Plan your life - without leaving your computer

While researching my kitchen renovation, I was pleasantly surprised to discover Ikea's kitchen planner had gone all high tech. Maybe it's been this way forever, but I just assumed it was just a floorplan. But no. It's soo much better: it includes a 3D version so you can give the program the measurements of your room, choose your cabinetry and watch as it magically creates your kitchen for you - complete with benchtops, appliances and, if you like, handles. If something doesn't fit in the space, it just won't put it there, making it so easy to build your room from scratch and suit your needs. Then you can virtually walk through it looking at it from all different angles to ensure it's what you want. If you're happy with it, you click on the list icon and the bill is itemised with the total. SAve it to IKEA and you can open it up when you get to the store to show the sales people what you're thinking. It's just so clever and simple - everything should be that easy. And it pretty much can be.
I won't go too into this now cause I will be writing an article on it for real living soon, but there is so much online stuff out there now you can literally plan your bathroom or kitchen renovation, build your dream home, create a garden oasis and check out what colours would suit a room or your house's exterior just by sitting in front of your computer. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. But it's quite addictive nonetheless. Here are a few cool sites to add to your renovation favourites list.

Ikea Here's to hoping one day the program will magically build your real-life kitchen when you hit save!

Kind of what my kitchen will look like. Open shelving will fill in around the window.

Reece A cool bathroom floorplan planner where you can add their products to see sizings and placement. Great to visit for sizing estimates for loos and baths etc.

Find out the best bathroom floorplan for you.

Dulux Mycolour Choose a room or exterior closest to your own and get painting - virtually, of course. Not only gives you a great range of rooms with modern and traditional furniture otpions, you can choose no furniture, night/day, different angles and your floor covering (tiles, carpet, floorboards).

You can find inspiration everywhere - some of Dulux's virtual rooms are quite cool!

Plan 3D As a kid, my idea of fun was to draw floorplans of dream homes - ballrooms, libraries and indoor pools included. Sadly, I still do this - what I'd love my place to be, what I hope to build on a waterfront block one day... I was also quite handy at the construction side - you should have seen the homes my sisters and I would build our Barbie dolls out of books and blocks! That was the real fun - the actual dolls didn't get much love, but they had awesome homes for the weekend. So this incredibly cool program seems like my idea of heaven: a create-your-own-home from a floorplan that then makes it 3D AND lets you furnish and decorate it. You have to pay, but I could spend way too much time playing with this!

Just imagine this room furnished and decorated to your taste...

The Net has certainly come a long way from virtual pets!
Bx