Quick Kitchen Renovations
September 4, 2008 |15:53 | Kitchen By : Team X
Minor renovations, such as new shelving, make the kitchen a house's focal point and they can help you 
recoup up to 83 percent of your investment.BEFORE
The kitchen's choppy floor plan left the room cramped, so Country Living Contributing Editor Randy Florke knocked down a wall and expanded the doorways. Too small for the room, the window next to the counter let in little light. Now enlarged to twice its size, it provides a view of the yard. Linoleum covered the floor until Randy ripped it up to reveal "picture perfect" maple hardwood underneath.
AFTER
Colorful and functional details, such as the swinging towel rack and countertop canisters, liven up the kitchen's neutral palette. Inexpensive terra-cotta pots and tin ceiling tiles add visual interest to the shelves above the oven.
Sometimes your new bedroom decorating simply needs a change of atmosphere to make it more comfortable. 
Josephine Sasso bears no ill will toward quaint and traditional Nantucket decor. But when it came time for the Pennsylvania-based clothing designer to decorate her own island abode, the nautical theme took a back seat to a design scheme that Sasso recalled fondly from her youth.
An oversized kitchen with an open floor plan can often pose as many challenges as too little space to a kitchen designer assigned with the task of a remodel. Meeting the demands for form and function, and tying those elements into the decorative elements of adjoining rooms can indeed be daunting.
From my hotel window I can see the Water Cube in all its bubble-icious wonder. At night, the exterior of the Olympic natatorium turns different colors -- now blue, now white, now pink, now rainbow, and your eyes blur if you look at it long enough. Over to the left, there's a slice of the Bird's Nest stadium, encased in its metal twigs, glowing red from within, with the Olympic flame burning 24/7 above. They're the two most popular and imaginative of the Beijing venues, but they're not the only architectural fantasies at these Games.
As backyard vegetable gardens undergo a renaissance, environmental officials and scientists are warning homeowners to be careful before planting the carrots and chard: There might be lead in the soil.
Synchronized swimming conjures up retro images of bathing beauties, smiles plastered across their waterproof, madeup faces as they dive and salute, one after the other, in sequined swimsuits. 
When nostalgia for historic industrial architecture collides with modern convenience and style, the result is something special.Such is the case at 540 Beatty, a seven-storey condo mid-rise being integrated into the exposed brick walls and cast-iron pillars of the century-old Crane Building.
A NEW pay and display car park in Barrow will ease town centre congestion, council officials claim.The £350,000 car park has 52 bays, 36 of which are pay and display. The remaining spaces are a combination of contract and disabled bays.The car park was paid for with government cash.
