Home Remodeling Success Secrets: Essential Tips Before You Buy, Sell or Remodel by Laura Martindale - HTML preview

→ Seek simplicity, comfort, and value

You’ll hear me reiterate this often. Simple means muted neutral colors, bright, open, airy, spacious, and uncluttered. And always seek high quality at a reasonable price.

Often you can find workable products and materials at Lowes, The Home Depot, OSH, or Sears, but sometimes you must go to a specialty plumbing, lighting, hardware, or ironworks store, and sometimes you’ll have to have it custom made.

When it comes to décor, furnishings, and finishing touches, you can find absolute treasures on Craig’s List or the newspaper classifieds. Do not underestimate these as key sources! Many of my favorite items, from sofa sets to

Helpful hint

I like to read various magazines that have a home design focus or subtext, including Architectural Digest, Home & Design, Home by Design, Coastal Living, and Santa Barbara Magazine, to name just a few. When I find pictures of a design or furnishings that I really like, I tear them out and keep them in a file folder for future reference. Sometimes such ideas are fairly easy to copy at a reasonable price!

dining tables to chandeliers to lawn jockeys to various one-of-a-kind items at bargain prices, I have found in this way. (However, I’ll also note that for me, perusing garage sales is usually not time-efficient or productive, but it might be different for you.)

I’m convinced that anyone can dramatically transform their home without huge expenses or major remodeling—anyone, that is, who has the desire and determination to plan ahead, accept competent advice, roll up their sleeves, and make some positive changes!

Si, se puede! Yes, you can do it!

My goal is to help you—as a homebuyer, homeowner, or home seller. I have transformed several of my own homes, and I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes…but also gained a lot of experience. The many tips I offer through my web site and publications will help you avoid the same mistakes and succeed in transforming your home. As I said before, my credo is to strive for simplicity and comfort, and moreover, to achieve elegance at a reasonable cost—seekingvaluerather than “being cheap.”

Now, let’s consider your house. Newly built homes reflect the modern American family’s kitchen-centric lifestyle by centrally locating a large kitchen area with unobstructed flow into the primary living areas. Formal dining rooms are forsaken in favor of larger informal breakfast nooks and comfortable family rooms as part of an open, flowing floor plan.

Unfortunately for many of us, the older homes in which we still reside were built with a different design viewpoint whereby:

 

1. kitchens were small, hidden, utilitarian rooms, better kept out of sight

 

2. isolated, “Ozzie & Harriet” formal dining rooms were used nightly

 

3. remote, formal living rooms were strictly for Dad’s easy chair and pipe

But don’t despair if you have a house that is saddled with this type of compartmentalized floorplan, because there are things you can do to make it feel better without tearing down interior walls or adding square footage.

Here are some sample pictures of projects I completed on various homes. Each of these is described in detail in my e-book, “Transform Your House! How to Dramatically Update & Upgrade (Without Major Remodeling).”

Remodeling Green

 

“Green” (a.k.a., environmentally sustainable) construction and remodeling takes advance planning and a little extra effort, but it can be satisfying and even economically sensible, too. Eventually, green techniques won't be such a niche topic.

One important way to limit your environmental impact during remodeling is to limit your environmental impact is to minimize the amount of demolition waste you create, as well as the amount of waste from poor planning of your new materials.

For example, rather than replacement, wood cabinets in the kitchen and vanities in the bathrooms can be cleaned up with lemon oil, or sanded and restained or painted, with only non-toxic materials, then adorned with new hardware to give them a fresh look. Also, when using wood for framing or cabinetry, choose wood that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which means it comes from a well managed forest.

Contractors & Subcontractors

Some keys to saving money include acting as your own general contractor and working with the subcontractors directly (although be prepared to handle the associated headaches), and beating the bushes for reasonablypriced, high-quality skilled labor. For example, I learned that our hardworking maintenance gardeners were also competent at simple fencing, plumbing, irrigation, grading, and brickwork.

Ask around through your network of friends and neighbors, or see whom you meet at the local home improvement store (be sure to ask for references). However, I wouldn’t suggest doing this on large renovations or new construction—it’s just too much for an amateur to handle. But it can work for the relatively simple updating, upgrading and enhancement projects that I focus on.

Beware, however, that if the workers you hire are not licensed, bonded and insured or if they are not legal residents, you might run the risk of getting entangled in legal or liability issues—not to mention ethical questions. If you hire unlicensed workers, be sure to check out the laws in your state. For example, in California, any contractor who is paid more than $500 for a job technically must be licensed by the state board. Also, unlicensed contractors are not covered by state worker's compensation. The California Contractors State License Board (www.cslb.ca.gov) recommends that homeowners get at least three bids, ask to see their license, and be wary of door-to-door solicitors.

Final Thoughts

A business associate sent me an email the other day with some interesting points. He started by saying, "After teaching real estate development at the MBA level for 7 years, I came away convinced that one of the most valuable lessons of the class was to treat their personal residence as a business project and also to factor into the process the lifestyle implications...."

Okay…then take a business perspective on this. Today's shaky economy and depressed construction & remodeling industries are offering homeowners a real opportunity to make value-added home improvements at prices that are perhaps 25% below what they were 2 years ago, and perhaps a lot less than they will be 2-3 years from now. It's also a great time to refinance.

So, if you have been considering launching home remodeling projects, either for increasing your home's value or for simply updating it for your own enjoyment, now might be the opportune time. But don't jump in willy-nilly. Take the time to prepare. Get consultations and bids from reputable contractors (your friends & neighbors might have some referrals).

See what you can learn online. Seek informational resources that can help you avoid problems, gather ideas and direction, identify green ideas to incorporate, decide what you will do yourself (DIY) or contract out, and learn how to negotiate an appropriate agreement with your contractors.

Finally, always think in terms of resale. Whether of not you plan to sell your house in the near term, resale value should always be a consideration whenever you are considering home improvements, remodeling, or simple home makeover projects. In fact you should be thinking ahead to resale beforeyou even buy a house, because you never know when circumstances will change.

In my opinion, you can either make your house generic to appeal to the masses, or you can make it special so as to appeal to the niche buyer. If your house is pretty much generic, such as part of a development of similar homes, the sale is mostly driven by price, which is a dicey proposition in a weak housing market. But if your house is unique or special in some way so as to fit the particular preferences of only a handful of niche buyers, they will pay more for it—although it might take longer to sell if no such targeted buyer happens to be prowling your market at the moment. All things considered, I prefer to make a house somewhat unique and special—but that doesn’t mean crazy, artsy, or eclectic!

Above all, remember to focus on simplicity,comfort, andvalue!

About the Author

Laura Martindale is a freelance design consultant and expert on affordable home makeovers. She has performed dozens of projects on numerous single-family homes over the past 16 years.

The learning process led her to a full-fledged passion for affordable home remodeling, decorating, and staging. Laura’s expertise is a direct result of her pursuit of this passion rather than a planned career choice.

You can learn more from Laura at: http://www.HomeMakeoverIdeas.com