy” into which you would collect information, brochures etc on solar panels, pellet boilers and so on. Into another you might collect information on “building materials”.

A Design Folder might have three sub-folders: One for your own sketches, notes and lists, another might have photographs of houses that you like or images from magazines that caught your eye.

Your Free house plans might go into a folder of sample plans/layouts. Use this then as reference material when preparing your drawing.

Carry out your design as one would research. Researchers use both Primary and Secondary information. Primary information is first-hand information obtained by interviews and questionnaires. Secondary information is then obtained from books, magazines and the internet.

When designing your house try and obtain as mush first hand information as possible. You are in effect your own client so make sure you record your own ideas. Talk to other family members, get their ideas. Do this both informally and formally.

With this “primary” information gathered, start to organise the information into lists and then into very rough sketches. This is the most exciting part of designing your own home. Even if you have never designed anything before you will be amazed at your own ability. You won’t have all the answers so only then is it useful to refer to your “secondary” information files. Your free house plans may help fill some gaps in information of help generate some new ideas.

Go online and download free house plans if you must but don’t ignore the free house plans that are waiting to be discovered within each of us

Image: posterize / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Now that would be a luxury wouldn’t it? To get three chances to design your own house.

There is also a saying among builders “Measure twice – Cut Once”

The point about this is that you need to really plan beforehand. By planning I don’t mean a set of elaborate plans copied from some fancy magazines. Here are some handy tips for designing  a house from personal experience.

1. Brainstorm: With your spouse, partner and/or children, write down all of the thing you will be doing in your new home. Use verbs rather than nouns. e.g. sleeping, eating, playing rather that bedroom, dining room or play room. Think in terms of “spaces”. This is the space for eating, sleeping etc. Ideally use a mind map. Be creative.  Don’t rule anything out just yet based on cost or planning restrictions. Start off big and scale down as necessary later on.
2. Design from the inside out: Most people look at how other people’s houses look like as they drive past. You will be living in your house. Most of the time you will be inside looking out. A friend of mine, architect Peter Cowman used a concept called the “headspace” which was a mock-up of you house plan large enough for you to put you head in underneath and look out though the doors and windows.
3. Design with you senses:
1. Sight is the most obvious one, views of course are important but also light.
2. Hearing: Are there noises that you want to avoid like traffic or noises that are pleasing. Is it possible to provide a buffer from noise pollution by planting trees which in turn will attract birds.
3. Smell: If you live in a natural house like me, your home will have a beautiful aroma. Be concious of aromas and smells that will be present in your new home. Also plan to avoid odours.
4. Touch: How will your house feel? Concrete-built house will be cold to touch. What will it be like to walk barefoot in your home. Timber can be pleasing but sometimes heavily varnished wood can feel cold do perhaps consider underfloor heating
5. Taste: Well unless you are thinking of using gingerbread dough as a building material, you won’t be able to taste your house. You will however be spending quite a bit of time eating so consider creating a connection between food and your home by having a garden or by planting indoors.
6. Sixth Sense: OK even if you are not into the paranormal, do try and get a feel for the site that you will be building on. Notice buildings that you visit like the bank or church. What is the feeling that you would like to have in your home. Some houses that I have visited feel more like shopping malls or art galleries than homes.
4. Visualise: Try and visualise yourself living in your home not just to when you move in but also when you are older. If you have children or plan to have children how will the house be for them. What if your circumstances change such as unemployment. Is there a space in the house that you could set up a small business.
5. When you complete the brainstorming process, try and group ideas and activities and start to create spaces for activities. Remember not every activity needs a separate room.
6. Scale down: Your first attempt at sketching a plan is likely to send your project flying over budget. But consider “Occam’s razor” and cut out what you don’t need. Do you really need five bathrooms! Are there more fun things that could be achieved with just two or even one? Corridors are wasted space in a home?  Eating can be so much more fun in a large kitchen rather than in a separate dining room (unless of course you have a team of servants!) Larger houses involve more expense in heating and cleaning.
7. You might not consider yourself an environmentalist but that is no reason to avoid the writing on the wall. Sustainable construction will be cheaper in the long run by far and you might retain some respect from your children and grandchildren for “doing the right thing”

Image: ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you are want to produce detailed 2 dimensional drawings of house and garden and experience a 3D walkthrough, then FloorPlan 3D will all of that and more.

You can choose to use the design wizards or select from pre-drawn floor plans.

Floor Plan 3D is just perfect for designing or remodelling, designing office layouts, decorating or designing individual room layouts.

Its easy for you and all the family to use.

FloorPlan 3D is not just House Design Software but Home Design Software

DesignCAD is versatile and easy to use.

There are literally hundreds of 2D drafting and design tools and an intuitive interfaceso it is quite easy to produce accurately scaled, precision designs! Ideal for the creation of architectutal drawings, floorplans and detailed engineering drawings.

