Eco Friendly Homes

Archive for May, 2009

While refacing your cabinets, consider other cost-effective renovations throughout your home. Laminate is an inexpensive and versatile remodeling material, and it’s not just for kitchen countertops and bathroom floors.

Laminates Throughout the Home

A new laminate countertop would complement your newly refaced cabinets, but why stop there? Laminates are available in a wide variety of colors including greens, blues, and beiges that can balance many areas of your home. Laminate is resistant to nicks and scratches, and is easily maintained with soap and water which makes it an ideal renovation material for high-use areas like:

1. Craft/hobby rooms * Garages * Kid’s rooms * Family rooms * Snack areas * Cabinets and bookshelves
Other less obvious areas in the home where laminate remodeling may be beneficial:

2. A laundry room countertop. The countertop would be ideal for folding clothes and easy to clean in case of any detergent spills.

3. A durable laminate built-in desk. Many homeowners store mail and paperwork near the kitchen, a built-in kitchen desk would be an ideal way to complement your cabinet refacing selections and kitchen décor.

4. Laminate storage enclosures, table tops, and decorative moldings. Ideal for increasingly trendy home theaters, computer work stations, and video console areas.

Laminate is a popular remodeling material for many areas of the home because of the wide array of design options. Rounded custom edges on tables and countertops make them a safe alternative especially if you have children running through the home. In tougher, high-traffic environments, it makes sense to renovate walls and doors with laminate. Laminate can also play a big part in rooms with dual functions; a laundry room can become a craft or hobby room, or a family room can double as a homework station or computer room.
Hire a contractor to reface your cabinets and remodel with laminate around your home. Laminate is not just for kitchen and bathroom renovations. Be creative and complement your cabinet decor.

People looking for a new home are not only looking at the price tags prospective homes carry but on several other factors. Most would try to look at such factors and elements whenever they conduct ocular inspections on a prospective home, and most would simply be turned off and walk away if they see that the home they are looking at failed to satisfy their expectations.

* Curb appeal or what the external areas in your house would look like would be the first window that prospective homebuyers would look for in a home. Great landscaping and an awesome lawn never fails to catch the attention of people passing by and those seeking for a new home would definitely want to set foot inside a home with a great looking exterior such as the one you have.

* Part of the curb appeal that homes could give to prospective buyers would be the external sections of the house. An intrinsic part of your home renovation work should also focus on the exteriors of the house including walls, windows, terraces, etc. Home improvements may include repainting of surfaces or a complete change of exterior material including stone or marble.

* A big increase to your home value can be achieved by improving your roof. Investing on a totally new roof would not be such a bad idea if you have the finances for it. The quick returns in terms of raising the home value significantly may be well worth the investment.

* From the exteriors, your home remodeling project to increase the value of your home should now move to the interiors. Walls and other surfaces would be the first eye-catchers so you definitely have to invest in repainting, change of materials or enhancing surfaces and countertops.

* Home renovation would not be complete if there would be no significant change in the flooring. It would be wise to consider moving away from the use of carpets and linoleum as floor covering and move on to ceramic tiles, stone, laminated floors or the natural beauty of hardwood. Such changes would swell your home value significantly.

* Kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling are some focus areas that you would need to consider to drastically lift the value of your home and catapult it to the next level. Custom home builders can help you design and build such awesome changes in your home that can be competitive against most modern and stylish homes.

Home renovation will definitely cost the homeowners a significant amount for investment but the returns would be far more significant in terms of raising the value of the home to a much higher level.