Design2Share

Q: What Value Does A Fireplace Add To A Home? Fireplaces are fantastic focal points for the rooms in any home, but what are the secrets for using a fireplace to add value to your home? Irwin and Nicola, our New York designer co-hosts, love the fireplace and share their advice and common sense tips with you on making your fireplace addition really count. In this episode you will learn the do's and don'ts for placing plasma TVs above the fireplace, which room gives you the best resale value for fireplace additions, the fuel gel fireplace trend (easy, inexpensive, and stylish), using decorative mantels and other fireplace surround materials to tie in with your room's color scheme, and the romance of coal and woodburning fireplaces (particularly if you love chimney sweeps)!

Q: What Should I Consider When Decorating My Half Bath? You would freak out if you knew how many years the average person spends using the toilet. It's not a pretty fact, but it's a fact that your toilet can be in a very beautiful room (and that's what counts in the end)! Nicola Chernicoff and Irwin Weiner take you onsite to a powder room and in this episode they will cover the resale value of adding half baths to your floor plan, what elements make up a typical powder room as opposed to a bathroom, how to add whimsy and style to bathroom decor, the latest trends and appliances to make this room greener and higher functioning, the early days of bathrooms (and we're talking sitting on stone, people!), the glam days of powder rooms, Irwin's pet peeves about bathrooms (and other outrageous bathroom humor), and a special tip about quiet, energy-saving toilets.

Formal sit-down meals have been supplanted by today's casual, on-the-go lifestyles. But the dining room should never become the dinosaur of your home's floorplan. Take back the dining room and use it every day! Join us as Irwin and Nicola talk about turning your dining room into a special multi-purpose room. This Design2Share Q&A episode will cover the versatility of your dining space to accommodate everything from simple suppers to holiday feasts, ideas for turning dining areas into more family-friendly spaces, tips for tables, how to flex up on your seating space, how the wealthy historically set up their dining rooms, rules of thumb for dining room seating, ways to decorate and light your dining room, and style tips that will elevate your dining room from ordinary to stunning!