Merry Christmas to all HomeRefurbers!

Before:

After:

Since we spent most of our money on buying the apartment, we decided to refurbish only one room and make create entry way through a wall from kitchen to living room.

We decided to refurbish one bedroom. It’s always good to have at least one room nicely refurbished so you can live in new place. First we removed old paintings from all walls. Since the walls were really crooked, it was necessary to put new polished plaster on them. We’ve chosen light yellow and green colors to apply on the walls.

Next we revived the floors. We rubbed down the whole floor using a machine with large papersand. Then we filled gaps with colored caulk – you need lot of patience for filling all the gaps. It takes me around 8 hours and I felt pain in my back for 3 days. After filling all gaps we applied 3 layers of floor varnish. I wanted to make it more resistant(that’s why I applied 3 layers), but I have to admit that the floor looked better when only one layer was applied.

Removing old paintings

Rubbing down the floor

Floor Varnish Applied

Painting radiators

The apartment has 4 rooms – Kitchen, Living room, 2 Bedrooms and 4 small balconies/loggias.

Here are some photos of the apartment at the time when we bought it:

Very old pelmet

Kitchen

Vestibule – Doors to Bathroom and Toilet on the left

Vestibule – old door, old phone, old lamp :)

Living Room – nice looking wall and floor, broken window at the back

Living Room – walls

Our dog – he can’t believe we’ll live in there :)

Here are the winners of cool prizes – Bench Cookie™ Work Gripper, Home Edition from Rockler and the stylish HR T-shirt.

• PaBull
• rdlaurance
• dustygirl

Congratulations and thanks to all members!

View all entries

Window Wonders

From dull to glam, from old to new: windows can be transformed by using a number of strategies, from paint, to curtains, to… well, you tell us! Show us how you have updated a window, sharing tips and tricks that you used and/or learned during the process. Post the “Window Wonder” in a blog and tag it as “CS1”.

PRIZES

Three random winners will get the Bench Cookie™ Work Gripper, Home Edition from Rockler. Plus, three random winners will be rewarded with the stylish HR T-shirt.

RULES

1. Post a blog, with photos, about a window transformation
2. Tag the blog as “CS1”

Get your entry in by Thursday September 30th and the winners will be announced on October 1st. Are you up for the challenge?

HOW TO ENTER

1. SUBMIT your challenge entry as a blog and add the tag “CS1” (of course you may add any additional tags too):
   
2. You can submit only one entry for this challenge.
3. Describe your process in a blog and add at least one photo of your unique finished product. Feel free to post your finished product in the HR projects.
4. The entry deadline is September 30th.
5. Winners will be announced online at HomeRefurbers.com on October 1st.

View all entries

Zoom Pictures button opens a slideshow view of the high-resolution project pictures.

Enjoy!

In summary, I’ve added the Watchlist feature that allows you to be notified – on the Pulse page or also by the emails – about new comments posted… not only on your own posts but on any posts that you add to your personal Watchlist.

So how this works you ask. I tried to keep things as simple and streamlined as possible. Following points describe the process:

• When you add new post (project, blog entry, forum topic) it is automatically added to your Watchlist.
• When you’re posting new comment you can choose if you want to add the respective post to your Watchlist or not.
  

• You can see green Watch and red Unwatch toggle button on each post (in the top right corner) to easily start/stop watching the respective post.
  

• Email notification settings have been simplified. You can turn on/off email notifications for all watched posts at once.
• Watchlist is integrated directly into pulse page. All those challenging dropdowns and checkboxes are replaced with just a few predefined Pulse views:
  • new posts & my watchlist (shows all posts that you never checked and new comments on your watched posts)
  • new posts (shows all posts that you never checked)
  • my watchlist (shows new comments on your watched posts)
  • all activity (shows new comments on all posts)
  • profiles (shows never checked Refurber profiles as well as new comments on them – for those who like welcoming new members).

• New posts & my watchlist is selected by default and I consider this to be the most natural way to use your personalized Pulse – you read the post that you never checked and then you either add it to your watchlist or not. When you start watching the post it will be automatically brought to the top if there are any new comments. Finally you can select time period on the right and see only posts active in the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days.
  

• There is a new My Watchlist link in the My HomeRefurbers dropdown.

Note that all of you previous posts were automatically added to your Watchlist during this upgrade.

Well this is going to take some time to get used to – especially for those using the Pulse frequently. But I believe that the whole process is going to be much smoother now. Plus you can get notified in all those discussions you participate in – not only authored by you.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Note: I’ve copied this blog entry from LJ and adjusted it a little. Thanks Martin.

1. First you have to check “Publish to my Facebook” checkbox when posting a new post here on HR:

2. Once your new post is successfully published you’ll be asked to connect our HR Facebook application to your Facebook account. This happens only once and is a required step:

3. Finally you’ll see a preview of a Facebook feed story. Select Full, Short or One Line option and hit publish:

4. Once done, a nicely formatted feed story will appear in your personal Facebook feed:

Enjoy!

1. Your latest Activity Widget

You can find the “Grab Widget” logo on the bottom of your profile page.

First, you have to click on it and your widget will appear. It contains your latest Projects and Blog entries, posted on HomeRefurbers.

Select the type of the widget you want use – Narrow or Wide, copy the code below the widget a paste it to your website.

2. Latest HomeRefurbers’ Projects Widget

You can find the “Grab Widget” logo on the bottom of the projects page.

First, you have to click on it and your widget will appear. It contains latest Projects posted on HomeRefurbers.com website.

Select the type of the widget you want use – Narrow or Wide, copy the code below the widget a paste it to your website.

Enjoy!