Remodeling Fads That May Not Be Such A Great Idea In Real Life

Remodeling trends come and go. Sometimes, though, what looks great in a design magazine just does not translate so well into a real life home. Here are a few examples of such unfortunate fads and some realistic alternatives.

The Stadium Kitchen

Perhaps because of the myriad of celebrity chefs that seem to be taking over every channel on TV, the arena sized cooking space has been splashed all over glossy design magazines for quite a while now. Suddenly people think that they have to have enough room in their kitchen to cook a banquet for 16 – or maybe run a Hell’s Kitchen style cooking contest?

Wouldn’t it be a lot more useful to have a kitchen layout that allows the home cook to pivot with ease from the chicken in the oven to the peas in the fridge to the tomatoes on the counter while whipping up a weekday dinner?

A big kitchen is nice, but one that requires Rollerblades simply to get from oven to sink quickly is just overkill. The perfect kitchen feels spacious but keeps everything close at hand, something that a good kitchen remodeling contractor can help you achieve.

Misplaced Porches

Having a porch built onto your home is a wonderful idea. If that porch is screened in so that you can enjoy the outdoors within being bitten to death by mosquitoes that’s even better. No one would argue that the addition of a porch will indeed benefit everyone who lives in the home. The problem is where most people choose to put it – right in front of the living room.

Views from that living or family room are completely now ruined. All the natural light that used to flood the room is gone and looking out of the windows now means peering through a rather darkened space that is filled with outdoor furniture that, in most US climates, you do not get to use for more than half of the year anyway.

Rather than ruin your living room with a view, why not have that new porch built onto the side of your home instead? It may take a little more thought and planning but that is why there are these people called architects.

Built in Lighting

Lighting up a room is obviously a great idea. In fact, most lighting designers recommend you implement a lighting system that has layers – task lighting and mood or ambient lighting. It is just that some built in lighting doesn’t always look right. Too many recessed lights and your ceiling begins to look pockmarked whilst track lighting is a little too reminiscent of a department store showroom.

Not all of your light has to come from the ceiling. Remember the layers of lighting? That means adding light at different levels as well. Every room has three dimensions so, apart from the light above your head, have sconces added to the walls and extra outlets installed so that you can add an elegant floor lamp or two near a love seat or table.

If you have examined all the other options, a basement remodel, an attic renovation, maybe even a garage conversion, but none of them seem to meet your home expansion needs, then a room addition is the only way left for you go. The next thing you will have to determine is how that room is going to be added – are you going to have someone build onto your home or build up by adding another storey?

In many areas of the country that choice may already be made for you. A great many communities have strict zoning laws about how high a structure can be and if your planned addition is going to exceed them then it simply won’t be approved. That is why when considering a room addition your first order of business is to discuss with the contractor you are considering hiring exactly what local laws have to say about your plans.

A floor addition is also a far larger undertaking than building onto to your home, which is itself already a a very significant home remodeling project. Although many of the construction requirements will be the same, almost all floor additions involve the removal of the roof. This is the kind of thing that should it go wrong, the results could be catastrophic.

The best way to decide which is the best way to add on to your home is to arrange a consultation with a very experienced local contractor, with the emphasis on the very experienced part. A room addition is very much a specialist project and, however good they are at other things, not all contractors are up to such a big task.

Solicit recommendations from family, friends or online referral services and make sure your check references very carefully before you even consider hiring anyone to alter the structure of your home.

You have budgeted out your home remodeling project, gone out and obtained the funding, and have even signed the contracts with your chosen remodeling professional or general contractor. All of this is great, just exactly what you should have done, but if you worry that you may still end up exceeding your original budget or facing unexpected costs you are, unfortunately, not entirely wrong.

A good general contractor or other remodeling professional will always give the best estimate he or she possibly can but sometimes there are surprises along the remodeling way that can cause costs to exceed the original estimate and which simply could have not been foreseen when they gave you said estimate.

For instance, say you have hired a local roofing company to simply replace a few shingles on your roof. The trouble is, once the roofer gets up there and begins to remove the old shingles, they may discover that the wood below is rotten and suddenly the initial simple job becomes a whole different one altogether. In not untypical cases like this the cost to complete the job is obviously going to change, perhaps by a considerable amount.

Alternatively, perhaps your general contractor drills into a wall and finds something completely unexpected like dry rot, wood worm or pest damage. Again, through no real fault of their own, the cost of the work is going to go up.

Another consideration is the cost of building supplies. If your remodeling job is one that will take a quite a long period of time – or if you received your estimate several months before the actual work began – there’s always a chance that the price of supplies used to complete the project as agreed will increase and with it your remodeling bill. If your contractor includes the cost of supplies in his estimate, before you sign the contract ask him or her whether those costs are subject to change and, if so, how that situation will be handled so this can be written into the contract as well.

Homeowners can also be their own worst enemy when it comes to busting their remodeling budget. It is oh so tempting to change your mind and opt for that more expensive tile or fancier bathroom fixture once the project is underway. Most contractors won’t mind but do understand that your costs will increase and do not act surprised when that final bill is higher than you expected.

If you are going to make a change, make sure you understand the cost in terms of both materials and labor before you submit a change order to your contractor.

The best way to avoid getting stung by hidden and unexpected remodeling costs is to budget for them in the first place. When you have that final budget add at least 5%, possibly as much as 10%, to it to be safe. Hopefully you won’t need it and you can spend the extra on a nice new rug or something similar, but at least you will have that safety net there if you need it.

Winter Remodeling Projects

For those people who love the summer and all the opportunities it brings to be outside, a cold winter stuck indoors can be miserable, to say the very least. They would love to venture outside but the temperatures are a little colder than they can bear for very long – anyone who lives in the northeastern United States especially knows all about that.

