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My Big Kitchen Renovation Mistake

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About five years ago my husband and I bought an old, decrepit house, and renovated it top to bottom. (My whole renovation story is here, if you want to see!) Part of that renovation included adding on an open kitchen that we outfitted with a semi-custom IKEA kitchen.

I loved designing my kitchen from scratch, and we saved a ton of money by doing most of the design and work ourselves. But let me tell you—when you go the DIY route, you do run the risk of missing details that can make a big difference. Here’s the biggest (yet surprising) mistake we made.

The centerpiece of my kitchen is a huge island with an equally huge sink in the center. As a recipe developer and cookbook author, dishes are just a central fact of life; and in such an open kitchen with no place to hide, I wanted a large sink for the mess. I could drop plates out of view and sweep pots and pans out of the way.

So I bought an enormous single-bowl sink that’s nearly three feet by two (it’s a Silgranit sink from Blanco). It’s deep, wide, and surprisingly quiet. No clinking or clashing of dishes and pans against ceramic or stainless steel. And it cleans up beautifully.

The sink, in case you are wondering, was not the biggest mistake; I adore it! The surprising problem and giant mistake we made came next: the faucet.

I chose a sleek yet budget-friendly faucet that was modern and unobtrusive. But I got it all wrong: You guys, I bought a bar faucet, not a sink faucet with enough depth for my giant sink.

See, I bought a faucet I liked the look of, but I didn’t consider the size. I have a deep sink, and the faucet’s neck was fairly shallow, about 5 inches from front to back. This means that we had to lean quite far into the sink to get our hands under the water.

My sleek (and way too skinny) faucet.

(Image credit: Faith Durand)

Okay, boo-hoo, you may be thinking—what a nit-picky problem. Come on. Small potatoes! But this is where you’d be wrong. We spend hours every week doing dishes and as my husband and I are both short, we had to lean in too much. I would find my back aching almost immediately and, after a half-hour of doing dishes, the bad juju (ergonomically speaking) was pronounced.

It was also something that I just didn’t realize was even an option (a bar faucet? Oops?!) and wouldn’t have thought to look at the neck depth of a faucet. Matching a sink to a faucet is just one of those small yet significant details that mount up in a kitchen renovation — but it’s one that had surprisingly dramatic effects.

When to Consult a Kitchen Designer

I talked to Susan Serra, a kitchen designer whose work I have long admired for its aesthetics and livability, about this issue of teeny details in kitchen renovations. I was having some regret about not having my renovation looked over by someone with more knowledge and experience. “Here’s the thing,” Susan told me, “you do a kitchen once, maybe twice in your life. It has to be right.” True!

She explained something I didn’t realize when I was doing my own renovation, which is that a kitchen designer doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars. Many designers are offering more personalized services, customized to budget. “Kitchen design pros today offer a wide range of services, from hourly consultations to e-design to traditional full service kitchen design. Even if you’re spending $10,000 or less on your renovation, soup to nuts, why not hire a top kitchen specialist for an hour or two?”

Susan herself offers a very budget-friendly e-design consulting fee to look over plans and answer questions. I certainly wish I would have taken advantage of something like that to get the tiniest details right. As Susan said to me, “Spending a couple of hundred dollars, even just for a consultation, may equal 2% of your budget but the return can truly be life-enhancing.”

A much better faucet. Mistake fixed!

(Image credit: Faith Durand)

A Happy Ending for My Kitchen Mistake

I lived with my kitchen mistake for far too long. Between my slow realization that it was even problematic and then feeling uncertain what kind of faucet to fix the problem (and having two kids somewhere there in between!) we lived with this bad faucet for five years!

But finally this spring, we invested in a new faucet with a spray feature and the proper depth of neck: this one is almost double the depth of the bar faucet at 9 inches front to back. (Here’s the one we got—a sleek Grohe faucet at a very decent price.) It’s so much better and I can stand at my sink and do dishes without getting a sore back.

So, I hope you learn from my lessons: Giant sinks are the best; DIY design is lovely, but get some advice from a pro if you can; and always, always, do a little research on your beautiful modern faucets before installing them.

