How to Brighten Your Decor with Hand Painted Ceramic TileWritten by Dy Witt
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Framed paintings do not do well in steamy bathrooms or near greasy cookstoves, gathering dust and needing cleaning way too often. A tapestry or rug painted on tile will hang beautifully inlaid into any wall. In hall where people always bump paintings is a great idea. Stair risers that always get scuffed up can be painted in a myriad of design motifs, like southwestern, Mayan or Aztec, any colorful design, and fill a dull stairway with brilliant color. Do you work too many hours to have pets? A brilliant parrot on wall in corner of your livingroom, gleaming feathers shining, will welcome you home, making no noise and quietly demanding no food or attention! No other art medium can imitate iridescence and brilliance of bird feathers like ceramic glaze. A skilled hand-painter can imitate textures and colored objects from all around world. Mayan stone carvings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, even cave art paintings all look so real in ceramic. Solid blocks of color in modern graphic shapes is other end of design spectrum. Color makes a very powerful statement, as we all know. Please do not feel compelled to use what remodelling stores offer, dull and unimaginative and very plain tiles they sell in volume. Email a hand-painter and she will help you come up with only one in world, a unique piece of fine art that is yours alone. Timeless and elegant decor is only a few weeks away.

Dy has 21 years experience with ceramic glaze handling, 15 in hand-painted ceramic tile. Her level of realistic detail work is unique in the industry, having learned about layering color with 25 years of animal portraits in colored pencil. www.dyztilz.com
| | Concrete Cutting - Adding a Pre-Cast Concrete Stairway Bulkhead to your HomeWritten by Robert Short
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Once hole for your bulkhead has been successfully dug out and portion of foundation that needs to be cut is exposed you need to clearly layout your cut lines with a measuring tape, a bright yellow lumber crayon and a 4' level as instructed on spec sheet. Now it is time to call a professional concrete cutter and find out what their pricing and availability is (cost is usually $425+/- to cut and drop piece). They will charge you approximately an additional $100 to jack hammer piece into manageable pieces and up to $500 to remove piece from site. In order to avoid break up an disposal charges, simply have your excavation contractor dig a "grave" for concrete at bottom of your excavation. This way you can just bury it and save yourself some time, money and hassles. Explain to concrete cutter that you need a standard doorway for a bulkhead. Ask them how much they charge and when they can schedule your job. Ask them for a morning appointment. You are going to have to coordinate concrete cutting and bulkhead installation so that as soon as concrete cutter is done bulkhead is immediately installed. So you can now schedule your bulkhead delivery and installation for about 12 noon. Most pre-cast concrete product manufacturers will do installation for you at no additional cost or it is included in price. I recommend calling each of your sub-contractors a day prior to their arrival just to verify that there are no scheduling conflicts. This will minimize amount of problems that will occur and give you plenty of time to reschedule each subcontractor if one of them runs into a problem. As soon as your bulkhead and metal bulkhead cover have been successfully installed you will need to "back fill" or replace dirt that was removed from hole. This can be done by hand with a shovel by an experienced "do it yourselfer" or you can make arrangements to have your excavation contractor return once installation is complete and do backfilling for you. It is always a good idea to allow this dirt to settle before adding your topsoil or planting any grass or flowers. The ground around bulkhead should be settled pretty good after several heavy rain showers. Well, good luck and if you choose to tackle this project congratulations. For more information on this subject just do a search for "pre-cast," "concrete cutting" or "bulkhead." As always please feel free to check out our website at www.affordableconcretecutting.com (c) Copyright 2005 Affordable Concrete Cutting, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Affordable Concrete Cutting Massachusetts services the contractor and homeowner in and around Boston and Eastern Massachusetts. We specialize in cutting doorways in concrete foundations. Visit our website at www.affordableconcretecutting.com
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