Another important aspect of DesignCAD is it’s compatibility AutoCAD®h 2011 with support for AutoCAD® layouts, PaperSpace, layers, linestyles, views, and blocks in both DXF and DWG file formats. Plus work with files from many other popular CAD and graphic programs.

Because the material used in Cob Construction is readily available and very often naturally occurring building with cob it is quite often favoured as an ecological building method.

Like many older buildings Cob walls are thick 600mm (24″) and therefore act as a thermal mass – cool in summer and warm in winter.

Cob building has become more and more popular in recent years and there are quite a few good quality books on the subject many written from the perspective of people who have built their own homes.

Click on BOOK for more information

Shannon and Dean Acheson are a Canadian Couple who operate a the blog www.akadesign.ca. They are DIY addicts who like to share their thrifty ideas for interior design.   They recently wrote an eBook entitled Welcome Home.

WELCOME HOME – Tips, tricks & ideas for creating a beautifully cosy home is  full of tips, tricks and ideas for creating a beautifully cosy home.

Click here to visit Welcome Home ebook.

Much like other books, Welcome Home is broken up into sections: Begin at the Beginning, Inspiration and Preparation, and Nitty Gritty.

Begin at the Beginning tells you what to do first. Where to start creating a beautifully cozy home. The do’s and don’ts of decorating as well as 3 elements that make for a great space.

Inspiration and Preparation leads you to a few sources of inspiration and then once you’ve found inspiration, we tell what to do with it and how to use it.

And finally the third section gets to the Nitty Gritty hands on decorating with small space decorating ideas, budget decorating tricks and bargain shopping tips. We also include our how-to step-by-steps for finishing furniture (plus a great resource for refinishing furniture like the pros), plus what to have in your decorator tool box and a whole list of 30-minute home improvement projects

To find out more

Click here to visit Welcome Home ebook.

But more importantly people are coming up with simple ways of generating their own electricity and are not only supplying their own modest energy needs but supplying power back to the grid and joining the growing numbers of people becoming “energy independent” and potentially living off-grid.

(Photo reference: Image: nokhoog_buchachon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net )

CLICK BOOK TO FIND OUT MORE

Check out the new ebook “Home Energy Made Easy“.  This Easy Step-by Step eBook will take you by the hand and walk you through each phase with easy-to-do weekend DIY projects until you are creating your own Free Energy.

“Home Energy Made Easy” contains over 350 pages and is packed with solid tips on reducing your energy consumption, as well building your own solar panels, to building your own wind turbine, to getting solar panels, batteries, even glass, FREE. It even includes a seperate section on making biodiesel.

Click here to view more details

Hemp as a foodstuff is contained in many products. Hemp can be used in the manufacture of a range of clothing and accessories.

But is as a natural building material that the use of hemp is growing in popularity.

One of those responsible for the revival in popularity in Hemp building is environmental design consultants and natural builder Steve Allin who lives in the south west of Ireland.

Steve’s book “Building with Hemp”

Find out about building with hemp

Image: m_bartosch / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For example one kilo of wood pellets will produce 5 Kw’s of heat for an hour. This compares very favourably with a typical dry hardwood fuel log. Pellets have a higher density than logs and because of this they can  flow very easily like  sand through wood pellet fuel systems. That’s why on a pellet stove or boiler you simply fill the hopper with fuel and burner will do the rest.

Wood pellets are very new to the market, particularly in Ireland. We purchased a Gerkorss 15 kw boiler in 2006 which at the time was supported by generous grants. 6 years later the boiler is still generating heat with very little problems.

The first winter we were faced with shortages of supply, having to go borrowing from other pellet boiler pioneers. This shortage was rectified by the following winter with the entrance of new suppliers. another problem we encountered was however that living off a main thoroughfare the trucks that supplied bulk pellets were unable to get close enough to deliver so we have to rely on bags of pellets. While this cost us more initially, thankfully the price of bagged pellets has remain steady particularly when compared with fossil fuels over the same period.

The standard grade of fuel which all pellet stoves and boilers can use is the premium grade wood pellet, however this is also the most expensive grade of pellet fuel and the market will move forward to other grades over the next couple of years. Due to this reason you do not want to purchase a pellet furnace which is designed to burn only premium grade wood pellets, you want a more capable pellet stove or boiler. Even if you intend to only purchase premium grade wood pellets, having that choice to use other cheaper and more available grades of pellet fuel has many benefits. Such as local pellet fuels which can support the local area with more jobs.

While our experience has been largely positive thanks to time spent researching, others were not as fortunate and particularly in an attempt to skimp on price, lost out and in many cases had to decommission the boiler in it’s first year.

It is essential that you research your wood pellet boiler in advance. Don’t take a salesperson’s word for it, ask for references from people who have used the boiler for more than a year. I would recommend you look at The PelHeat Beginners Guide And Complete Guide

Find out more about wood pellet boilers and stoves here!