Source

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/my-big-kitchen-renovation-mistake-260471

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Credit Scores and Home Improvement Financing

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Remodeling your home – freshening up a living space, replacing the bathroom tile, or renovating to improve your home’s value in anticipation of a sale – can be a worthwhile investment. Depending on the scope of your planned renovation, these projects can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands.

Financing your dream renovation depends on your credit scores – higher scores will lead to better interest rate offers on a loan.

Remember, as you take on debt to make home improvements, you may see an impact on your credit scores. The immediate impact will come from credit inquiries or opening a new line of credit. If your credit utilization increases because credit cards are used to make home improvements, expect to see it reflected in your scores.

Home equity loans

A common way to finance remodeling is with a home equity loan, sometimes referred to as a second mortgage. Like your first (primary) mortgage, this is a loan taken out against the equity in your home. If you have been paying your mortgage for a few years and property values have risen, there is a good chance you have accumulated a fair amount of equity in your home. A home equity loan can be a convenient way to turn that equity into cash.

Be mindful that while second mortgages are popular products at most banks and lending institutions, they often involve higher interest rates than first mortgage loans. That is because the term “second mortgage” has another meaning. If you were to default, any funds available would be used to pay off your first mortgage (the one you used to originally buy the home) before any payments are made on the second. If there is not enough equity to settle both mortgages completely, the lender in the “second” position may not get everything owed on that mortgage.

For this reason, lenders view both second mortgages and home equity loans as carrying more risk. Therefore, it is generally recommended to use this type of loan only if the interest rate is affordable and you will be able to pay it back. Of course, this reasoning applies to all loans.

Home equity line of credit

A home equity line of credit works in much the same way as a credit card. A lender gives you a borrowing limit, but charges interest only on the amount you use. You also have access to the funds when you need them, which is a big plus if your project spans an extended period of time.

There are typically no closing costs associated with a home equity line of credit, and although interest rates are adjustable, most are tied to the prime rate. Repayment timelines typically vary between eight and 10 years. Banks, credit unions, brokerage houses and finance companies all market these loans aggressively, so you should have no problem finding potential lenders.

Remodeling financing options

There are two government-backed loan products that are aimed at those planning to remodel: Fannie Mae’s HomeStyle® Renovation mortgage and the Federal Housing Administration’s 203(k) Rehab Mortgage Insurance.

  • Fannie Mae HomeStyle Renovation Mortgages. This program, administered by the government-sponsored mortgage company Fannie Mae, provides mortgages to homeowners and investors alike. Borrowers can use HomeStyle funds to pay for just about any remodeling-related expenses: inspections, engineering and architectural fees, permits and, of course, the renovations themselves.
  • Federal Housing Authority’s 203(k) Rehab Mortgage Insurance. The FHA’s 203(k) product enables homebuyers and homeowners to finance (or refinance) the purchase of a house and any rehabilitation costs through a single mortgage. While some improvement loans have relatively high interest rates and short repayment terms, the 203(k) is an attractive option because it offers a long-term fixed-rate or adjustable-rate loan. The proposed renovations must cost more than $5,000, but the funds can be used to offset a relatively long list of expenses: construction, elimination of health and safety hazards, plumbing work, roof replacement and more.

Credit cards

Credit cards can be a tempting option when it is time to remodel, but proceed with caution. Unless you can avoid paying interest on the purchase – if you have a zero percent introductory rate, for instance – credit cards effectively add an interest charge (sometimes significant) to the renovation total.

The best credit card-financing scenario is to have a card that offers a cash-back reward and that you pay the entire balance before you incur interest. That brings you the benefits of cash back or points without adding interest to the cost of the remodel.

Source

https://blog.scoresense.com/credit-scores-and-home-improvement-financing/

News

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Red tape delaying bathroom renovation

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COMMENT:

Renovating a house is an insight into what has caused our housing crisis.

The difficulty in getting tradies. There aren’t enough of them.

The price of gib. What costs us nearly $25 a sheet costs the Chinese $1.80. It all adds up to make a house more pricey than it should be.

And then there’s the red tape.

