Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

When was the last time you got a good talking to from your smoke detector? What? Yours only shrieks and beeps at you? Well, that can be jarring. Here’s an alternative option:

Onelink’s carbon monoxide and smoke detector comes equipped with a voice that tells you the type and location of danger in your home. Also, if you have multiple smoke detectors in your house (which I’ll assume you do, unless it’s a very small home), these models can wirelessly communicate with each other so that when one alarm sounds they all do.

Setup is supposed to be easy. Just insert the two included AA batteries and the unit walks and talks you through the set-up process.

$99.99 from SmartHome:

ONELink Carbon Monoxide and Smoke Detector with Voice

Pineapples are a fine fruit, but I’m not sure that explains how frequently they show up in fixtures and furnishings for the home. Remember the pineapple chandelier? The pineapple post caps for your deck? And of course the pineapple trash can cover? (Who writes about all these crazy things anyway? Ahem…)

Well, here’s another pineapple inspired piece for the home. This outdoor porch light is part of the Plantation Collection (plantation as in ode to pineapples) from Hinkley Lighting. It’s available in burnished brass, copper bronze and pearl bronze, and as the merchant says, it’s certain to be a unique piece that doesn’t look like the outdoor lighting other folks in your neighborhood are featuring (I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s good or bad).

Hinkley Lighting

Old-fashioned tin ceiling tiles can give a lot of character to your kitchen, especially if you live in a historical home and are looking to emulate traditional architectural details, but there’s no rule that says they can only be used above your head. Tin tiles can add punch to backsplashes, wainscoting, walls, fireplaces, or just about anywhere you can imagine.

In this picture from Valley Tin Works, the tiles create a unique, custom look on the backside of the kitchen peninsula, a spot where you would usually just see (forgettable) wood.

For ideas on how to incorporate tin into your home, you might want to check out the company’s blog on the Art of Tin.

Wine refrigerators are great, but most of them are designed to store unopened bottles on their sides. Once you open a bottle, you’re stuck balancing it in your regular old refrigerator door until you can finish it. Who’s going to appreciate it there (when it’s hogging up space usually dedicated to the mayonnaise jar)?

This snazzy VinoView wine refrigerator is ready to come to the mayo jar’s aid. It has room for your opened bottles of wine as well as the corked ones still in storage.

A convex glass door makes space for up to four upright bottles. Even if you don’t usually have four bottles open at once, it’s a nice way to display a couple of your cooler looking favorites that haven’t been uncorked yet.

$290 gets you the 20-bottle refrigerator from the Wine Enthusiast. I may just have to put this unit on my Christmas list. (Too bad it’s only March.)

VinoView Silent 20 Bottle Wine Display Refrigerator

I love hot tubs, especially in the evenings when you can look at the stars, but if you live somewhere it rains frequently (*cough* Pacific Northwest *cough*), you’re probably thinking of covering your spa. Sitting out there and getting poured on just isn’t as fun as one might think. However, if you get a gazebo or other permanent covering structure, you’re going to douse your views of the night sky for good.

A “spa umbrella” is an alternative.

This umbrella from Leisure Concepts can be folded and rotated to the side on clear nights, then unfurled to keep your hair dry during a down pour. It attaches to the side of the hot tub for sturdiness, but can be unfastened for storage during dryer months.

Inside the umbrella are several LED lights, too, just in case you’re like me and enjoy reading in the hot tub. (Hey stargazing is fun for a while, but the entertainment value of the night sky does tend to diminish after the first 10 minutes.)

Leisure Concepts

Looking for some outdoor lighting to brighten up your yard in the evenings? I’m sure any old light set from the home and garden store will do, but if you want to install something a little more interesting, you might like these replica lighthouses.

These cute lighthouses are an homage to the real thing, but these ones are run on solar power for an eco-friendly yard. Get them by themselves or with a “keepers base.” Measurements run 17 inches high without the keepers base and 20 inches high with the keepers base, and the circumference of the lighthouse is 12 inches.

Size-wise, these lights won’t overpower your yard, but they could add a fun bit of nautical inspiration. There are several models available, and prices start at $79 from Woodcraft Cedar Furniture.

I have a confession here: I’m writing about this brownie pan because it looks cool, not because I’d ever buy one. I was the kid who, risking major yellings from mom, would cut my brownies out of the middle of the pan so as to avoid the edges (AKA crusts!). But, if you’re on the other end of the spectrum, and you like crusts and corners, then you may have to have this interesting-looking pan.

It’s designed so every brownie will get two chewy edges, yet it works with standard recipes and mixes without requiring any modifications.

In case you’re wondering if the unorthodox shape will affect cooking times and evenness of heat distribution (hey, baking brownies is a scientific undertaking), the pan’s sidewalls are patented to make sure heating is uniform.

$35 from Amazon, and it comes with a nifty lid that matches the zigs and zags of the pan.

Edge Brownie Pan

I’m not sure a dead duck, pheasant, or goose in my yard says luxury or even class, but I guess I could see getting a fake one if I had a lot of trouble with pest birds. If you’re trying to get rid of geese running rampant through your garden or noisy ducks taking over the pond you worked so hard to install as a place you could relax, then you might try this interesting form of pest control.

“This realistic dead goose decoy is placed in an”agony” posture, convincing live geese that a predator has made a fresh kill, tapping into fear and flight response in the live geese, causing them to flee the area.”

I have a feeling I’d end up startling myself (and poor visiting guests) more often than the geese, but if you’re looking for a non-chemical way to keep pest birds out, I suppose you could try this.

Oh, the product description mentions that you have to have at least two dead geese decoys and rotate them regularly (so the real geese believe the predator is still in the area and still munching geese). Hey, who said pest control was easy?

$95 gets you a two-goose kit from Birdbusters.

If you’re building a wine cellar in the basement, the fact that it’s underground may not be enough to keep your bottles cool enough, especially in hot climates. And if you live somewhere that basements aren’t popular and your wine cellar is above ground, then cooling becomes even more important (don’t worry; we’ll still let you call your storage room a wine “cellar”).

You can spend thousands of dollars buying special wine cellar cooling units (AKA air conditioning for your booze), but if you don’t have a huge space that you need to work with, you can find a decent unit in the hundreds of dollars.

The Breezaire WK-1060 is perfect for cooling a room up to 140 square feet. Just set the desired temperature, and rest easy knowing your wines are being properly cared for. You will want to make sure your wine cellar is sufficiently insulated for maximum efficiency.

Some extra features you can get for the Breezaire cooling unit are digital temperature controls and “bottle probes” which will actually set the temperature based on the liquid itself.

$645 gets you the base unit from the Wine Enthusiast:

Breezaire Wine Cellar Cooling Units

Looking to reface your fireplace with something more interesting than brick or stone?

Metal can be a great choice for the sleek, clean lines of modern design, but stainless steel tends to look cold, which isn’t necessarily the feeling you want for a living area. On the other hand, copper is a simple but handsome choice for a fireplace surround, and its warm hues can make it perfect for an inviting family or living room.

In its polished state, copper is an orange-gold color. As the metal oxidizes, it gradually develops a rich, monochromatic patina. Some prefer the latter for its feel of age, but you can also apply special copper cleaners to keep it looking shiny and new.

The fireplace surround shown here is made from copper sheeting, and was created by Chicago-based Soupcan, a company that works with concrete, copper, and zinc for household creations (especially countertops).