Small City Spaces

Major designers have shifted focus and dedicated time in designing furnishings that are made and highlight the use of recycled goods. These even fetch high prices and are quite functional conversation pieces. They have even put up a house made of recycled materials from window glass panes to form the walls, old used doors for the flooring and old keyboards and other computer stuff to form the walls. The project was to show that recycling can turn old things into new ones such as the said house and that it need not look old and worn. The environmentally friendly house has been conceptualized with the government even issuing tax incentives for those which are rated to be energy star compliant which uses and maximizes the use of power, heat and cooling.

Give old stuff new lives by giving them a splash of color or re-finishing them. A table you bought last year might make a good antique piece if you know how and it’s probably banged-up anyway. Get any hard object such as keys and locks and take a whack at your desk making sure they are well distributed (you can use anything hard as long as you don’t hurt yourself by using it). After a whackin’, get some sand paper and sand off ant sharp edges that might have resulted in your whacking session so you don’t get splinters. Get a fine artist brush and some dark wood stain and stain in those cracks and crevices that you’ve just made. Let the stain dry and get hold of some semi gloss varnish or natural varnish and give it a few coats. You now have an antiqued table that is sure to make you smile (even after whacking it).

In cities where space is a premium, if you live alone, try giving the room a look that reflects you. If you are the happy type, try bright vibrant colors and if you are the passionate type try darker, richer shades that reflects your character. Remember, your imagination is the limit so play around to get the look you do desire to achieve. Don�t have much for new furniture, walk around the block and look for garage sales and thrift store where you can get stuff that still works but at half the price. Weekend markets where all kinds of stuff are sold is a good place to get theme pieces that will accent your space. An antique lamp, a brass candle holder you fix onto the wall whatever you might fancy you can get in them, just remember the limited space you have for a good buy might just find it’s way back to the place it came from. If you own stuff you don�t like, get rid of it for it acts as a sort of reminder of how much you hate it everytime you see it.

An old fireplace can house a television or fit a small refrigerator within it’s cavity. Got an antique refrigerator heirloom form the old house that doesn’t work? Use it as a Television rack. Get those glass tops you mount from the sides like clamps and store away. Light plays wonders in a small room. Use mirrors and allow a lot of natural light in to make it look spacious even if it really isn’t. Want to save more space with the TV? Get those projector type ones that hang on the ceiling projecting the image onto a blank white wall, no space consumed at all? TV addict with no space, mount them on swing arms so you can turn them anyway allowing you’re to move is as you move around to cook, work and sleep.

City life has become very difficult, jobless rates on the rise and not enough jobs to go around for the millions who lost them since the economic crunch began. There are lot of simple yet very effective green tips for small city spaces such as apartments and similar spaces that can be easily upgraded to green status. Changing the bathroom fixtures with water saving fixtures that use less water or selecting water recycling sinks that sends wash water to the water tank of the commode, for use in flushing down solid waste. Read the rest of this entry »

People who want to take part in the greening of the city can do more than just having plants all over the place to ease the impact of those harsh cinder block walls. Green toilets that have wash basins on top as cover saves you a lot in terms of flushing power for the water you wash with is the same water you use to flush your toilets. Water saving toilets are also around that are more efficient than older models yet can flush even the heaviest dinners easy with more powerful jets that use half the volume of water.
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With regards to a small space indoors, try to visualize the space and what you want it to become. Then you can plan your project, by either getting stuff from somewhere else inside the house or re-using it into something totally new. Or you could opt to buy new stuff for your personal space. Try getting everything on paper, measure the length, width and height of the space and measure it out on a piece of paper (graphing paper works best). Next, measure out the pieces of furniture you intend to use and also lay them out on pieces of paper that are to scale with the room you just drew. That way you can move the pieces without having to break your back even before you do get onto working on the said space.

If you have a house that is quite aged and has some history, chances are that under all that vinyl or carpet is a nice set of wooden floors boards. You can have them re-finished by a contractor or get to do them a section at a time on your weekend off’s. If they look too damaged to give you a lovely floor, there are always a lot of those laminated floor panels that come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. They are simply placed over the existing flooring with glue and they usually have interlocking edges that prevents them from separating up due to weather. Laminated wooden floors are also quite durable and will withstand years of water and sun as long as they are cleaned and treated well.