HAVE YOU BATTLED RED TAPE TO WORK ON YOUR HOUSE? EMAIL US

I just want to turn my bathroom into a bathroom, not convert it into a giant indoor fire pit. I’m not asking for permission to run a zoo out of the shower. It’s a room that will be used for exactly the same purpose it currently is.

But, I need council permission for that.

This means I need a shower curtain. The council wants a shower curtain to stop splashy people creating puddles that cause slips. Only, it sort of defeats the purpose of the doorless step-in shower I wanted.

I also need to replace the window glass. The council wants safety glass. It doesn’t matter that the renovation isn’t changing the windows. They’re staying exactly as they are. It doesn’t matter that the glass has been sitting perfectly safely in those frames for possibly a century.

The council wants safety glass because it shatters less dangerously. It’s necessary in case a window breaks. And in case someone then walks through the bathroom. And in case they’re barefoot. There’s a lot of “in case” to justify that safety glass.

Extensive research suggests no one has bled to death in this house from a giant foot slash since the estimated building date of 1905.

We’re supposed to be moving out of the house today. The builder’s supposed to start tomorrow.

Trouble is, we still don’t have consent. They say consent takes 20 days but it never does. The council wants more information. It has paused the clock. There are 3.6 days remaining before we can get consent.

But my builder’s waiting and my temporary accommodation is only available so long.

What’s happening to me is happening across the country. It’s happening to renovators, house builders and developers.

Builders waiting. Projects on hold. Unnecessary alterations and additions. And then there’s the cost.

What is essentially just paperwork has already cost an eye-watering $2300. If I was a developer I’d push up the house’s sale price to get that money back.

And that is exactly what they’re doing. There’s a horror story from the Tutukaka coast of a planned subdivision. The consent cost $1.4 million. It cost more than the land itself. That cost added $60,000 to the price of each house. But in the end, after years of fighting for consent, it was denied.

Red tape is only one of the reasons why houses cost so much in this country, but it’s a significant one. Master Builders CEO David Kelly quotes an estimate he’s heard that consenting makes up 20 per cent of the cost of a house build.

If this process was streamlined, or just knocked back into a shape resembling common sense, we could shave $100,000 off the price of a house that would’ve cost half a million to build.

What’s your view? letters@hos.co.nz

Frustratingly, we’ve talked about cutting the red tape around building for years and nothing has changed.

If the Government actually dealt to this once and for all, they’d have a better shot at building those 100,000 planned KiwiBuild houses. The ones they’re planning build in 10 years. The ones people have entered into a ballot to buy.

We know those 100,000 will never be built in time.

We know because we’ve seen how the red tape works. In a decade this Government will probably find itself at exactly the same place I am right now. Clock stopped, tools down, 3.6 days left.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is on NewstalkZB in Wellington, weekdays, 8.30am-noon.

Source

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/news/article.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=12084029&ref=rss

News

11 Things to Keep in Mind While Planning For Home Improvement

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Home Improvement is not only time-consuming but it often leads to huge expenses based on the work planning. So, a careful planning is essential to save both time and money. Moreover, an advance planning reduces stress into minimum along with allowing you to keep in your budget. Apart from this, setting a strong contract ensures an effective procedure by avoiding some common hazards and risks.

In order to get your Home Renovation done properly, you must plan in a realistic way or you may take advice from a professional renovation service. Whatever you plan, at first, you must follow below steps to give your home a better renovation:

At first, make some realistic goals adjusting with your expectations. This work demands inputs from a number of people with better coordination among them and a careful attention to that particular project. In such works, it is always important to avail with contingency and leeways. Moreover, be sure that the goals you have set, are better thought-out and realistic as well to be achieved.

Like the realistic goals make a realistic budget before the work starts. If your approach to the work is not based on well-thought and forget to give attention to your expenses, you are supposed to exceed your budget wasting the money. Try to do your research and shop around. But it is not always the best thing to accept the cheapest offer. Ask your shortlisted candidates for some free testimonials and example of their work. Some renovation companies often provide the customers a free estimate based on the project. So, you can ask them for an estimate.

