Get a guide to help with home decorating tasks

Get a guide to help with home decorating tasks

Stop telling yourself that you stink at home decorating and that achieving a functional and stylish home requires a special talent. Didn’t you learn the moral of “The Little Engine That Could?”

Now that you think you can, all you need to figure out is how.

“Decorating Master Class: The Cullman Kravis Way” (Abrams; $45; hardcover) by Elissa Cullman and Tracey Pruzan is a guide to interior design that covers a broad range of principles. The guide teaches readers how to incorporate architecture, art and antiques to create homes that are comfortable and chic.

Home decorators with almost any kind of budget can follow the rational design process offered in the book. The book provides solutions for common problems faced at different stages of decorating and includes numerous sidebars featuring helpful concepts, information and advice.

Photographs of finished projects, floor plans, drawings and renderings help readers see results in detail.

Wooden carpet is a new, ‘green’ flooring option

A carpet made out of wood? Who would’ve thought?

Kakadu, a company located in the heart of a nature preserve in Israel, did.

Brightly colored and suitable for heavy-traffic areas such as kitchens, hand-painted wooden carpets are environmentally friendly and durable.

The “functional floor art” is created using fast-growing timber that has been planted specifically for harvesting, rather than timber from the rain forest or from old-growth forests. Raw materials are selected using nontoxic and recycled materials whenever possible, according to the company.

Designs are hand-painted with colors developed at Kakadu’s color laboratory to enhance the natural grain of the wood. After painting them, artisans coat them with a high-grade marine varnish for protection and long-term use.

The wooden carpets are available in a variety of shapes and sizes and can be painted with nearly 50 design motifs.

Prices start at $159 for a 2-by-3-foot carpet.

To find a sales and distribution center near you, visit kakadu-design.com.

Helpful tips for home safety available online

Fires, burns, falls, poisonings and drownings are all accidents that can happen in your home if you don’t take steps to prevent them.

Mysafehome.org, an interactive safety tool by the Home Safety Council, breaks down the steps needed to make your home safe room-by-room.

From your outdoor spaces to your bedrooms and baths, the site helps users find risk areas and provides tips and advice to correct them.

The site offers up-to-date research on home safety and shares what others are doing to prevent injuries. One of the findings, according to the site, is that though most families recognize dangers in each room of their home, 45 percent say they have not made any safety improvements.

Other site features include a list of rooms where families feel most vulnerable and ways to reduce the risk, safety practices taken in the garage and backyard, American spending habits in areas of home safety compared with home decor, and a room-by-room safety plan.

Users can tour a virtual home and learn about the leading causes of serious home injuries. Digital animations show major risk areas.

Keep summer tasks safe

As temperatures begin to sizzle, home improvement tasks become particularly challenging. Take precautions when working in hot weather to protect your health and get better results. F2

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