Projects To Avoid

If you plan putting your home on the market in the next few years, there are some home improvement choices that will probably hinder the sales potential.  Robby Monk with Exovations writes that when it comes to home improvement, every homeowner wants their home to look good, function well and add value.  If just one of the three listed isn't accomplished, then you could be left with a home improvement project that fails to live up to the intended result.  Below are five home improvement projects you may want to reconsider.

~~Turning your garage into a family room. We have all seen it.  A buyer walks into a beautiful home and everything inside the home meets their specific need - except for not having a garage.  One of the biggest mistakes homeowners make is turning their garage into a family room.  Garages are often expected.  If you remove the garage, then your pool of buyers drops significantly.  Even if you aren't looking to sell anytime soon, the time will come and you will be left with a great deal of regret from having made this costly decision.

~~Excessive landscaping. Curb appeal is important.  A well landscaped yard can often lead to greater interest in a home that is on the market than a similar home with no landscaping.  However it is important to remember that "less is often times, more".  Excessive landscaping to potential buyers can look like too much maintenance. Although landscaping is important, it just as important to know when to stop and maintain what you have.

~~Converting a bedroom. Unlike landscaping, when it comes to bedrooms, "more is more".  Understandably there are times when a bedroom can be turned into either a home office or even a closet, but when a homeowner is looking to sell, the best thing they can do is turn the bedroom back into its intended use - a bedroom.  Buyers don't want to envision too much.  They want to see a home for what it was intended for.  Be aware that the bedroom must have a closet for it to be considered a bedroom by the appraiser.

~~Adding a swimming pool. Swimming pools can be fun.  They can also require a ton of cost and maintenance.  Swimming pools are considered more of a liability than an asset for buyers.

~~Being too personal. Extreme design tastes, although pleasing for certain individuals, don't always translate to buyers.  It is perfectly acceptable to turn your home into a theme of your choice, but know that when your home is on the market and prospective buyers are looking, they don't want to necessarily see your infatuation with Morocco and the marble tile you have put down throughout the home.  Instead, invest in making your home more neutral.  Prospective buyers don't like surprises and want to visualize how their furniture will fit into the home.  If they can't get past your extreme design flair, then they buyer may be thinking about the next home before they even leave yours.

Is Thanksgiving Dinner At Your House This Year!
If you have decided that this is the year you will finally remodel your kitchen, and you want it done before the holidays, you need to be well into the planning and estimating process.  Most kitchen remodels take about three months to complete from the time the cabinets are ordered.  You should be making your final decisions and getting your installation scheduled now to have any certainty of having a brand new kitchen in time for the holidays.



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10 Tips For Choosing The Right Paint Color

We found these tips on a great blog, Myra Hope's MyBlessedLife.net.  Knowing how to choose the right paint color is so much easier on your budget, your neck, your marriage, etc., when you get it right the first time! Myra Hope advises:

1. For the love of all things beautiful, DO NOT go straight to your local home improvement store, choose a color under those horrific lights, buy two gallons and tote it home. Please.  Your walls thank you in advance. Trust me.

2. What looks good in my house might look awful in yours. And vice versa. This actually happened to me a few months ago. I loved the look of Sherwin William's Comfort Gray in several rooms that I had seen online. Without doing much research I painted my dining room and it was wayyy too blue. Not what I was going for at all. I should have followed my own advice and gotten a few sample pots.

3. Find your inspiration piece. Your inspiration may be something you already have - a piece of fabric, a chair, a pillow, a piece of art. Go old school and look through magazines or use Pinterest. Either way, decide what colors you are drawn to.

4. Take advantage of paint sample strips.Again, trust me. If you can get your hands on a paint deck (shows all colors) that would be even better. If you don't have a paint deck and you don't know anyone who does, you can usually get them on loan from your local paint store. If these aren't options, then take home lots of individual paint samples so you can go on to the next step.

5. Look for color undertones and compare samples. It is very helpful to compare paint samples to white. It is the easiest way to determine what undertone a color has. Each paint sample strip has an undertone - green, blue, red, yellow.

6. Tape the paint samples to the wall and look at them during different times of day.It is very important that you look at the paint samples in different light {both natural and manmade}. Give the samples a good stare  - morning, noon and night - and you'll be well on your way to step #7.

7. Use process of elimination. Also...squint.As you look at the paint samples color undertones and see them in different lighting, you will begin to determine which ones you love and which ones you don't.  This is the beautiful process of elimination. It rocks. If a color makes you hesitate, scratch it. You might think that squinting sounds funny, but if you squint your eyes, often colors are easier to figure out.

8. Get sample pots of a few paint samples that you like best. Please do not skip this step. Especially if you are painting a large area. Get sample pots of 2-3 and paint them on the wall in a few different places. I like using el cheapo foam brushes that I can just throw away when I'm done. This is the final step in the paint sample elimination process. Either you love a color or you don't.

9. It will end up darker than you think. I realize that when looking at a paint strip of colors from light to dark, it's very tempting to be all dramatic and go super dark. Once a color is on all four walls, it's going to be more dramatic {dark or need-your-sunglasses-bright} than it looks on that innocent little paint strip.

10. Less saturation is more. I just touched on this point, but a slightly grayed paint color is going to be more subtle and classic than a color that requires sunglasses. My recommendation is to go for less saturation rather than more. I can't tell you how many times a client has tried to find that perfect yellow color and unfortunately it looks like "The Man With The Yellow Hat" came for a visit. A soft, buttery yellow is much more pleasing, even though it looks more pale on a paint strip.