Don’t get influenced by a company’s fancy website and their impressive sales pattern as more often they are found to be unlicensed. So, ask them to show their license or relevant certification, company’s insurance and their liability insurance. Don’t get relied on with the verbal contract, sign a contract when you are sure about the whole agreement as it will help you avoid any kind of misunderstanding. This will provide you with the ways to take legal assistance whenever you notice something going wrong during the renovation.

Hire a project manager while working with different professionals if you have no idea about the process. A project manager establishes a detailed project plan ensuring everybody up to the speed. Moreover, the person also ensures about the completion of each stage in time and budget. An efficient project manager is always ready to be involved in difficult conversations as the requirement and will do anything to avoid such conflicts.

In case of major renovations of different areas of your home, work must be done in a proper order like your roof is not completed, there is no way to remodel your room. If one portion goes wrong, other parts must be done with some compromises. So, it’s always advised to follow a process by figuring out the tasks to be done in a right order.

Listening to the experts is very important in order to achieve the goals you have set for your home renovation. If your contractor thinks that improvement is not possible and suggests an alternative, do not avoid it as you are paying them for this reason. So, it is always essential to consider their opinion and compromise according to their belief.

Some major renovations take time. So in such case, it is quite uncomfortable and stressful living in an incomplete house with the workers coming and going. So it will be a good idea to arrange an alternative living place.

Home renovation means full of dust and mess. Therefore, pack up the things or move them into another place of your home but make sure that you keep the essentials aside and pack up the rest things. In such case, if you have no space in your home, you can consider a temporary storage solution.

Giving access to your home to the contractors and their team can put you and your family at a risk. Workers will be coming and going all the day, so, it will be very tough to keep the track. In such case, it will be a great idea to get your security upgraded by adding programmable locks or alarms. It will provide a register of everybody who enters.

If you have kids, you need to handle this area carefully. Keep the children away from the work areas as it can be dangerous for them. Not only this, they can the work process. In order to avoid such problem, put up child safety gates or keep then anywhere else until the work is done fully.

During the home renovation work, it is quite natural of people’s coming and going and also bringing the vehicles with them. It will increase traffic occupying a lot of space and add noise. So, in order to avoid the conflicts, alert your neighbors in advance.

So, these are common basic facts to be followed while your home is under the renovation process.

Source

https://www.sooperarticles.com/business-articles/11-things-keep-mind-while-planning-home-improvement-1667801.html

News

Seven Home Improvement Projects It Pays Not to Postpone

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You may think you have all the time in the world to make repairs to your home, but your property has other ideas.

After my wife and I bought our first house five years ago, we began building a subconscious triage list of issues and potential repairs and started addressing them as best we could. We honestly thought that portions of our house and surrounding property would sit around in suspended animation as we dithered with garden beds, insulation, and myriad other projects that now seem incidental at best.

During the next five years, we’d learn the merits of preemptive planning. When a wind storm felled a 110-year-old pignut hickory tree, we became quickly acquainted with arborists, preventative maintenance, and tools like pruning poles and wood chippers. When a a firewood rack nearly fell through our front porch, we learned the value of selecting the right wood and framing for the job. When our water pump seized not once, but three times, we learned that asking for a professional opinion during a small job (like winterization) is better than asking for it before a big job (like a complete pump replacement).

The biggest takeaway from all of these misadventures is that it isn’t just cheaper to address small problems before they become big ones, it’s often inexpensive to address small problems period. I looked back on my own checklist and came up with a few projects where the bill was not only lower than I thought it would’ve been, but low enough to make me wish I’d called someone in sooner.

Tree Pruning

When we first moved to our house, we inherited two legacy trees. One was a 110-year-old pignut hickory and the other was a 125-year-old black walnut. When a windstorm took down the first, we avoided a nearly $900 removal fee, but spent days with chainsaws, hacksaws, a wood chipper and a log splitter cutting apart a gnarled, knotted, dense mass of a tree.

My father-in-law had much of the equipment that we didn’t, but rental charges would’ve brought us to at least half the removal price. We did have to spring for a $230 excavator rental to get rid of the stump, but sprung for $200 tree pruning for the remaining black walnut tree in the years that followed. With each tree right near our garage, and the hickory fortunate enough to fall away from that building, we likely should have addressed pruning far earlier than we did.

