Author Archives: schatzi

Top Tips For Choosing Your Door Handles

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As we all know door handles are used to open and close doors, that’s pretty much a given, but what most of us don’t realise is how much they play a part in the styling of our home. Your door handles are there to decorate your rooms and doors in a subtle and delicate manner. The style of your handles gives your home a touch of character and quality and so it is important that you choose a design that suits you and your home. You wouldn’t rush out and buy the first colour of paint you came across for your living room walls and so you shouldn’t go out and buy the first style of door handles you come across either, take your time and browse the available options, you’ll be glad you made the effort.

Here are some tips and hints to help you choose the perfect handles for your home:

Stick To Your Budget – most people when they decorate their house have a budget in mind of how much they want to spend on paint, furniture, and carpets, this budget should lend to your door handles as well. Think about how many doors you have and how many door handles you are going to need and split the budget up wisely. Once you have a budget in mind this will make it easier as you’ll have a price range to search within.

Door Handle Privacy – when choosing your door handles you need to consider whether some of your doors will require a lock such as on the bathroom doors and on some bedrooms. More than likely you will want a lock on the master bedroom door but not on your childrens bedroom doors if they are quite young, or perhaps if they are at the teenager stage they are demanding one! Generally speaking most people have a door handle with a lock for any bathrooms in the house to give a sense of privacy. It is important to keep in mind when purchasing your door handles which doors will require a lock and which will not.

Keep In Style With Your Home – of course there is no right or wrong style when it comes to door handles, but there are styles that will suit your home better than others. Take a look around your house and your rooms and pinpoint your style and taste, do you prefer silver or gold, do you like plain straight lines or shapes, do you prefer two colours or one colour? Once you have a pretty good idea of your home’s sense of style this will make it easier choosing handles to match.

Goal Oriented Design

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Web design is not art. It involves a whole collection of different skills including typography, layout and art.

To combine all these elements of web design and achieve your desired results, your design team should guide you through each aspect of the design, always working towards your sites key goals.

Goal oriented design is the combination of your key goals and our web design process. A good design house will not simply design a user interface that looks good. They will design interfaces that will help you accomplish your key objectives.

Many websites out there look fantastic, but often fall short in their intended function. Design styles are of course important, but a good we design company will keep the implementation of those techniques and styles focused and relevant. For example, a blog isn’t a marketing brochure; so they would focus their attention on usability and readability rather than style. Similarly, a promotional website for a computer game would feature graphics and styles that portray a specific feel and style; the aesthetics would be very important here.

When designers create a look and feel that is currently fashionable without any thought of how it will function, the result is unlikely to be very effective.

Web design is all about crafting an interface that communicates function, is usable and accessible and portrays the right emotion and feeling. Effective web design needs all of these elements to be in tune with the goals of the site, and in conjunction with the objectives behind the website. Strategic design is all about identifying those goals and using them to guide your design.

The main gist of goal oriented design is simply common sense, we’re making something for a specific purpose; so naturally it should fulfil that purpose through its design. The key is to not lose track of the goals, and end up with something that is beautiful but ultimately doesn’t work. Without goal oriented design, design agencies easy fall into the trap of implementing the latest design trends just because they look attractive or they may shape a section of their website to resemble another website that they really like without first thinking about why they are doing it or how it fits in with the clients purpose and goals.

A web design company will avoid falling into these traps by thinking through every design decision they make. Why is this button this colour? Why are we using tabs? Why should we use icons here? The design process should be very focused, and constantly have the product or organization they’re representing in mind. Thinking about the target audience and your brand. What will work in this context? What is expected? How can we use design to best fulfill the website’s purpose? Good design houses don’t don’t just build beautiful websites, they make websites that really work.

Brighten Up Your Walls with Decorating Ideas

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If you have recently moved home or if you are thinking of redecorating, one of the main things that may need doing is decorating your walls. The walls are the biggest focus in any room and if they are left bare they will make the home feel bare and uninviting.

So, just how can you decorate your walls then? Well, there are plenty of decorating ideas you could try!

