August 1998

Between friends

Topping It Off

Using the same old rods and rings above your windows is so predictable. Broaden your horizons with a clever topper that makes a style statement for the entire room.

Wallpaper's New Look

Get up close. Run your hands over it. With all the new textures, artful details, and fool-the-eye finishes in wall coverings these days, you have to look twice to tell if it's paper.

Sizing It Right

No matter how much you know about a subject, you can't go wrong brushing up on the fundamentals now and then. Decorating Class, a new occasional feature, does just that. It teaches you some of the basic principles of design-- things like balance and proportion, mixing patterns, and getting color right-- in a way that's easy to understand and to apply. Today's lesson: size. Whether you're picking out a coffee table, a wallpaper, or a chandelier, size really does matter. Follow these quick tips and you can't fail. And don't worry, you won't be tested on this later.

Cupboards Galore and more

Jan and Mike O'Brien needed a new kitchen, but not just any kitchen would do. Both avid cooks with limited time at home, they wanted a space where a working couple could collaborate on meals. And because their plan called for opening the kitchen into the great-room of their Tucson home, the O'Briens knew they had to minimize clutter with at-hand but out-of-sight storage.

Helpful Books

The Kids' Paper Air Plane Book is a 160-page softcover guide from Workman Publishing filled with everything needed to fold and fly paper airplanes. Included are a pilot's license, a full-color pullout airport poster, a flight log, a field guide to a real-life airport, and instructions for building a three-dimensional airport from common household items.

Happy Everything

You'll always be buttoned up and seasonally correct when you display the appropriate sentiments on this Happy Everything Sampler. The title and 3 motifs (shown above) plus 10 additional motifs (shown below and above right)-- 13 motifs in all-- are cute and colorful and can each be quickly stitched up in an afternoon or evening.

Design It Yourself

Architectural design software once served only professionals. But with today's more powerful personal computers, computer-aided design (CAD) has found favor with homeowners and hobbyists.

Make your house young again ...

A home glows with youth when it is first built. Decades later, the luster may have faded-- or fallen victim to a misguided "improvement" or two-- but you can bring it back, just like the six families whose exterior fix-up entries won top prizes in our Home Improvement Contest. (For specifics on porch size, scale, and detail, see "Planning a Porch" on page 58.)

Patio Patterns

Reblooming Irises

When summer's lush greenness gives way to the sunset hues of autumn, you'd expect the garden to overflow with asters and chrysanthemums. But irises? How did this flouncy flower of spring transform itself into an autumn beauty? Obviously, these aren't ordinary irises. These are reblooming irises, and they're changing the look of fall gardens.

Cape Cod Garage

Joan and Robert Brown's garage isn't attached to their house, but that doesn't prevent it from having a strong visual connection. To make the side-by-side structures look at home together, the couple used similar designs, then built them with identical materials.

It Takes a Villager

The minivan with the highest level of owner loyalty gets a makeover and a second sliding door. Side air bags come later.

NEW NEIGHBORHOODS, OLD TREES

Charging up your mortgage

"Green" Lawn Care

Organic Standards Regrown

Foods grown with municipal waste, treated with irradiation, or genetically engineered can't be labeled "organic" after all.

Keeping Fathers Involved

"When fathers get involved, children learn more," says U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. For example, a U.S. Department of Education study shows students are half as likely to have ever repeated a grade if their fathers have high involvement in their schools.

College Countdown

Help your child select the right college by following this step-by-step guide.

Almost outdoors

Anyone who's ever pitched a tent or built a treehouse in the backyard knows the magic of a place that's almost-- but not quite-- outdoors. Work that magic at your home (and stretch out your summer at each end) by adding a room where warm sun, cool breezes, and wraparound vistas of the garden come "in" to meet you halfway.

A trellis trio

Vines want to grow "up and at 'em." But to get off the ground, these climbers need something to climb on. Here is that something.

Grape Expectations

Walk This Way

Views of Blues

Blue is a big help in the garden right about now. It's a cool color-- the color of the ocean and swimming pools-- that can take the edge off even the most torrid day. Blue is calm and serene, which you most likely are not as you attend to the mowing and weeding that is almost a continual duty at summer's height.

Raise Beds and Veggies

Mulch, Mulch, and Much More Mulch

BH&G® Test Gardener Roy Wyatt makes sure his plants-- even established trees and shrubs-- are well-mulched all year long in his Atlanta landscape. In late summer, heat and drought can sap the mightiest of plants, but especially those with shallow roots, such as rhododendrons (right).

Weekend decorating warming up a suburban home ...

Raising a family. Building a career. Just plain living your life. A lot of things can keep you from noticing that your decorating style has grown out of date. For Carol Kromminga, a new marriage helped open her eyes: It wasn't that her early 1980s contemporary home needed wholesale redecorating-- just some warming touches and reshuffled spaces. By tackling the projects over a few weekends as Carol did, you, too, can get a new style outlook without putting your life on hold.

BH&G kids

Let your imagination soar along with our featured flying crafts. Start by building the earliest known flying machine-- a kite. With our easy-to-make mini kite, you'll experience the same thrill kids felt 2,000 years ago when they watched their handcrafted kites lift into the windy skies. From start to finish, you can have your kite up in the air in 20 minutes. And check out our flying plane, bird, and floating butterfly mobile on the following pages.

The Shopper's Mart

The man next door