Gutter Cleaning

We have a two-story home that dates back to the early 1850s, which means it has an extremely steep roof on its second story and questionable roofs over some of its entrances. I can get the lower gutters and about 20% of the high gutters fairly easily. It’s the 80% of those highest gutters that have irked me for years.

As the folks at HomeAdvisor point out, the average cost of gutter cleaning nationwide is $150, but that can range from $70 for a smaller job to $335 for a mansion-sized property. Ours was slightly less than the average, but well worth it after a series of unusually snowy and icy Oregon winters threatened to pull gutters clean off of the house.

Driveway Repair

We have a gravel driveway that wasn’t in peak condition when we arrived and was replete with ruts and pits before we finally addressed it. Installing a new driveway would’ve cost us thousands, but repairing a gravel driveway costs roughly $40 a ton for 3/4-inch minus — thick gravel with loose fill that settles into gaps left by potholes.

Combined with the $60 rental of a plate compactor, the entire job will cost us less than $400, which is significantly less than the nearly $1,500 cost of having it completely redone. An asphalt driveway, meanwhile, costs about $2 to 2.50 per square foot to repair but $3 to $4 per square foot to replace.

Well Pump

If your house uses well water or you have an irrigation system that runs on well water, it helps to have a float and cutoff switch installed for the months when the well gets low. It also pays to blow out your lines and winterize your pump before things get too cold.

Before we learned any of this, we overheated two well pumps and had a third crack after its remaining water froze. Each replacement was roughly $250 apiece, while winterization cost nothing (just removing bolts and draining the pump) and the float and switch installation cost roughly $180.

Septic Tanks

As soon as we were told that we were moving into a house with a septic tank, we made plans to have it emptied. We didn’t mind the previous owners leaving behind items like curtains, furniture, and appliances, but having their remnants in our septic tank just made me uneasy. We had a crew come in during the spring and empty it for about $275. While that isn’t insignificant, it’s a cost you incur every 10 years and is far less than the $1,551 average cost of repairing a septic system that’s been pushed beyond its limits.

Insulation

In our house’s more than 150 years of existence, insulation seems to have been a nominal concern. There was some old yellow batting in the floor of the attic, but not much beyond that. The first winter’s natural gas bills for heat were substantial, with even the 12-month flat rate exceeding $190 a month.

Landscaping

We have laurel bushes and invasive blackberry ringing our property, but the laurel bushes on one side of the house had grown halfway across the yard. We realized in other parts of the yard and in our garden that, if left unchecked, hedges and blackberry would simply consume everything in their path. That said, these laurel bushes and blackberry were about to consume and outbuilding an reach their way toward the house.

We called in a landscaping crew and, $500 later, we had reclaimed much of the yard and given the goats a bunch of laurel and blackberry to munch on. If the previous owners had simply pruned a bit each year, however, that same hedge could’ve been either pruned by professionals for far less or trimmed by the owners for free.

Source

https://www.thesimpledollar.com/x-home-improvement-projects-it-pays-not-to-postpone/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thesimpledollar+%28The+Simple+Dollar%29

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8 Tips for Your Next Home Improvement Project

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Dawn dish soap and a roll of Bounty paper towels. That way, if you’re limited to just a few rooms for several days, you can still pull together some basic meals and a hot cup of coffee.

Covering all your floors and furniture with bed sheets might protect them from light dust, but what about spills and heavier debris? To keep furniture and floors clean and damage free during renovation work, cover them with thick plastic sheets. Laying cardboard beneath the plastic will keep hard flooring safe from cracks, scratches and dents, too.

Renovation work can quickly fill your home with dust, grime and debris. After the job is complete, carefully remove all plastic sheeting from furniture and floors. Clean hard floors with a Swiffer WetJet, an all-in-one mopping system with a cleaning solution that loosens dirt and lifts it off the floor. Use Swiffer 360 Dusters to trap and lock dirt that has settled on baseboards, fan blades and blinds. As a finishing touch, spray Febreze AIR in your newly renovated space to fill it with a fresh, clean scent and eliminate odors.