Manufactured Housing Life

For many people, choosing colors for their homes is a very scary process. Think about how many people’s homes that you’ve visited and the walls are still “Builder Beige” because they’ve been afraid to make a wrong decision. Do you live a beige lifestyle, or is your life full of color and excitement? Or would you like it to be? It’s been proven that color has a direct effect on our moods, so adding a little to your life might make a world of difference.

Here are some tips to start you in the right direction to find the perfect hue:

1. Ask Sherwin Williams or an expert at your local paint or home improvement store. Color is their life so they can help steer you in the right direction. I personally love Sherwin Williams because of their color palettes that they put together that give me fool-proof coordinates in a family of colors. Be sure to check out their new Concepts in Color - great fresh new colors with brochures that show the colors in an actual room.
2. Be inspired by your surroundings. When I lived in Arizona I fell in love with the desert colors so when I was ready to paint my family room I took my swatches outside to match up the colors that I had fallen in love with in nature. Technology is a wonderful thing (sometimes!) and many stores now have a machine that can match up teh color of almost anything that you can bring into them.
3. Start Small. Before you paint an entire room in a color pin some paint swatches up on a wall in the room and see how the lighting in the room affects them during different times of the day. The perfect blue in the store may become the imperfect violet with your lighting on your walls. When you’ve narrowed down the choices, buy a pint of a sample of the colors you’ve chosen, paint a 2ft by 2 ft section of wall if possible and take a day or two to live with the results. Many times I’ve thought I wanted to go light, but when I see the color up and view how it playes with the colors in my carpets or furniture I decide to go a shade or two richer.

Keep in mind as well that you don’t have to paint an entire room - sometimes an accent wall is all that it takes to give you the look that you’ve been wanting. Paint is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to remodel your home and your life, and can add thousands of dollars of value if you are selling to a potential buyer who is as afraid as you were of color.

It's Show time! One of my favorite homes to work on every year is the Brenco Housing show home at the Heart of Texas Fair in Waco. This is the fourth year that I've decorated a home at the fair, and I think this one is my favorite. This manufactured home was built by Patriot Homes of Texas, and people walking through the home were amazed that it was a manufactured home.

One of the questions that I get asked the most is how to decorate a manufactured home, and I think this home shows that you can do it beautifully. Everything used in the home was readily available - the furniture was from Ashley Furniture and most of the artwork and decor items were by Home Interiors and Gifts. As a Lifestylist I'm always taking into account my client's lifestyles and budgets and this home is no exception. Home Interiors is a great resource for affordable, exciting design and made designing this home a breeze.

Builders are having to re-visit their merchandising budgets, and Brenco is no exception. After the fair I'll be helping them "recycle" the furniture and decor items from this house, because a very lucky family has already purchased this home and will be moving into it on their land soon. The merchandise will be used to decorate new model homes that will be part of the Patriot of Texas Show starting November 5th in Waco. I'll be sharing photos of those homes as well - you'll have to see if you can identify what is new and what came from the fair.