Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

If you want to add storage to your garage, cabinets and shelves are a painless way to do it. These diamond-plated garage cabinets from Car Guy Garage certainly look sturdy and rugged, perfect for a man’s workspace. Just don’t put them anywhere sunlight can shine on them or the reflection might blind you.

The company sells a wide line of shelves, cabinets, and accessories (you can even get a diamond-plated garbage can or light switch plate cover to match your cabinets), so check them out if you’re looking to add storage. Prices are higher than if you installed cabinets of lesser quality, but these look like they’ll last for years and add value to your home. The 8-foot combo set pictured here will run you $1650.

Diamond Plate Garage Cabinets

**Sponsored post

Looking for some wall sconces that do more than light the room? Something visitors will notice and oh and ah at when they stop by? Well, they’d have to be blind to miss the Cellula sconce on your way down the hall.

Designed by Nunzia Carbone and Tiziano Vudafieri, the light fixture is made from aluminum, stainless steel, and cut Austrian crystal. It uses three 15 watt clear incandescent bulbs, which are included in the $1,265 price tag (one would hope, right?). You can order the wall sconce online from Moss.

Just because you like to take on home improvement projects around the house doesn’t mean you want to build a workbench down in the garage from scratch. A do-it-yourself kit is perfectly acceptable, thank you very much.

If that sounds like you, then the Finley Workbench Assembly Kit #14090 (doubtlessly a big step up from the #14089) might fit the bill. Since you provide your own lumber, the workbench can be customized to fit any space (after all, not all garages are created equal, so one workbench does not fit all, right?). The kit is designed to be easy to assemble with only straight cuts needed. Finished, the shelves can support 1,000 pounds, and the bench itself can be used for whatever projects you have in mind.

The kit is $60 through Amazon (remember wood not included):

Finley Workbench Assembly Kit

Vinyl flooring is common place in the bathroom, but if you want something impressive, consider glass. These Lake Garda glass floor tiles from Ann Sacks offer elegance and clean-cut style.

Available in 40 matte colors and a range of sizes up to 12″ x 12″, the tiles are textured enough so they aren’t slippery and sturdy enough that they’ll last for years. A glass floor doesn’t come cheaply however; the Lake Garda tiles start at $44 per square foot. Fortunately bathrooms are relatively small, and they’re one place you can usually afford to splurge.

Ann Sacks

If you like the idea of furniture made from recycled products, this coffee/side table pieced together from scraps of wood might interest you.

Made by Uhuru Design, the Stoolen Lite uses reclaimed walnut and water-based glues. Use it to hold a lamp, stack magazines on, or plop it in front of the couch to prop up your feet while you’re watching TV.

If you’re not in the market for a table, it’s still worth browsing through the company’s other eco-friendly furniture. Uhuru (I’m resisting the urge to make a Star Trek joke) embraces “sustainability and environmental practices within our own lines and one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture.”

http://www.uhurudesign.com/

Whether you’re tired of locking yourself out of the house or having teenage offspring grab your keys and run off with your car, a key safe can be a simple solution to many small annoyances. These wall-mounted safes are specifically designed to hold your car keys or a house key. You can place them inside or outside (the garage is a common spot) and no one can access the key without knowing the combination.

This is a nice alternative to leaving your car keys laying on a table or hanging from a hook next to the door (where anybody who passes by can grab them). And if you’ve got school-aged children who get home from classes before you get home from work, they can just punch the combination to grab the house key (instead of carrying a key with them all day and possibly losing it).

There are lots of key safes out there, so you can get something that holds a bunch of keys or something like the GE AccessPoint Slimline KeySafe here, which is compact and holds just a couple. The weather resistant metal means it can be mounted indoors or out, and you can change the combination at any time for added security. It’s under $30 at Amazon:

GE AccessPoint Slimline Key Safe

If you like the idea of having a kitchen island to give you more work and storage space, but you just dont have the room for a permanent structure, a folding butcher block island might come in handy. The one pictured here lets you expand your counter space, and there are shelves underneath for pots, cookbooks, or whatever items you’d like close at hand. When you’re having company over or just don’t need the island, it can be folded up like a TV tray. In its compact state, it only takes up 5″ of width, so you can tuck your kitchen island in beside the refrigerator, behind a door, or wherever you’ve got a little nook.

Sold by the Pot Rack Source, the butcher block island costs $200.

If you want to add a bit of color to your kitchen–and some personality to your cabinets–without undertaking an entire remodeling project, these cute little knobs could be fun additions. The hand-painted ceramic cabinet knobs are made in Jaipur, India using a technique called “Blue Pottery.” The base material is made from a mixture of quartz stone, green glass, fuller’s earth, and banyan tree gum. How’s that for adding a bit of worldly charm to the kitchen?

The cabinet knobs come with brass fittings on the back, and they’re supposed to be easy to install yourself. Including the hardware, each knob costs $7-$10 from Pottery Knobs.

If you like to entertain in your backyard, but you always seem to end up with more people than seats, perhaps adding a few portable benches would solve that problem. You can even get benches that double as storage units. This one comes with a liner inside, so you can put ice in it at parties. Of course, it might be inconvenient for the person who’s sitting on it…

“Where’s the beer?”
“It’s under Patty.”
*shove*

Still if your guests don’t mind standing up to allow access to the ice chest, it might work just fine. The storage bench is $170 (plus $20 if you want a cushion) from Comfort House.

You’d probably feel a little exposed if you didn’t have curtains or blinds on the windows inside your home, but many people don’t bother putting curtains on the windows in their garage. After all, it’s not exactly a prime living area where you’re likely to be strolling around in your bath robe and bunny slippers. But curtains in the garage can be a smart move when it comes to home security.

If you’ve got a nice car or lots of tools and recreation equipment stored in the garage, these items can be tempting to burglars. Garages are often overlooked in people’s security plans and a thief decide to target the area, figuring it’s an easy mark. A simple way to keep from tempting burglars is to put up curtains on any windows in the garage. This keeps someone from wandering up and scoping out your vehicles and other valuables you might have stored inside. With curtains hiding the goods, for all they know you’ve got a garage full of junk.