Renovation Bells & Whistles by Baruch Tenenbaum

About

Renovation Bells & Whistles by Baruch Tenenbaum When building or renovating a home, you have an opportunity to make your living space into a place you can truly enjoy. You may want to consider adding modern features that will increase your comfort and enhance the aesthetics of your home. Since you’re already going to be opening floors or adding drywall, here are a few suggestions of additional ways to treat yourself. UNDERFLOOR HEATING If it was good enough for the Romans, it could be good enough for you! Radiant floor heating creates a comfortable radiant heat, far superior to the heat from A/C units or space heaters, and much more energy-efficient than radiators—without taking up an inch of space in your home. Warmth is supplied by hot water tubes or electric wires buried under the floor tiles. The only visible evidence of the unit is a thermostat/control panel for each of the zones where the heating is located. Usually each bedroom is controlled individually, and the salon/kitchen/hallway are grouped together as one zone. You can also set up a system of timers for each of the zones in your house. As the tubes or wires heat up, they radiate heat upwards and warm objects they strike, which in turn radiate that captured heat. Compare this to conventional convection heating where the air is heated and then circulated in the room: you feel warm because the air is warmer. However, hot air rises, so you might experience the top half of a room being toasty warm, or even stuffy, while you find yourself needing a pair of extra socks against the cold air in the bottom half of the room. Radiant heat is more consistent. It rises from the bottom up, but spreads evenly over the entire floor. You will no longer need to rely on rugs or slippers to spare your feet the shock of a cold tile floor in wintertime. PLASTER (GEVES) SPOTLIGHTS You can add flair to your living room or even your bedrooms by introducing a decorative geves design. Throw in some lighting, and now it’s function