Do you love your home? If you enjoy creating a beautiful living environment with a great atmosphere and if you are interested in Do It Yourself tips for your home and garden, you should have a look at Hometalk, an online home improvement community you will fall in love with.

Hometalk is an active community for home owners, renters and professionals to share tips and tricks and ask for help with projects around the house and garden. It presently counts more than 100,000 engaged users, who are passionate about their own home and helping others with improving theirs. Members can ask questions or post their own projects and other members will respond with advice and comments. The website has a very clean and professional design, many useful features, and is very easy to navigate.

You can browse all of Hometalk without having to sign up. Becoming a member and using the site to its fullest is super quick and entirely free. If you want to learn more about Hometalk before joining, take their incredibly well done tour, which walks you through the major sections and key features of the site.

Signing Up

You can log in with your Facebook account or sign up with an email address. I chose the latter route and was directed to a page where I filled in mandatory information, i.e. my first name, ZIP code, and a password, as well as some additional information. Signing up is quick and painless and within seconds you are a full member and can use every feature the site has to offer for free.

Browsing Hometalk

Hometalk is very well organized and it is easy to find what you are looking for. You can use the search in the top left or browser by popular topics listed on the left-hand side or all topics available via the menu on top of the page.

Narrowing In On Topics

There are some pretty nifty features along the way. One of them is the ability to easily display results from a combination of topics to narrow in on interesting projects. Once you chose a topic, you will see a Related Topics drop-down menu next to your chosen topic in the top left. Select another topic from the list and yet another drop-down menu will appear. Moreover, you can sort posts by popular, recent, or by results from people you are following.

Saving Posts To The Clipboard

As a member you can create clipboards and save posts to them. This way you can keep track of ideas you liked and create a collection to draw from.

Your clipboards are shown on your profile, where you can view all of them in a tiled overview or open single clipboards to view posts in a list.

When you hover over an item in the list, a little ribbon appears in the top right of the post. It hides a menu that provides access to editing or deleting your clipboard item.

As shown in the screenshots above, members can follow each others' clipboard.

Posting Projects & Asking Questions

As a signed up member, you can ask the community questions or share your projects and ideas with them. Not only can you post text and links, you can also add photos and files of up to 10MB and embed videos. There is no difference between the Ask and Post form, however, a question is marked with an icon, so it can easily be distinguished from projects.

Hometalk Profile

The Hometalk profile is a space where members can introduce themselves. Moreover, it provides an overview of their activities, including their posts, clipboards, comments, photos, and who they are following. A member's popularity is indicated by the amount of followers and likes they have received. The site is also frequented by contractors and members can get in touch with them for projects and subsequently rate them.

Conclusion

Hometalk is a lively community hub for people passionate about DIY home improvement. For those who are just looking for some creative ideas, Hometalk can serve as a great resource for inspiration and advice. Easily taken for granted and yet a key to a positive user experience, the site is incredibly well designed, which makes it a pleasure to use.

What are your favorite resources for home improvement or DIY projects and how does Hometalk compare to them?