This may seem like a strange question, but I have terrible allergies and cooking in our kitchen makes it uncomfortable for me to breath. Is there anything we can do to improve the quality of air in our kitchen? —Steve

Steve, that’s not a strange question at all. In fact, contemporary kitchens are often designed as both a space for food preparation and family interaction. So it is important to consider factors such as air quality in the kitchen.

The first place we’ll look is obvious, but what we’ll be looking at may not be. Take a look above the stove. In every home there should be some implementation of a fan to move and recirculate the air above the cooking surface. However, there are two primary methods used for this process of recirculation.

A fan and filter system uses a fan to pull the air up and away from the cooking surface and a filter to help catch particles and contaminants from the air before the air is recirculated back into the kitchen. This is a common and economical method since the process can be contained within an appliance—for instance, many hanging microwaves will have a vent/fan built in.

An exhaust system is different than the fan and filter method because there is no recirculation. Instead of filtering, the fan pulls air from the cooking area and forces it outside. Think of it like the exhaust hood in chemistry class or even the dryer vent in the laundry room. While the difference in performance is significant compared to a fan and filter system, so is the cost. Because exhausting the air requires ducts and vents, you should contact a contractor to see if its a viable option for you kitchen.

We all know how it feels to wake up with a dry nose & throat, dehydrated, ready to down  a gallon of water.  That happens to us, and we’re 60 percent water, imagine what happens to your nice wood floor.  It’s that in particular that I want to make you aware of, so you can protect and preserve that important investment.

What Dry Air Does To Wood
As the air gets dryer in your home, the same evaporation that happens outside during the summer can take place inside. According to the EPA, The optimal level of humidification in your home is anywhere between 30% – 50%.  And, as we use our furnaces and heat pumps day after day, the moisture in your home’s air slowly evaporates.

The impact of the lack of humidity can mean the boards lose uniformity, you see separation between planks, or crowning when the center of the boards swells.  Softwoods like pine and fir, which have open grains, are particularly susceptible to these issues.  One of the biggest ways to avoid these issues is proper installation from the team at The Affordable Companies.

If your hardwoods are already in place, and you’re dealing with these issues, my team at Homesense Heating | Cooling has some ideas for you to consider.  There are many great whole house humidifiers that can provide a cost effective way to reduce winter health issues, decrease heating bills, and prevent the hardwood issues we’ve talked about.

Some of the main considerations your HVAC supplier should have in mind are:

And if your shower door has lasted a long, long time, my guess is that it still mostly works fine and mostly looks (no offense) … old.

Typically a large, focal point of any bathroom, a shower area with an updated exterior appearance provides an immediate and dramatic improvement to the bathroom’s overall look and feel.

The very best looking, luxurious shower doors are the frameless variety. Made of heavy, rigid glass sometimes up to a half-inch thick, “frameless” doors have little or no metal framing and are best suited for large bathrooms with dramatic shower presentations.

Clear frameless enclosures are most popular in master bathrooms, although shading, design and etching provide endless options for a unique stylistic statement. Frameless doors are not as water-tight as other styles, but they look awesome.

Semi-frameless doors typically have no frame on the swinging or sliding door itself, but have a minimal metal frame around the door casing. They’re great in normal size bathrooms, provide a nice blend of function and style, and are easily customized.

Fully framed doors – metal all the way around the door and the casing units – are very common in older, original construction, and usually not something we use.

One other note: the more metal, the harder it is to keep a shower door clean. Also, better shower doors have “ShowerGuard” coating which prevents the pitting and ridges that lead to the cloudy, never-quite-clean look on older doors.

Replacing shower doors is something you’ll most likely want a professional to do. Even we know that the best work is done by experts, and for these unique home improvements we often partner with Mirror Concepts of Carmel (they provide bathroom mirrors and shower enclosures for the annual Indianapolis Monthly “Dream Home”).

How much longer do you want your glass shower door to last?

Autumn is a great time to make the installation.

While that “tile chill” feels great when the weather is warm, cold feet on a cold hard floor in winter is the opposite of cozy. As a unique home improvement, it is relatively easy to install sole-pleasing warmth in the room where most people have the highest likelihood of being barefoot on a bare floor.

Electric radiant heat works well under tile or stone and is considered a supplemental heat, different from the primary hydronic (water tube) floor heating which would be installed throughout a home.

It was briefly fashionable some years ago to put carpet in bathrooms, but homeowners rapidly discovered that an absorbent material in an area prone to water, chemicals, hair, mold, mildew, etc., is difficult to clean and maintain.

A hard bathroom floor surface makes more sense, and a heated hard surface provides not only additional comfort but actually fights mold and mildew.

Upgrading to a heated bathroom floor involves both electrical and flooring work. Floor heat material can be put in for $10 per square foot and up, and considering the ongoing, daily proximity of water and wiring, the install – especially the electrical – should be done by professionals.