There are ways though, with a few remodeling and decorating tweaks, you can actually bring far more of the best of the outdoors indoors, alleviating some of that November to March cabin fever that so many of us suffer from. Here are just a few ideas:

Add a Sunroom

Adding a sunroom is a big investment but one that more and more homeowners have been choosing to make over the past few years. A well constructed sunroom allows household members to enjoy an afternoon in the sun without having to brave the icy cold and also adds extra living space that the whole family can enjoy.

If you already have an existing porch you may be in an even better position. Consult with a remodeling professional about having it converted for year round use.

Upgrade Your Windows

If adding a sunroom is too much of undertaking for you right now, you can achieve a similar effect in your living or family room by having your smaller windows replaced by a larger bay or picture window – or by the addition of a few well placed skylights or sun tubes.

Create an Indoor Garden

A few pot plants scattered around the house is nice enough but, for some outdoorsy types, that is simply not enough. An indoor garden takes the pot plant idea a step further. Many gardeners already know starting plants inside is a common technique to have a successful crop in the spring and summer, but why stop there? With a little expert help (yes, landscape designers will work indoors as well) you can create a beautiful indoor oasis that will bloom all year long.

Another thing some homeowners choose to add to their homes is an indoor water feature. It does not have to be overly big an and fancy – a $30 tabletop water fountain can be just as effective at bringing the mental image and real sound of a babbling brook into your living room as one of the larger, pricier options.

Upgrade Your Deck

For some people there is simply no substitute for the feeling of really being outdoors and as long as they have something to take a little of the chill off they do not mind bundling up a bit to do so. If that sounds like you, why not consider investing in an outdoor fireplace for your deck?

If you are considering adding an outdoor source of heat you may want to consider one of the newer pellet burning outdoor stoves over a traditional wood burning one. These fireplaces produce no creosote, which is a major cause of chimney fires, and are some of the most energy efficient appliances on the market today.

When is a remodeling professional not a remodeling professional? When he’s a residential general contractor.

Not funny at all, but many homeowners don’t know the difference between the two and can get a little confused when it comes to hiring the right people for their home improvement or remodeling project.

A residential general contractor is more than just a remodeling contractor. He or she is the right person to take on larger residential remodels and additions and will generally hire other home improvement professionals on a subcontract basis. For instance a full kitchen remodel (cabinets, countertops, flooring, the whole nine yards) usually takes at least six to eight weeks to complete, so this kind of remodel is definitely a job for a residential contractor.

For such a job to be completed successfully you will need an electrician, a plumber, a countertop contractor, a cabinet contractor, a flooring pro, a painter, and someone to install the appliances. The genesis of the residential general contractor is that they are the ones to orchestrate all these pros so that the work gets done in an orderly fashion and no one is under anyone else’s feet.

Often homeowners hire a general residential contractor when they do not really need one, and vice versa. How do you know whether you need to find one for your planned project? Basically you should consider hiring one if:

• The remodeling job will take longer than a week
• If you already know that the project will require the services of several different pros
• If the project is going to involve a number of permits and/or planning permissions.

Finding a good residential general contractor will take a little more work than simply picking a name out of the Yellow Pages or off the top of a Google search. Not all general contractors are residential specialists, there are industrial experts as well, but that is not always clear from an ad. Using a service like remodelingcontractor.com can help a great deal as they can put you in touch with the right people the first time to ensure that you are not wasting time talking to the wrong person.

Protecting Your Biggest Investment

If you are like the majority of other Americans your home is your single biggest financial asset. Therefore the fact that you need to protect that investment as best you can should be a no brainer.

Yet it’s not too unusual to see someone outside their home on a Saturday afternoon lovingly washing and waxing their car for hours, completely oblivious to the fact that water is also running all down the driveway because the gutters are blocked and about a day away from falling off the house altogether.

Protecting your investment in your home is all about maintaining its value, especially when the real estate market is less than great. The value of your home is directly tied to its condition, so there are certain steps you should consider taking to preserve that value. Where best to begin?

Do Your Homework

There are many ways to preserve the original value of your home and many of them involve repairs to and sometimes the remodeling of both indoor and outdoor features of your property.

It may interest you to learn that the return on investment (ROI) you get from certain remodeling projects – especially exterior ones – actually varies depending upon whereabouts in the country your home is located.

According to several years worth of findings in the Cost vs Value report, a mid priced re-siding job undertaken on a home in the north eastern U.S.A. will, on average, recoup 90% of its cost but that decreases to the low 70s in the Mid West. In that region it tends to be decks and patios that offer a better ROI when discussing outdoor improvements and additions that pay.

The projected costs that could be  recouped on any  given remodeling project also depends on the current value of similar homes in your neighborhood  and the rate at which property values are changing in the surrounding area. Even the availability and current cost of new and existing homes in the immediate vicinity can be a big factor in a project’s ROI.

At this point seeking the advice of either an experienced local realtor or a general contractor working in the area is very useful when trying to determine which projects make financial sense and which are going to be mainly just for your personal enjoyment – and there is nothing wrong with that.

Picking The Right Contractor

However good a certain remodeling project’s ROI seems to be on paper it is only going to return the investment you expected if the job is well done. A new deck may in theory be a great idea for preserving the value of your home but if it’s a shoddy DIY job with crooked beams and spotty staining that is hardly going to be the case.

Take the time to put as much, if not more, work into finding the right contractor for your project as you did choosing which one to undertake in the first place. If your family, friends and/or colleagues cannot offer you a good recommendation try using a service like Remodeling Contractor to find the best people in your area for completing any given project.