Entries from November 2009 ↓

Taking on a new home addition is not a light undertaking because of the effort and expense involved with adding living space to your home. Still, adding onto your house can be a great decision because it will give you the extra room you need and make your home more attractive to buyers when you finally put it up for sale. To get the best bang for your buck when taking on a new home addition, there are a few basic things to consider.

It is important, first of all, that you hire a respected and reliable home improvement contractor. Some contractors will not focus all of their attention on your job and may leave you with a shoddily constructed home addition. Obviously, this is not what you are looking for, so hire a home improvement contractor with a proven track record of quality to avert disappointment.

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Painting your home’s exterior is perhaps the best and quickest way to improve its curb appeal and make it look like new again. It is also not too difficult of a job for the homeowner to perform, although you may want to hire a professional in order to get the best results. In any case, there are several things you should keep in mind before you start painting your house.

First, painting your home’s exterior involves more than just placing a new coat of paint directly over the old one. The walls will need to be prepped before the new paint is applied; otherwise, it may not stick or it may damage structure you are trying to protect. Use a pressure cleaner to remove dirt, grime, and peeling paint, and make sure to seal any cracks with stucco before painting. You will also need to apply a coat of primer before you apply the new color.

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Because flooring takes up a large part of any home, changing it is a significant home improvement project. Homeowners typically spend much time mulling over their flooring options to get the best look for their home at the best price. Three flooring types in particular — vinyl, tile, wood — are popular, so for many homeowners, comparing types of flooring often involves weighing the merits of these three kinds of flooring.

Of the options mentioned, vinyl flooring is usually the least expensive. It is easy to lay, often times having a peel-and-stick backing so that the vinyl can be laid on top of the existing floor. As a man-made product, vinyl flooring is probably available in more styles and colors than any other form of flooring. However, it is not typically a very long-lasting flooring option. Over time, it can start peeling away from the floor or get chipped.

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Being able to entertain friends and family ranks as one of the greatest benefits that comes with owning a home. The extra space that a home offers can be used in a variety of ways to host guests or give the family opportunities to spend quality time together. Setting a room aside for fun and games is an especially good way to use the space, so creating a game room in your home is usually a good idea if you have the extra room.

Like any home improvement project, you should begin with a design before creating a game room in your home. Coming up with this design will require you to decide whether it is going to be a family-oriented game room or a place designed more for adults. The use of the room will determine what you do with it.

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Northern homeowners benefit greatly from the extra room that basements provide. Many people choose to leave their basements unfinished and use them only for extra storage space, but others who want more living space in their homes will finish or remodel their existing basements in order to achieve that extra room. Several basement remodeling ideas can help you get the most out of your basement and make it a room in which people will want to hang out.

Basements often have low ceilings, which can make them feel cramped and closed in. Instead of overhead lights that hang down from the ceiling, consider installing low-voltage recessed lighting. This will make the ceilings appear higher and make the basement more roomy.

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Today we are all looking for ways to live with the least impact on the natural world as possible. We are looking for more fuel-efficient vehicles, switching to reusable cloth bags for shopping, and designing homes that are environmentally friendly. It is even possible to take a home built decades ago and make it better for the environment when we are about the business of remodeling with green in mind.

There are countless ways to remodel a home and make it more environmentally friendly. One of the least expensive remodeling projects is a new paint job, and you can make your paint job more “green” by choosing paints with low VOC numbers. VOC stands for volatile organic compounds, which are those chemicals that can give off environmentally harmful fumes for years after the painting has been completed. The lower the VOC number, the lower the amount of damaging fumes are released and the lower the damage to the environment.

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The kitchen gets more use than most other rooms in a house, and it is one of the key rooms that potentials buyers concentrate on when they are deciding whether or not to put in a bid on a house that is up for sale. Due to these realities, it is wise to invest a good sum of money in remodeling the kitchen from time to time. Redoing cabinets, in particular, can make the kitchen more enjoyable for a home’s owners and increase the resale value of the home.

Putting in brand-new cabinets can cost a few thousand dollars or more, but homeowners can get the same effect as brand new cabinets for much less through kitchen cabinet refacing. With kitchen cabinet refacing, there is no need to take all of the cabinets out of a kitchen. Only the outer, visible parts of the kitchen cabinets are changed when a refacing project is done, which saves both time and money.

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Remodeling a bathroom is a great way to brighten up a home and increase its resale value. Even those who do not have a lot of money to invest in a bathroom remodel can still make changes to their bathrooms. Inexpensive, small bathroom remodeling projects can give these important rooms a whole new look.

There are four main types of small bathroom remodeling projects. The first one is probably also the least expensive — a new paint job. By repainting the walls of a bathroom, the homeowner can bring it up to date and incorporate colors that are more popular in today’s world than those colors of years past that might be on the bathroom walls in the present.

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Siding is a popular choice for the exterior walls of homes in the United States. Its ease of installation and relatively inexpensive cost make it a favorite of home builders. Furthermore, in a home remodeling project, siding is often chosen for the walls of home additions for the same reasons.

As a homeowner, you may very well be thinking of adding siding to your home or you now have to repair siding that has suffered wear and tear over the years. If you are installing siding, you should take aluminum siding into consideration as you make a list of your options. Unlike vinyl siding, aluminum siding will not become brittle over time or during the winter. It is also fairly malleable; thus, it is easy to customize pieces to fit the shape of a home and other buildings.

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