Remodeling and Landscaping: Microsoft Powerpoint or Star Office Impress to Make a Picture Board

If you go to Menards or Lowes for assistance in replacing kitchen cabinets, a design assistant will show you pictures of different layouts, styles, and colors of cabinets. He is able to show you these pictures with the assistance of a CAD (computer assisted drawing) program. By entering the dimensions of your kitchen walls, doors, and windows, and cabinet placement into the CAD program, he enables the software to draw a facsimile of your kitchen with the selected cabinet style.

Although this will show you a drawing of how your kitchen might look, CAD can not replace the cabinet drawings with actual photographs.

One way that you can see actual photographs of how your remodeling job might look is to make a picture board. With your camera, shoot pictures of your kitchen and pictures of the different cabinets that you are interested in. Load these into your computer.

Open a presentation software program, such as Microsoft Powerpoint, or Star Office Impress. Open the pictures you took of your kitchen cabinets in a photo editing software, such as Photo Shop. Select Edit/Copy. Go to your presentation software program and select Edit/Paste. This will paste your kitchen cabinet picture into the presentation software program. Save this presentation as "Kitchen Cabinet Remodel." Now, next time you are at Menards or Lowes, take pictures of kitchen cabinet displays that you like. You could also go to the manufacturer's website and find kitchen cabinet images that you like with similar arrangements to your kitchen layout. Then, right click on the images one at a time and select "copy." With your file "Kitchen Cabinet Remodel" open, select "edit/paste." This will paste the image you just copied from the cabinet manufacturer's website. Move the image you just pasted until it is covers the cabinets in your kitchen. You can now see an actual photograph of what your kitchen would look like with different cabinets.

On a larger scale, this can also be done with landscaping. Take a picture of your house and yard. Then, get pictures of a fence, trees, patio, and awning that you like. Use the same steps described above for the "kitchen cabinet remodel," pasting a fence, trees, patio, or awning images instead of kitchen cabinet images.

Decisions about design elements will be so much easier. Don't believe me? Just look at the pictures shown with this article. Because, after all, a picture is worth a thousand words.