Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

If you’re building a home from scratch, or doing an extensive remodel, you can add a lot of curb appeal by installing a custom-built front door. This lets you reflect your personality and tastes in a part of your home everyone sees.

One company that specializes in custom-designed doors is Artisans Doors of Montana. They use engineered stiles and rails and old-fashioned tongue-and-groove panels to create one-of-a-kind pieces. They draw on artists in different disciplines, so you can get any combination of materials you want (i.e. etched glass, leather tooling, carved wood, etc.) incorporated in your door. If you’re not sure exactly what you want yet, the site has pictures you can browse through for ideas.

http://www.artisansdoors.com

If you’re looking for more storage space in the kitchen and you’ve got a dead spot in a corner on the countertop, you could try something like this tiered shelf.

Designed to tuck into a corner, it’s big enough to hold bottles of cooking ingredients as well as herbs and spices. Since I’m always buying those neat looking bottles of extra virgin olive oil, garlic oil, red wine vinegar, and the like, I wouldn’t mind displaying those things on the counter, but if you prefer to keep everything tucked away out of sight, you can also use this shelf in a cabinet to create more usable storage space.

Made from wood, the unit measures 15 3/4″ L x 14″ H and has 5 1/2″ deep shelves. It’s available for $20 from Fresh Finds.

http://www.freshfinds.com

If you’re planning to spend a good chunk of change on your bathroom remodeling project, you can really take it over the top with a golden swan faucet arching out over the sink. Complete with wings and realistic detailing (you can see the eyes, feathers, etc.), this faucet probably looks as expensive as it is.

Part of the aptly named Swan collection over at Jado, the gold-finished faucet can be purchased with a matching tub filler. Other pieces in the collection include everything from showerheads to soap dishes and robe hooks (though the faucets are the only items that actually look like swans).

http://www.jadousa.com

Here’s a gadget for you chefs (and wannabe chefs) out there. The Sili Sling rests in the bottom of any baking or roasting pan, and you cook your food right on top of it. When the meal is done, you can easily transfer turkeys, chickens, fish, etc. straight to a plate or a cutting board without hassle.

The silicon-based sling can handle up to 600 degrees and is dishwasher safe. It can hold up to an 18-pound turkey, so no more trying to figure out how to carve the bird while it’s still in the pan.

The kitchen gadget is $20 from William Bounds Limited.

When you think of light pollution, you probably think of how all the lighting in an urban area combines to make it difficult to see the stars at night. Light pollution can be that, but it can also be unwanted light from your home or yard that shines onto a neighbor’s property, causes glare that distracts passing drivers, or even threaten the livelihoods of nocturnal animals.

If you’re buying outdoor lighting fixtures for your home, you might want to take light pollution into consideration. You can find fixtures that are friendly to the night sky (and your neighbors) online by searching for lamps that shine down instead of out and by buying ordinance compliant lighting. One site that specializes in these kind of fixtures is Starry Night Lights.

You can browse their site for a wide variety of indoor and outdoor lighting fixtures, everything from recessed lighting to landscape lighting to outdoor wall sconces and post lamps. Some are even certified to be “dark sky friendly” by a third-party association that only approves fixtures that minimize glare and light trespass.

This Minka Lavery “Great Outdoors” wall lantern caught my eye. The vintage rust finish makes it perfect for an older home where you’re trying to preserve the historic flavor. It sells for just under $110, so it isn’t any more expensive than fixtures that aren’t night sky friendly. Lamps like this would be a good choice for you if you want to take care of the environment in which you live.

Night Sky Friendly Outdoor Lighting

**Sponsored post

If you enjoy hosting parties, and alcoholic beverages are a staple, then you could have fun buying some exotic glassware for your guests. You can get stemless wine glasses, souvenir shot glasses, or perhaps martini glasses with a unique twist.

These Satin Breeze martini glasses from the Swank Martini Company come in a set of 6. Each glass is a different color (turquoise, purple, blue, yellow, clear, and pink) that will not chip or flake off since it’s applied with a satin glaze. The set is available online for just under $50.

http://swankmartini.com

What’s your kitchen style of preference? Country? Traditional? Contemporary? Maybe you don’t want any of those classic styles. Perhaps a touch of the tropics is in your future.

If you want home decor that matches the coconut trees, white sand beaches, and blue oceans beyond your door (or if you just want to pretend those things are beyond your door), then you could build a tropical feel right into the kitchen. This palm tree tile mosaic backsplash from Pratt & Larson Ceramics would certainly set the mood. If palm trees aren’t quite your style, you can also select bamboo from the company’s tropics line. Just don’t forget the pineapple chandelier for the dining room.

http://prattandlarson.com

One of the fun parts about remodeling the kitchen is picking out the cabinets you’re going to install. Perhaps even more so than the appliances, the cabinets define the style of the whole kitchen. If you’re after a traditional look, you could go for something safe–such as smooth wood drawers and doors with a timeless cut–but you could also have a little fun with these vertical pinstripes.

Available from Plain & Fancy Custom Cabinets, the doors have handsome grooves that add texture to the kitchen. Match them with granite countertops and new appliances, and your kitchen will leap into the 21st Century while maintaining the timeless warmth of the traditional style.

http://www.plainfancycabinetry.com

You’ve doubtlessly encountered (and been annoyed by) motion-sensing, hands-free sinks in public restrooms, and you may have even come across a hands-free soap dispenser (though these are a bit rarer). Now, you can have this technology in your own home (for good or ill… these things never seem to work as well as promised). This hands-free soap dispenser can sit next to your bathroom or kitchen sink, awaiting a wave from your hand to squeeze out a dollop of its liquid contents. This could be nice, I suppose, since getting soap would become a one-handed job and you could hold a pot or dish or whatever with the other hand (although wouldn’t you have to bring that other hand into line in order to suds it up anyway?).

Anyway, the gadget is available from Brookstone for $40 and uses 3 AA batteries:

Hands-Free Soap Dispenser

Though granite probably isn’t going to fall out of favor as the most-preferred countertop material any time soon, products like CaesarStone’s quartz composites offer some fun colors that natural stone just doesn’t come in.

This ruby red is sure to stand out in any kitchen. Made from 94% natural quartz and a mix of color pigments and polyester resins, CaesarStone offers a lot of flexibility in the color department. Some other examples include orange, lime green, midnight blue, black, and brown.

According to the company, care and maintenance are easy. Just wipe up spills with a little liquid detergent and a damp cloth, and your counters will shine like new. A scouring pad can be used for extra tough spills. Quartz is moderately tolerant to heat, but you wouldn’t want to leave a steaming pot on the counter for a long time.

http://www.caesarstone.com