The project involves removing the existing floor covering (tile, carpet, etc.), prepping and installing proper subfloor, laying the custom-fit heating element (looks like one of those foam under-rug anti-slip mats but with wiring like an electric blanket), liquid leveler, some wall wiring, a wall-mounted digital thermostat, and choosing new bathroom ceramic, tile, slate or stone flooring.

The job doesn’t take appreciably longer than just redoing the floor, and with 150,000 reasons to keep our feet happy, this is a crowd-pleasing, sole-satisfying (and soul-warming!) improvement.

Truth is, you can do a lot of it with mirrors.

Our friend Donna Moulder at Mirror Concepts in Carmel knows more about mirror design than anyone else I know. Entering the New Year seemed the perfect time to “reflect” with her about updating mirrors and unique home improvements.

Donna notes that the entire look of a two-sink bathroom, for example, can be changed just by replacing the (typically) enormous mirror over the twin vanity with a pair of smaller custom mirrors that can be beveled or framed or both.

Many folks have older mirrors with black blotches around the edges. “Black edge” is caused most often by ammonia in glass cleaners. Ammonia runs down the mirror, seeps into the bottom edge, and destroys the copper in the reflective “silvering” on the back. It’s the “silvering” that turns a piece of glass into a mirror.

Sealants and frames can protect a mirror or cover up “black edge,” but there’s no repairing it. Mirror Concepts recommends “Hi-Sheen” industrial foaming glass cleaner for all sorts of glass and metal surfaces. It has alcohol instead of ammonia, and Donna tells me customers buy it by the case once they’ve tried it.

Mirror Concepts warns that it’s important to consider what’s being reflected before installing large mirrors. Does the panoramic mirror over the fireplace show your guests the un-cleared dining room table or a dirty kitchen? It’s something to consider.

Too many mirrors on multiple walls – workout rooms, wardrobe closets, maybe bathrooms – can create an “infinity” effect that will make you dizzy or physically ill.

“Well-designed and well-placed mirrors, when combined with smart lighting and function, are dazzling,” Donna says. “But there’s a fine line when too much of a good thing becomes completely the wrong thing.”

And Donna knows. We’ll reflect more on this in later columns.

Sometimes it’s a whole new kitchen.

We love to get the calls! But – is it too soon to talk about this? – the waning September days of summer are an ideal time to get the unique home improvement ball rolling while holiday entertaining is still far off over the horizon.

Kitchens are the heart of the home, and they get a workout during the Thanksgiving – Hanukah – Christmas – Kwanzaa – Winter Break – New Years holiday season. At home, everyone gravitates to the kitchen, and it’s fun to share the excitement of new improvements with those you most enjoy and love to entertain.

In the specific case of countertops, we have potentially the kitchen’s single most dramatic (and quickest) appearance and entertainment enhancement. But … deciding on budget, design and materials is much easier when the clock isn’t the enemy.

Consider that there are a dozen or so general categories of countertops – granite, of course, then various ceramics, laminates, stainless steel, wood, concrete, hybrid, natural, man-made, eco-friendly materials, and more … in virtually limitless colors.

And if you’re doing the counters, better evaluate (at minimum) your sink, plumbing fixtures and backsplash. They are part of most countertop projects.

Decisions need to be made! It can be an exciting, even a fun task – and surprisingly easy – when you partner with an experienced home improvement designer to help navigate the process.

No matter what time of year, time itself is the best friend there is when it comes to managing and making decisions about budgets, designs, materials, fixtures, appliances, lighting and the overall scope of the project.

Kitchen improvements are both an expense and time commitment. Around the holidays, homeowners don’t need more of either. Plan today to not rush tomorrow.

Cabinet design, however, is essential to kitchen function.

The kitchen is typically the most equipped, stocked, busy, multi-tasked and occupied space in a home. How the cabinets are designed to facilitate the demands of “the heart of the home” – along with appliances, countertops, lighting, technology, furniture and access – can make a kitchen a happy place or a pit of despair.

Well, maybe “pit of despair” is a bit of over-acting, but I honestly do tell customers over and over, functional design is the single most important element in replacing kitchen cabinetry.

How you live, who you feed, how (and how often) you cook, how you entertain, whether you’re tall or short, mobile or limited, and what preferences you have are all part of a very fluid, human and complex kitchen equation.

Multiply that by all the available choices of cabinet materials, hardware, finishes, placement, size and even technology, while setting and keeping the project within a budget, and professional design becomes invaluable.

A properly designed kitchen will have plenty of cabinet space and style, but nailing the overall functional design is what makes new cabinets – and really the whole kitchen – a success or failure.

I got an email from a young couple who just moved into a premium, nearly-new home (built in 2007, one owner, 5,000-plus sq ft) with a spacious, richly-appointed kitchen – high-end appliances, custom hardwood cabinets, lots of space, lots of style.

