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An awning, when installed over a window, a terrace or a balcony, provides protection against direct sunlight, wind drafts, rain or ice, without shutting out the surrounding view. The view of the house is enhanced when its doors and windows are covered with awnings of an appropriate color and style. Terraces, decks, and balconies can be converted into large covered areas that become airy attractive additional rooms with the proper use of awnings.

Metal awnings are usually made of aluminum, copper, iron, or steel, depending upon the architectural requirements of the building. Usually, vertical metal panel awnings and window or door awnings are of solid, stationary construction of strong ribbed heavy gauge materials, for all-weather durability against wind, rain, and sun. Depending on the individual shape and configurations, the awnings may or may not have distinguishable sides. Aluminum awnings are available in solid or striped styles and in several attractive colors. Metal awnings are available in several distinct types, depending on the functional requirements of the individuals.

Horizontal window panel or louvered awnings have an angled slat design with space between slats that enable the person inside the house to see out but prevent anyone from seeing in. Overlapping slat design also allows the sunlight to filter in indirectly. Aluminum slats are usually made of heavy gauge with a baked-on enamel finish that resists chipping, cracking, and peeling.

Retractable or roll-up metal awnings are usually constructed from flexible horizontal slats without any visible space between slats when the awning is in open position. They are controlled with a hand cranking device or cord pull. Storm awnings are specially made of heavy-duty materials and can be pulled down to cover and protect the entire window during a storm or worse, a riot.

Aluminum door awnings are designed for installation over the door to help keep stairs, entries, and landings free from excessive rainwater. They have to be installed with enough head clearance to allow the door to open. Copper, iron, or steel rigid type awnings are excellent for protecting doors and windows from the elements.

It’s easy to get carried away with decorating the interior of your dollhouse, but there is far more to bringing real life down to miniature size than what goes in your house. The exterior of your dollhouse can make your scene look complete. Paying careful attention to detail and spending a little time on the outside of your dollhouse can turn it into a work of art.

There are limitless possibilities as to what you can do to enhance the exterior appearance of your dollhouse. A great place to begin is by designing and building a garden, or by creating some landscaping effects. Not only will this give you the opportunity to utilize your design skills in a different way, but will now have an excuse to learn how to make furniture for a dollhouse garden. You will find a great deal of satisfaction as you hone and prune your miniature garden to create an idyllic outdoor setting for your dollhouse to set in.

Trying to replicate real life outdoors is just as important as the realism of the interior. Many miniature collectors like to have outdoor spaces that look lived in, such as a backyard scattered with tiny child’s games or a small swing set. A pet or two may make the dollhouse look like somewhere a typical family lives and bring a sense of belonging to the scene.

There are certain features that add a greater sense of reality to the exterior of your dollhouse. A dollhouse car, a mailbox, trees, and a driveway are all features that may not be missed when you don’t have them, but that add so much richness and depth to the scene one you’ve added them. You may find yourself wondering how you ever let the display go for so long without them. The difference that they make in your miniature collection will be striking.

Some enthusiasts choose to change the exterior d?cor of their dollhouse seasonally. In the same way that you would decorate the exterior of your home for the holidays, you can come up with creative ways to decorate your dollhouse. When you roll the barbeque grill out onto your patio for the summer, do the same with your miniatures. Patio sets and metal doll lawn furniture are other seasonal additions that give your dollhouse a sense of reality. It may seem slightly out of place if you have your dollhouse designed in a warm and cozy wintertime theme and it’s ninety degrees outside.

However you choose to utilize your creative abilities on the exterior of your dollhouse, keep in mind that there isn’t really a right or wrong way to do it. As long as you make sure the exterior scale matches the interior scale you can decorate the exterior however you want without ruining the integrity of the display.

Designing your apartment based on Zen principles can give you a more relaxed and peaceful state of mind. Though you may not be familiar with the terms and quotes Zen masters recite, you can still give your home a slice of nirvana. Here are some tips you can follow in order to have that mystic eastern feel in your home.

What is Zen?

Zen can be very hard to understand for those who have just encountered it because they will usually encounter paradoxical questions such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” and phrases such as “To become the Buddha, you must kill the Buddha” which can easily confuse you. So what exactly is Zen then? Unfortunately, the ambiguity of Zen does not allow it to be pinpointed with a specific definition.

First of all, Zen is not a religion. This is because they do not have priests, scriptures, and dogmas that guide or determine what a Zen monk should do. Second, it is not a philosophy. Zen does not have any systematic form of presenting their ideas unlike your typical western philosophies. The best way to describe what Zen is that it is a state of mind that heightens our awareness to the here and now without relying fully on our opinions and ideas.

Zen interior decorating uses the harmonious interaction of space and form within your home or apartment. This gives you a more soothing and relaxed feel, giving you the great amount of rest which you deserve.

The Zen approach to interior decorating promotes minimalism. Zen uses the bare essentials within a dwelling and each item in the house has a specific use. The best colors to use to have that Zen touch in your home are earth tones such as brown. Lighting is also important for a Zen home, and this is achieved by letting more sunlight through large windows.