Decorating Ideas

There are two ways in which you can mainly decorate your walls and those are:

o Wallpaper

o Paint

Wallpaper used to be the main form of wall decoration in the past, but these days it seems a lot more modern to use paint. It is all really down to personal preference as to which form of decorating you use and both styles will create a different look overall.

Wallpaper is still available and there are quite a lot of different styles to choose from. Whether you want something smooth and simply pastel colored or whether you want something with a little more texture and a more patterned look, there will be something to suit your tastes.

Paint has also moved on and there is quite a large variety to choose from. There are a range of different makes and the prices which you can expect to pay will determine which brands you go for, but there is something to suit all budgets overall.

When it comes to choosing the colors again it is all down to personal taste but you should try and personalize it to your own tastes as much as possible.

Personalizing the Walls

In order to personalize the walls you can use things such as murals and pictures in order to suit your tastes. Murals can look really good if you take your time and use the right materials. However, done wrong and they can look tacky. So, always be careful when personalizing your walls as yes you do want them to look nice and personal to you, but you do not want them to put potential visitors off visiting you!

You can also use borders to help separate the walls and create a sophisticated and warm look to the home. Borders can look both modern and elegant and again as with wallpaper, they come in a variety of different styles and colors.

Finally, when thinking of decorating ideas for the walls, you should also think about pictures and the overall style of the room. Could you place a nice clock, picture or mirror on the wall to make it look more homely? Cover all angles and most importantly be sure that you are happy with the overall design before putting it into practice.

As-Built Construction Assets: Key to Future Planning and Facilities Management

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Preparing ‘as-built’ drawings and models is certainly one of the most crucial requirements of any design-build project. These final sets of construction assets validates how the contractor built the structure including all the changes and modifications that were made in the process. The finalised drawings and models are passed on from the contractors to the building owners and property managers.

The set of as-built drawings and models, though underestimated and neglected, broadly serve a dual purpose. Firstly, the as-built drawings and models act as a guidebook to the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) firms that are contracted for renovation and refurbishment of an existing structure. So, the time, cost, and resources that would have been utilised during pre-renovation survey are saved. Secondly, they help owners and facilities managers to conveniently undertake maintenance and refurbishment activities besides helping them during emergency situations e.g. for rapid evacuation.

Whereas data-rich as-built 3D building information models have obvious benefits over 2D drawing sets, the decision to choose one over the other mainly involves factors, such as the scale of the project, owner’s preference, and the design-build teaming structure. The owners of relatively small building projects may prefer 2D as-built drawings of an existing building, prepared by a technician after collecting accurate data on site. On the contrary, large-scale design-build and renovation projects may require BIM-driven as-built 3D models.

Assuming that the project in question has not had a BIM model for the design process which is then updated during the as-built stage of the project, there are two typical ways of preparing as-built BIM models. Firstly, using the as-built drawings and other construction drawing sets as the starting point, 3D BIM models can be prepared using applications such as Autodesk Revit. The second method involves the Scan to BIM technique where point cloud data of the structures. This point cloud data is then converted into an intelligent BIM model using tools such as Cloudworx and Scan to BIM applications such as Revit.

The as-built drawings and BIM models serve as a comprehensive reference tool for owners and property managers. They benefit from these as-built drawings and models in the following ways:-

• The finalised as-built construction assets make future project planning, including renovations, extensions, and redevelopments, convenient and cost effective for the owners.

• Since the as-built drawings and BIM models contain complete details related to dimensions, fabrication, erection, elevations, sizing, materials, location, and mechanical/electrical/plumbing utilities, the owners can use this data and conveniently manage facilities within budget.

• The owners can use these as-built assets to resolve disputes regarding insurance claims. In case of a massive loss due to extreme disasters, the insurance company will require extensive documentation, including the as-built drawings and models to support your claims.

As the as-built drawings and models are prepared by combining the drawings/models of all the building services, the owners and property managers can schedule maintenance operations of the building’s MEP (M&E) systems in a timely manner.