Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

Okay, gardeners, here’s a gadget for you:

A mold that lets you grow heart-shaped cucumbers in your garden at home.

“If you grow cucumbers at home, or want to give the perfect gift to a gardener friend, the Heart-shaped Cucumber Molds will let you grow your young cucumbers into perfect heart shapes over time. Have unique salads for dinner parties and special occasions, or use your imagination to create something else entirely!”

The three-piece set comes with instructions (though they are in Japanese, so you gardeners better brush up on your linguistics) and costs $59.

From the Japan Trend Shop via Greenhead

Cement might not be the first material that comes to your mind when you think of colorful flooring options, but these cement tiles from Granada Tiles might just dash your preconceptions.

Cement tiles, in addition to being available in just about any color you can imagine, make for a practical flooring solution. Durable, easy to maintain, and eco-friendly (The folks at Granada use natural pigments and green processes to create their tiles) are just a few of the words that can be used to describe the material.

I’m particularly fond of hard floors for the additional benefit of being friendly to allergy sufferers. Unlike carpets, which–no matter how often you clean–harbor pet dander, mites, mold, mildew, etc., bare floors are easy to keep free of potential allergens. Oh, and they feel really nice and cool underfoot in warm climates too (this comes to mind since it’s 100 degrees out as I write this post).

If blue isn’t exactly the color you imagine in your living room or outdoor space, you might want to browse the company’s gallery for colorful tile ideas:

http://www.granadatiles.com

Sometimes, when I’m looking for ideas on things to blog about, I’ll browse the home and garden or home improvement bestseller lists at Amazon, and that’s where I stumbled across the Beer Tender home beer tap from Heineken and Krups.

Though I’m more of a wine gal myself, I have to admit that a home beer tap sounds fun for entertaining (or just enjoying yourself!).

“The B90 BeerTender is a stylish, high-tech countertop beer draughting system that uses the Heineken DraughtKeg patented carbonator pressure technology to ensure an authentic draught beer at home. An innovative ultra quiet chilling technology maintains the beer at the perfect serving temperature. The BeerTender and DraughtKeg connect through a patented interface. Simply snap on the disposable draught beer tube (included in box or sold separately) onto the DraughtKeg, insert into the BeerTender and serve. The BeerTender:”

The home tap keeps your beer a chilly 38 degrees, and don’t worry about finishing it all off in a night, because beer will stay fresh for up to 30 days. Techy folks will enjoy the digital display that shows volume and temperature (after all, it’s not enough to know the beer is supposed to be 38 degrees; you must see the readout that proves it’s 38 degrees).

Yours for $350:

Heineken and Krups Home Beer Tap

If you have one or more dogs in the family, chances are your home improvements and purchases take them into account too. Pampered pets are hardly uncommon these days, so if your pooch actually sleeps in a dog bed (mine prefers to sleep in the human bed… under the covers even), then perhaps a luxury dog bed is in order?

This one is called the “Italian Gate” and is made by Jakey BB, a shop that believes in green practices. “We believe in recycling and many of the fabrics used to construct the outer covers are made from vintage clothing- beautiful woolens, cottons, silks, cords and unusual designer fabrics that we’ve found. We figure if you once enjoyed that lovely wool jacket, so will Fido.” Also the inner cushion is made from 100% cluster fibers made from recycled soda bottles.

The wooden bed box is crafted from plywood/white wood and features custom-turned decorative feet that are also made of hardwood. The cushion covering zips off and is machine washable.

$400 gets you this fine luxury dog bed.

It can be hard to enjoy your outdoor living space when the sun is shining into your eyes or just radiating too much heat at you for comfort. Even if you have an awning, the late afternoon sun will probably sneak through.

Outdoor blinds are a way to control the amount of sunlight reaching your deck, patio, balcony, etc., and if you choose a durable material such as bamboo, you know they’ll hold up well over the years.

The Radiance Laguna Bamboo Blinds are designed to roll up, so it’s easy to use them when you need them, and store them up and out of the way, when you prefer the view of the yard. They can also be used indoors.