By letting the principles of Zen on light, space and function interact harmoniously within your home, you could have a happy home that is in-sync with nature and the world around you.

French Country is a popular home design style nowadays, both exterior and interior. This article addresses the French Country home design style on the exterior.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

Do you think that French Country, or the effected Country French, is a home design style? We’d say, “Not exactly.”

French Country is a range of home design styles -

1. From an early French farmhouse to not quite a French embassy

2. From residential design styles, including but not limited to Rustic French, Rural French, French Provincial, French Eclectic, Chateau (French version of the English Manor House), and the namesake French Country

3. From in-between Cajun style and Louisiana Plantation style

4. From the time period in America bracketed roughly by WWI and WWII

Comment: There is a stylistic kinship of sorts with other home home styles that are casually (and incorrectly) taken as singular and not as a set. For example, American Victorian is a/k/a (Victorian, in each instance) 2nd Empire, Gothic, Italianate, Queen Anne, Folk, Stick, Shingle, and Richardsonian (Romanesque). Or for example, Southern Colonial ranges from Warburton House (1680) in James City County, VA or Christ’s Cross (a/k/a Cris Cross) (circa 1690) in New Kent County, VA and simpler, all the way up to Bacon’s Castle (1650) in Surry County, VA and Stratford Hall (1725) in Stratford, VA [noting that other examples abound either standing, or artistically captured earlier-on or reproduced, the author having chosen these for their geographical and temporal proximity, Post-Medieval English roots, and breadth of character].

You’ll find beaucoups publications about French Country on Amazon.com and at your local bookstore. To wit, along with a slew of other design-oriented books, a while back we ordered Provencal Inspiration: Living The French Country Spirit by Home Planners, and immediately received a notice that Amazon’s out of stock. French Country is back bigtime. As another, more recent example, our just completed custom house plans in French Country Style for a property in Asheville, NC will be offered later this year at $4+ million [and the facades really do have a rural sense to them].

French Country style reminds us more than most of Craftsman style – multiple roof slopes; windows of different sizes and heights; broad overhangs and soffits; knee braces and other exposures of construction structure; front-facing gables; a mix of gable, clipped gable, shed, and hip roofs; natural materials; masonry exterior, especially stone; a mix of finish clads; restraint in exterior accessories and adornments. French Country style can be comfortable and inviting in its more relaxed presentations.

However, French Country home design departs from the Arts & Crafts Movement in several respects: high-peaked, steeply sloped roofs at pitches way above Craftsman’s; a refinement in exterior trim particularly in rakes; an understatement of observable structure; gutter systems sometimes with gussied-up copper appointments; curved rooflines to accommodate steep slopes, larger windows, unpierced ceilings and interior walls; broad soffits; arches and curve-topped dormers, elaborated ironwork; balconies; turrets; Classic columns; masonry accessories in relief, some interest in symmetry, etc. Simplicity and elegance.

There are ways to botch French Country home design, e.g., hold rooflines to one pitch to assure consistent soffit depth and single-level eaves – in the name of cheap, easy, and stylistically insensitive; apply Corinthian columns in lieu of, say, Tuscan, or flute the Tuscan columns; confuse French styling with English, unbalance vertical and horizontal to favor horizontal; not mullion grouped windows, not apply true French casement windows; use plastic shutters, S-dog the shutters, not apply true French doors, asphalt shingle the roof, insist on broad facia and frieze boards, etc.

And there are ways to develop French Country home plans by using – contemporary technologies, among them, e.g., cost-efficient cultured stone, particularly in its fieldstone representations – perhaps by Owens Corning; and by using artistry, e.g., the half-round copper gutter systems of A. B. Raingutters, Inc., Classic Gutter Systems, L.L.C., the gas or electric luminaires of Charleston Lighting Company or the aluminum wrought-like railing of Southeaster Architectural Metals, the garage doors of the Carriage House Door Company, and the like.

French Country style encourages applying design principles of excellent residential design, such as, Russell Versaci’s Creating a NEW OLD HOUSE: Yesterday’s Character For Today’s Home, The Taunton Press, 2003, and Jacobson, Silverstein, and Winslow’s Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design, The Taunton Press, orig. 1941, reprint 2002; and, separately, sacred geometry. Here again, you can embrace and succeed or disregard and fail in the design effort.

Take, for example, the layering and other arrangement of finish clad, notably in steeply sloped gable ends. In Versaci’s realm of signaled, or suggested, age, it is the wise designer who specifies supposedly older, heavier (looking) materials – fieldstone and the like – from grade up to, say, L1, and then some lighter material higher up. Such arrangement and layering would be particularly in-keeping with more steeply sloped roof gable ends which would most unlikely be originally run up 2 stories under high, hard to support roof pitches. That is, L2 should and would appear to be of more recent vintage than L1, and presenting a story of age without such attention to detail is to send the gift horse packing.

Finally, in the vernacular of Patterns of Home, again for example, the French Country style readily lends itself to creating a courtyard, or “Creating Rooms, Outside”, and to dormered space demonstrating design keystones of “Refuge and Outlook” under a “Sheltering Roof,” particularly if the rooflines are low-profiled and trimmed more simply on L2 than on L1.