While hanging single art pieces can certainly be effective and eye-catching all by themselves, designing a gallery wall is a great way to take things to a whole new level. If you’ve found the prospect of designing a gallery wall a bit intimidating in the past, now’s the time to reconsider! Here are some tips to make your gallery wall pop. 

Finding The Right Location
Small spaces can make great gallery walls, along with areas beneath and along staircases. When planning out your interior design goals, consider emphasizing your home’s unique traits and opt for an unexpected area or two rather than falling into something a little too typical. The perfect gallery wall for you should embody a one-of-a-kind feel. Use that mindset for the best results.

Map It Out
Once you’ve picked out a prime location for your gallery wall, you should be ready to gather your tools and get to work. Start by grabbing your pieces and arrange them on the floor just in front of the wall that you’d like to use. By doing this, you can take your concept one step closer to reality and allow yourself to better visualize the final product.

Make sure you give each piece proper breathing room so your gallery wall doesn’t feel too cluttered. There's no hard and fast rule for how much distance you should put between each piece, but smaller spaces and pieces can be placed a bit closer compared to large, floor-to-ceiling concepts that benefit from increased distances.

Strategize Your Design
Now, picking out what you’re actually going to hang is where the fun really starts! As discussed, lining pictures of equal size and subject matter all with matching frames in a grid can be satisfying and tasteful. When going for this route, consider opting for an all black and white approach. Pictures of family, kids, or pets in this style can be extremely effective and really tie together a living space.

Alternatively (and probably our favorite option), you can opt for a more eclectic style, varying your frame sizes, your frame materials, your shapes, textures, and colors. 

Add a Personal Touch
And finally, remember to think outside the box when selecting what you’d like to feature on your gallery walls. Pictures and favorite prints are all well and good, but branching out is the best way to craft something memorable. If you collect vinyl records, hang a few up! Went to a memorable concert or took a once-in-a-lifetime vacation? Frame and hang up those tickets! Whatever you’re into, whatever your hobbies are, find a way to integrate them into your design.

What’s going on in this picture?

There’s technically nothing wrong here! What you’re seeing is actually a heated toilet, a relatively rare find for our inspectors in the field. Heated toilets are a luxury option that feature adjustable temperature settings, allowing you to customize the warmth to your preference. Heated toilets can range from around $600 to several thousand dollars, depending on the design and additional specifications. While the upfront investment is significantly higher than a regular model, the long-term comfort and convenience may make a heated toilet a desirable upgrade for a buyer or seller. 

Planning to host guests over the holidays? You need these tips to get your house smelling its freshest! 

#1: Take Out the Trash
The first piece of advice we’ll discuss today might be the most obvious one, but garbage stinks! Whether from the kitchen’s standing trash can, from the drain, or the garbage disposal, food residue can emit an odor more quickly than some might realize. Depending what you’re cooking, most households will benefit from taking out the trash daily (whether your garbage bag is full or not).

#2: Air Out New Furniture
Although this tip may be more well-known today, many homeowners are still frequently caught off guard by the strange chemical smells that can sometimes fill their homes after purchasing new furniture. During a process most commonly known as “off-gassing,” new furniture can offload volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into houses that may persist long after they have fully aired out. VOCs are not only unpleasant to smell, they can also have adverse health effects such as headaches and respiratory illnesses.

#3: Manage Sources of Moisture
We’ve said it plenty of times before, but the top concern and source of problems for every building is water. As we talk about unwanted smells in the home, unregulated water usage once again rears its head with musty odor developing anywhere that moisture accumulates. The most common places for mold growth are attics, showers, window sills, ducts, vents, chimneys, and fireplaces. You’ll also want to check under the sinks and inspect any houseplants. 

#4: Practice Pest Prevention
Pests can create all sorts of unwanted smells throughout the home, and can be the answer for odors whose origin are more difficult to locate. Whether wood-destroying insects have found their way within the walls or an animal has made a nest in your attic or crawl space, it’s important to contact an exterminator or animal control professional quickly.

#5: Watch Out for Rotten Eggs
Homeowners who detect a strong odor that is similar to rotten eggs should quickly vacate the premises and either call their local utilities company or 911, because this is a sign of a gas leak. Many home systems and appliances rely on natural gas to function and leaks can turn into a fire simply from turning on a light or starting the car.

Natural gas is normally colorless and odorless, so the rotten egg smell is actually a measure intentionally added by utility companies so that homeowners can detect and act on leaks quickly. With that said, it may be important to point out that natural gasses which aren’t supplied by a utility company (like radon gas) can linger within homes and cause adverse health effects overtime.