Yet when they started unpacking kitchen boxes, they realized only then that the kitchen had no pantry, no place for seating, nowhere really to even stand and talk.

And these people like to entertain.

They laughed it off, but I appreciated the story. Design. Design. Design.

It needs to be right the first time.

But there are many more twists to a true shower experience upgrade. It’s a big conversation addressing a homeowner’s preferences and limits for shower head flow, function, style, energy usage, plumbing, drainage, space, and budget.

So let’s talk shower heads, and discuss unique home shower improvements. In 1992 the U.S. government established regulations limiting shower head flow to 2.5 gallons per minute at a water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch. Concerns about energy usage and water waste, one might say, washed over federal regulators’ desire for a good hot shower.

Adios, it seemed, to the joy of a full-force, under-a-warm-waterfall, suds-blasting shower. It became a bit of a plumber’s art form to both follow the regulations and allow consumers to shower as they please. Green is good, but so is a therapeutic shower.

Enter the multiple-head shower fixture, popular in high-end residential construction. If one can afford the extra hot water and manage the drainage, the rules allow 2.5 gallons per minute per shower head. More shower heads equals more water.

Diana Dinges, the cheerful and energetic bath fixtures expert at Ferguson Bath, Kitchen and Lighting in Carmel, notes that “His and Hers” showers (with separate heads and controls on two ends of a shower stall, likely with a body spray and hand held nozzle as well) are very popular.

Affirming that “the fixtures available today are fabulous,” Dinges adds that energy-efficient tankless water heaters help keep high-volume showers “green,” and thermostatic faucets lend comfort by separately managing temperature and volume.

Talking about a great shower is never quite as good as the real thing, and in the unique home improvement market, few experiences compare to a true shower upgrade.

You know … the drawer below the oven? The one with round steel cookware jammed into a square, flat steel drawer whose handle is just a few knee-creaking, back-breaking inches off the floor?

Sure … the drawer sits there innocently enough until one attempts to retrieve the frying pan, which is underneath three sizes of nested saucepans piled next to a stack of lids where rarely is the one you need on top.

Down low you go and … crash, clang, ping (thud) and bang! Balance and patience are tested in the multi-step fishing expedition. Unneeded pans are pulled out, lids are shuffled, random cookware is scattered on the floor … and then re-stacked and re-stuffed. And why does the drawer never open quite far enough to simply lift the stew pot out of the back?

The pans rattle when the drawer opens, and clatter when it shuts.

There’s got to be a better way … and believe me, there is.

Modern kitchen technology offers great solutions for cookware storage.

Comfortable, accessible, waist-level, compartmentalized drawers make the pan retrieval process peaceful and quiet. Their rubber or silicon lining protects expensive cookware and muffles noise. Nearly invisible, ultra-quiet self-opening and self-closing bins are available, with light-as-a-feather, strong-as-an-ox, and quiet-as-a-mouse glides and supports (Google “TandemBox” or “Blumotion”)

Sometimes there is merit in keeping all clutter out of sight. Other times, eye-popping displays of handsome pans hanging on sturdy hooks add homey warmth and cooking utility like nothing else.

When modern design combines function, space, technology and style … Presto! A clatter-free kitchen!

Our holiday wish is that in your kitchen, the loudest noise is the conversation and laughter of family and friends.

If you’re a home seller and your kitchen is functional but a bit long of tooth, let’s talk about some of the smartest ways to make the kitchen help sell your home.

First … ask an expert. Each home is different, each kitchen has unique “qualities” only you as a homeowner know, and each buyer responds to different value triggers. But here are some things to consider.

A kitchen designer is best able to see and hear your unique kitchen story and turn it into maximized kitchen value on resale. For discussion’s sake, let’s ballpark a kitchen that’s 10-15 years old, the appliances, electrical, plumbing, lighting and décor are dated but functional, and you want to bring your home up to the high side of neighborhood comps.
The biggest factor is how the fixtures and finishes look and how they relate to the house value. For example, if the house was worth $500K and it has white vinyl cabinets that were a bargain basement at one time, replace them even if they function perfectly.

If the cabinets fit the value of the house and are presentable, I’d recommend dressing them up with new counters, tile splash, sink, faucet and possibly matching trim. The idea is to use the best combination of existing materials paired with new to give the kitchen an updated look. “Ho hum” is not a good option.

It’s a definite plus to have granite counters but in some homes they might be overly exotic and not return the value. Few buyers pick an entire home just because there is granite in the kitchen.

Paint and hardware (knobs and pulls) are probably the cheapest route, while new flooring – not cheap – can dramatically improve the overall look and feel of a home.

A designer can evaluate your existing kitchen and tell you the best route to a smart pre-sale redo.