Starting around $20:

Outdoor Bamboo Blinds

Painted floors were very popular back in the day, and according to this history of the practice, painting floors pre-dated the painting of walls by quite a bit.

“Stenciling of floors was a way to simulate woven carpet, floorcloths and parquet floors without that expense. The whole was protected with varnish which, over time, mellowed to a rich yellow/brown causing the black, red, green and white paints to appear as the finest inlay of variegated woods set in background colors of yellow ochre, grey, “Indian red”, and green.”

If you have an older home and want to create historically authentic flooring, painting those wooden floorboards might be a cheerful way to do it. And of course there are no rules that say this can only be done in older homes.

You can have someone come in and paint your floors by hand, or you can get stencil patterns to do it yourself.

The sliding barn door look isn’t for every home, but they’re quite popular in those industrial loft kind of spaces.

You can find them made from all sorts of materials, but it’s hard to beat good old fashioned wood. And if you’re a fan of using reclaimed materials, you might appreciate that this barn door was made from reclaimed oak staves, once used in the wine-aging process at California wineries.

It’s the work of furniture maker Cliff Spencer, and if you take a peek at his site, he’s got office furniture, tables, and entry way cubbies also made from wine oak staves.

Maybe if you order a piece, he’ll through in a bottle of wine as well?

In ye olden outdoor-furnishing days, you were somewhat limited to your choices when it came to tables, benches, chairs, and the like. Would you like wicker or plastic? Or for a cornucopia of color and variety, you could get those folding lounge chairs with the metal frames and the little plastic slats… They did have that tendency to rust in the rain though.

Anyway, today there are a lot more options when it comes to outdoor tables and other backyard and pool furnishings. For the color-starved girly girl, this pink cocktail table might be of interest. Though it’s made of metal, it’s not heavy or clunky.

“The Botanist cocktail tables are created from quarter inch aluminum that is cut, formed and welded. Each piece is then powder-coated which allows them to be used indoor or outdoors without worry. Aluminum makes the products light and easy to move without sacrificing durability. The botanical pattern is cut with a precise water jet process, leaving the edges crisp and beautiful.”

Alas, pink and botanical don’t come cheaply. The table runs $1,900 from Design Public (though $25 of that is donated to a breast cancer awareness organization).

Hm, do chickens go under the pet category or, since you’re probably keeping them for eggs, maybe into the kitchen category? Or maybe chickens just defy blog categorization.

While you may think of keeping chickens as kind of a farmlands thing, there seems to be a trend toward having them in urban areas too. I know this has made the papers several times in Seattle in recent years. But if you’re going to have modern, urban chickens, then you’ll need a coup worthy of your yard in the city or suburbia.

Enter the Eglu.

“The eglu is a modern home for up to 4 medium size chickens or up to 6 bantams and is a stylish and practical addition to any backyard. Designed to be the house that the chickens themselves would choose, through its clever design the eglu also makes light work of the chores leaving you more time to enjoy these wonderful pets.”

And these modern coups are available in bright and cheery colors too. You can even order your eglu with chickens and feed included–everything you need to get set up housing your own chickens and collecting your own farm fresh (backyard fresh?) eggs every morning.

$500 from Omelet USA (via the Green Upgrader)

One easy way to brighten up your yard and add curb appeal to the front of your home is with something you need anyway: an address plaque or sign.

If all you’ve got are some faded old numbers on the curb, it’s definitely time for an upgrade. Not only does a good, reflective address plaque help the pizza guy find your house at night, but it’s vital for rescue vehicles in the event of an emergency.

And as long as you’re getting a new plaque or sign, you might as well get something you’ll really love. We’ve looked at a few ideas before (stainless steel house numbers and nature-inspired twig and vine house numbers for example), but you may dig something custom made.

The customized reflective address sign shown here was done by Classic Address Signs.

The all metal design isn’t supposed to rust, and you can choose from three fonts and reflective white or gold lettering. The signs are visible up to 1,000 feet at night, so the pizza boy shouldn’t have any trouble finding your house.