Sherwin-Williams

While there’s no iPhone app that can help you avoid hitting your thumb with a hammer, falling off a ladder or stepping in a tray of paint, certain apps can be a useful addition to your tool kit when attempting some DIY projects. Here are five great apps that will assist you in illumination, estimation, decoration, organization and for those green-thumbed folk among you, even propagation. So grab your safety goggles and strap on the tool belt — handyman help awaits. iPhone owners are privy to a large number of fantastic color-related apps, but this is our top choice for the DIYer as it offers some practical features. Say you’re out just living your life and suddenly you spot the exact shade (or shades) you’d love to decorate your kitchen with. Just snap a picture of the hue and this app will help you match it to the nearest Sherwin-Williams paint color. You can also take the selected color and create a custom palette either based on your own choices, or from auto-generated suggestions. If you want a second opinion on your selected palette, you can share it via e-mail or Facebook, and then once you’ve made your final choice, the app offers map-based store locations and directions so you can go and purchase the Vogue Green and Java Brown you have your heart set on. It goes without saying that the color representations (or matches) on the iPhone will depend on the quality of the light, and the paint may not be exactly the same as you’ve been seeing on your phone’s display. But it’s a free, high-tech alternative to endless sample strips, and a great way to record a favored shade on the go and match it to real-life products. Cost: Free If you’re the type who can look at a wall, squint convincingly and suck in a breath before stating, with absolute confidence, “we’ll need 267 six by six tiles,” then skip these apps. But for anyone else who’s not a born guesstimator or mathlete, stay right here, as KAD Software’s apps might be of great help. The company offers a bunch of estimation apps for all aspects of home improvement. Whether you need to know how many rolls of wallpaper you need, or how many cans of paint, or how much lumber, acoustic ceiling, sheathing, asphalt, and so on, these $0.99 apps are great. There are free Read More

FOR a device that is designed to be used while on the go, the smartphone turns out to be a surprisingly adept aid to anyone working on a home or garden. And with mobile applications now numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the question is not “Are there apps out there to help my renovation/garden project/home-repair project?” but “Which ones?” Below, 20 mobile tools that will help make your smartphone a better “home” computer than, well, your home computer. Home Improvement Paint chips can be daunting. (How many shades of gray can there be?) Rather than attempting to decipher them all, find a hue you like in the real world and turn it into a gallon of paint with either of these tools. Both Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams offer free applications that analyze the colors within photos you have snapped or uploaded to your mobile, and then display the closest matches in their line. Sherwin’s ColorSnap adds a palette of complementary shades to choose from for trim possibilities. (For iPhone; free) Never again will you wrap up a project only to find that you’re missing a few crucial inches of wallpaper or have one too many gallons of paint. This Home Depot wingman calculates exactly how much you need of a given material. Plug in your room’s dimensions, including how many windows and doors are in it, and HandyMan will tell you how many gallons or rolls to pick up. It can do similar computations for flooring or gardening projects. Extra perk: a feature that displays a bright compact-fluorescent bulb on your phone’s screen — an impromptu flashlight when you’re working in a dark corner. (For iPhone; $1.99) Planning to build an extension? This app lets you map out square footage, as well as construction costs. If you’re gearing up to build your home from scratch, the application breaks down mortgage costs so that you can make size adjustments, as well as changes to your loan term to more closely match your monthly budget. (For iPhone; $2.99) Fifth-grade wood shop taught you only so much. This pocket guide gives you everything you need to know in the lumber aisle, including detailed specs and photos of 160 cuts of wood. You can find out how durable and sustainable that bed frame you’ve been eyeing is, or browse woods by color. Once you find the ideal timber, the program will show you appropriate Read More