How to add texture to your southwest home...

We love to use natural products for all our decorating.  Granite, slate, travertine, saguaro, willows, juniper logs and juniper floor molding just to mention a few. 

Some how to remodeling tips you can do yourself.  Southwest homes often have very rustic furniture and several heavy pieces of wood furniture so by adding texture to your walls and floors with natural products you can balance it all out.

Add Saguaro Ribs for texture...  Saguaro in a 6 foot bundle These are saguaro ribs - yes, from the Saguaro Cactus. I ordered several bundles and they were all about six feet long.  They have to be imported since the plant is protected in the US.  They are great when added to table insets, headboards, nightstands and in our case cold air returns for texture.  We also attached them to an etagere we purchased at Bed Bath & Beyond which converted it from an ordinary wooden bathroom rack for over the toilet to a very Southwest Etagere.  See more bathroom etageres here.

To see a queen size headboard made with saguaro ribs see southwest headboards.

How to use Saguaro Ribs to turn a Cold Air Return Cover into a southwest accent...  This cold air return is about 20 feet up in our great room.  My husband took off the "very white metal" cover and cut about a dozen each of two different lengths of saguaro ribs and stapled them to the same wood frame the white cover had been attached to, leaving just enough space between them to allow the return to work correctly.  It has been up almost 3 years and all is fine.  We have 3 returns in the house and all have now have covers made of saguaro.  Really Southwest!  You do not notice them anymore than you did the big white ones - and they look better!

 How to use Saguaro Ribs to make your heater vent covers look like part of your southwest decor... I really don't like the heater vents and heater vent covers you can buy - even the wood vents are not attractive and do not work with a southwest home.  My husband came up with a custom idea - he built a small frame of wood furring strip to fit inside the floor heater vent, stapled this frame into the heater vent space, cut small pieces of saguaro ribs to fit and stapled them to the frame.  You can vacuum right over them without hurting them.  I think they look better than any vent covers I have ever seen in a store - and especially for southwest decorating.  For the wall vents he attached ribs over the opening as in the cold air return cover above. All our vents in our house are now custom vents. Saguaro Heater Vent Cover

How to use Saguaro Ribs for floor molding that definitely looks southwest... It is so easy, just cut pieces the lengths you  want and staple them to the wall, one above the other.  Make the floor molding 4 pieces high or 10 pieces high.  And here you see a different style of heater vent cover my husband made.  Like above, but the frame inside is thicker and so the pieces are on the outside of the hole.  A little harder to vacuum around but I have a couple of them.  Really custom!  Saguaro Floor Molding picture.

How to make your own custom floor molding... We found this juniper lived edge wood at a small local mill and were able to purchase it for only $1 per foot.  My husband put a clear finish stain on it and put it up for floor molding in most of our house.  He used short pieces of Saguaro Ribs for the inside and outside corners of the rooms.  Husbands make a lot of points when they do stuff like this! Juniper and Saguaro Floor Molding

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