Last year I tried out the HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite and it’s super handy if you’re designing a home and even handier if you’re designing landscaping. In fact, I liked the landscaping part of the program better than the architect features (and I’m an architect freak). In any case, I thought I’d mention this software because if you’re planning a large or new landscaping project, this software could really help you out.
Below is a shot of one of the first houses I messed around with on the program. FYI after practice you get better and can make more …read more

Over the last two weeks, we’ve intermittently been looking at HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite software. I’ve discussed…

All the basics of this home software.
Exterior features, such as building a home and landscaping.
Interior design and remodeling features.

Software pros:
Amazingly in-depth feature rich software. Everything you need to design and decorate almost any sort of home (minus green – see below).
Pretty easy to use. There’s a learning curve, but nothing I think anyone will have any trouble with. Plus there’s a massive 700 page user manual included, plus online help, plus a help guide in the software itself. You can use …read more

Ok, I’ve finally got the interior HGTV software feature review ready for you – it took a while, because the interior stuff was tricky for me to figure out.
First of all, in case you missed it, we’ve been looking at this cool HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite software. Besides a basic look, I also showed you how you can design your own home. The house I designed was ok, but you can do a lot better if you’ve got the time. I wanted to share two of the HGTV sample home creations with you, to give you an idea …read more

In the post, Home Handy Software Review: HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite, I said I’d be back with more info. First I thought we’d look at the home design feature.
You can design a house from scratch, but the software offers an easier option as well, the House Builder Wizard. It basically walks you through the process, allowing you to choose things like…

Number of floors
Foundation type
House shape
Garage position (or no garage)
Building dimensions, which also calculates square footage for you
Building elements, such as roof pitch, how thick you’d like your walls, footing size and so on

I used the wizard and here’s …read more

I received a review copy of HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite a while back. Due to flu and storm power outage issues, it’s taken me a while to get around to posting what I think. The good news is that since I was housebound over the last week or so due to snow, I’ve had plenty of time to get the software up and running.
First of all, this is pretty hefty software; it’s jam packed with loads of handy home makeover features – WAY too many for one post. In this post I’ll list some of the overall features, …read more

Yes – last season was a huge disappointment to me. Still, it doesn’t mean I won’t possibly hang around for season 3 of HGTV Design Star.
If I’m gonna watch, you should too, just so you know what I’m talking about when I start whining about it. This season the show is in Nashville. Personally I’m wondering why they never have the show anywhere I like. Vegas? Nashville? New York? I think they should go somewhere cool next year; like San Francisco, Italy, or Oregon.
What else, hmm. I haven’t paid attention at all to who is in the competition, so I’ll …read more

You know, I realized this week that I never did give the correct answer regarding the last bonus points — sorry, I spaced it.
The answer was:
Everyone playing, correctly guessed that Josh Johnson from HGTV was the real Offbeat visitor. However, most people seem to think, that if it were up to me, I’d like to have a Food Network guest here at Offbeat, which is far from true.
Only Nick Allen correctly guessed that I would love an X-Files guest and got the extra 5 points. (Go Nick!). I adore the X-Files. In case you think I’m joking, I wrote about …read more

Design Star news:
Yup folks the end of HGTV Design Star is drawing to an end. Will it be Kim or Todd? Who knows. It’s won’t be Sparkle Josh so it’s hard to care but still he is supposed to be on the final show so that’s exciting. I did vote and you should too. I had to vote at least once to make my world complete I suppose. I voted for….
Todd
Why? Because frankly Kim gets on my nerves and I honestly question her design skills. Todd has the fun edge. But I only voted once; I don’t like Todd that …read more

I don’t like television. I watch two shows when I catch them; What’s With That House (duh), and Ace of Cakes. But for a million bucks I can’t tell you their regular times. If I notice one is on I’ll watch a green home show. Other than that I just forget to watch TV.
Except… I take a break on Sunday night around 12 to 1am or so (I keep weird hours) and watch whatever is on for an hour. For the last few months that was the Food Network Challenge (I know, it’s like a disease). So, Amy …read more

Or so that’s what I hear. Heard, to be exact, last night on the Red, Hot, & Green special on HGTV. I’d like to take this moment to point out that I did list this show as an “Offbeat Hot” last week. Turns out I was right. This show was very cool.
I felt that the show didn’t cover too much in terms of new green ideas per say. There were very few ideas discussed that were new to me, and probably fewer that would be new to the average green builder. What was cool and unique about this show is …read more