Home Makeover reaches deeper into Canada's biggest home renovation market: British Columbia's Lower Mainland and Sea-to-Sky corridor where owners spend $6 billion a year improving and expanding the most expensive homes in Canada.

Home Makeover goes beyond cosmetics. We recruit top design, architectural, contracting and financial experts as we guide homeowners to the most effective and attractive home improvements on the West Coast.

Distribution to qualified subscribers through Business in Vancouver, door-to-door delivery in Whistler and Squamish and exclusive delivery through select Home Hardware stores throughout the Lower Mainland, plus Home and Garden Shows puts Home Makeover front and centre in the market.

FEATURES
12 What makes a great kitchen?
British Columbians weigh in
18 Bathrooms’ new mantra: Indulge
Make your space a relaxing refuge
26 New-home design secrets
Steal million-dollar-look makeover ideas
36 Reduce, reuse, renovate
Contractors catch the green wave
40 Home and Interior Design Show
6 new displays, and lots of celebrities
42 Focus on feng shui
Keep the energy flowing
46 Suite luxury
Bedrooms get hotel inspiration
50 RenoMark
A new way to find competent contractors

Download Home Makeover Magazine, October 2008

PDF format, 11.3MB, 66Pages

Step Into Luxury Bathroom Renos Take on a Spa-like Feel
By Baila Lazarus

Bathrooms often pose the most difficult challenges when it comes to renovations. The limitations of space make it hard to feel free in choosing design elements; and the fact that we spend a smaller fraction of our time in the bathroom than in any other room in the house can make it hard to justify spending the money that quality bathroom renos demand.

So, perhaps not so surprisingly, a shift is occurring where people are actually treating the “tub ‘n’ tile” room as more of a refuge in which they can enjoy spending time; a place to pamper themselves after a long day that is well suited to bathrooms’ new mantra – “Indulge!” ...

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EDITOR'S NOTE
Take it easy

Redecorating is like planning a wedding: it takes skill in decision-making, divine foresight, generous amounts of patience, saint-like emotional stability and almost endless financial resources. Thankfully, home renovations are less taxing than weddings when it comes to seating guests; however, one thing most agree on – the events take longer than a weekend.

Those who take on the task of renovating a home are generally people who are familiar with hard work – either because they are contributing their sweat-effort in the actual physical labour, or because the income from their daily grind is paying for the redecoration.

Either way, renovations are rarely easy.

So when I was offered the editor’s position at Home Makeover, my first question was, How best could I deliver a magazine that would make every aspect of changing your home as easy as possible? Whether it’s a full-blown, knock-down-the-walls, raise-the-roof living room reno; 10 tips on turning your terrace into a tea-time retreat; or how to hang photos in a bathroom in a such a way that they don’t steam up and stick to the inside of the glass frame, I’m up for the challenge. Every issue of Home Makeover will have practical tips to make life easier for you.

Inside this issue, for example, we report on the new adoption of the national RenoMark program, which will ensure consumers that the contractors they are hiring are qualified and not fly-by-night operators. Those given a RenoMark stamp of approval must work by a 10-point code of conduct, which includes returning telephone calls within two business days, offering a minimum two-year warranty on all work and providing a detailed written contract or scope of work for all jobs.

See? Life just got a little easier already.

On top of that, we have ideas for kitchen and bathroom makeovers, green renos, financing options and new products to make your life run more smoothly.

And if we don’t have what you’re looking for, let us know. Our e-mail is open for your suggestions of what you’d like to see on our pages that would make the tasks you’re facing run as smoothly as possible.

But wait; there’s more! In addition to allowing Home Makeover to be a storehouse for experts’ opinions, we want to hear from readers about your own renovation experiences.

Tell us in a couple of hundred words what the scope of the project was that you took on, what went wrong (or right) and what you learned from it that you could pass on to your fellow renovators. We’ll publish the best. But remember, keep the language clean; this is a family magazine.

Have a great autumn.
Baila Lazarus, editor