360renos: January 2011

How to make your home stand out when selling

We can help your house sell quickly and at a good price -- even in a slow market.

It takes a lot more than sparkling windows, scented candles and chocolate-chip cookies to sell a home in today's market.

Improvements should be made so that the property shows well, is consistent with the neighborhood and does not involve capital investments.

Beyond any doubt, the best investment you can make is new paint. Painting can make a room or an exterior façade look brand-new, and totally transform the look and feel of a room or the entire residence. It is always wise to be somewhat restrained when choosing colors for a home-staging paint project. Avoid choosing colors that are too individual or flashy and favor neutral colors and schemes. This does not mean painting everything white, however.

Use subtle color schemes to accentuate the home's strengths and minimize weaknesses. Dark colors, for example, tend to make a room feel smaller, while lighter colors and pastels can make a room feel bigger.

There is another benefit to painting as well: the process of preparing the interior or exterior surfaces of a home for painting automatically allows us to go over the entire area receiving paint in great detail, and this can often expose items or areas requiring repair. It seems you always discover where the caulking has let go, where the wall is dinged.

It is always preferable that we discover and deal with these items before the real estate agent (or worse, the prospective buyer) points them out to you!

Dave - 360renos

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Sunday, January 16, 2011

Design Considerations for Your Homes Trim Part II

Baseboards and Casings

I recommend you select the profile you wish and then settle on the size. Selecting profiles is very much a personal choice. Colonial (classic) profiles are the most popular. More modern profiles would include styles which feature simple and straight lines.

For very large homes or when trying to match mouldings in older homes, you may need very large trim. Either a 7¼” base or baseboards with extensions may be the answer. For these options there are many great combination ideas avaialble. Another approach is to place a decorative moulding about 2” above your baseboard.

Shoe mouldings are placed at the bottom of the baseboard. Functionally they are used to hide any cracks between the baseboard and the floor. Aesthetically, shoe mouldings can add distinctiveness to larger baseboards.

Casings and Headers

Ottawa & Toronto: mouldings, trim, casings, crown and baseboards.

Casings are for around windows and doorways. Normally your casing will be about 2” smaller than your baseboard. Casing is the largest item and the most seen in the household. So select the trim which most appeals to you.

Casings can be enhanced with backband. For larger homes, using backband throughout the house is common, particularly in Toronto. Another option would be to use backband and headers in your main formal areas. The use of headers is a great way to improve an entranceway. It can also be used throughout the house.

The use of bullnose or full sill coupled with a smaller apron piece is a nice touch on windows.

Crown Mouldings

Wood mouldings feature very crisp profiles which show extremely well.

First select what type of crown profile you want:
For ornate crown or those with stylized designs, plaster or polymer mouldings are the best approach.
For simple lines and curves, wood mouldings are best.
For price, MDF mouldings best fit the bill.

You can enhance crown mouldings in a number of ways. You can add a casing trim either on the bottom or top of the crown. This makes the crown look bigger without encroaching on the room. Another option is to to make symmetrical combinations with a casing on either side with a crown in the middle. Or you can add a decorative piece about 6” below the crown.

MDF is becoming more popular. Just make sure you are happy with the profile, compared to that of wood. Many consumers have learned over time that the crispness of wood mouldings is their preference both for casings and crown.

Dave Bennett

Owner
phone 613.429.5000
mobile 613.282.2124
email dbennett@360renos.ca
www.360renos.ca

"Everything you can imagine is real" - Pablo Picasso

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Design Considerations for your Home's Trim

Selecting mouldings is very much a personal choice. Having said that, there are a number of factors which you should consider.

Symmetry: Normally your baseboards and casings will reflect the same profile. By doing so the house is brought together.

Depth of Profile: The thicker the moulding, the more profile it will have. Better quality mouldings usually are ¾” thick. These profiles give the room a much richer look. Generally suburban homes come with mouldings 3/8” thickness.

Crisp Profile lines: The crisper the profile line, the more the moulding will stand out. By using finger joint or solid wood the profile lines are very crisp. By using MDF the lines are less crisp and hence will not stand out as well.

Proportionality:Sizing the profile to your room is important. The following is a good guide -

Ceiling height Baseboard Casing Crowns

Stand 8 ft 4 to 5” 2 ½” 4 ½”

9 ft ceiling 5” plus 3 ½” 5 ½”

Over 9 ft 5” plus 3 ½” with backband 5 ½” plus

Proportionality also appears to vary by community. Houses in Toronto tend to use larger trim and backbands than those in Ottawa.

Wood Type

Generally I prefer fingerjoint pine trim. Both the depth of profile and crisp lines are obtained at reasonable product cost. In addition, it comes in lengths of 14 or 16 feet which minimizes waste.

American Yellow Poplar is a good solid wood. It is excellent for painting and more durable than fingerjoint. Like any solid wood it costs more. MDF is great if price is your most important variable. It will not wear nearly as well as fingerjoint pine and the profiles are not as distinct.

Pine, Maple or Oak: If you seek wood for staining, any one of these will do an excellent job. Remember, with pine you can stain it to reflect any natural wood for colour.

Thanks,

Dave

Dave Bennett
Owner
phone 613.429.5000
mobile 613.282.2124
email dbennett@360renos.ca
www.360renos.ca

"Everything you can imagine is real" - Pablo Picasso

Which Paint Is It - Latex or Oil?

Determining, definitively, whether a given paint was oil or latex has always been a bit of a problem, but an important one as you can paint oil over latex, but not latex over oil unless you use a special 'super adherent primer' first.

I used to recommend taking a bit of paint thinner on a clean contrasting colour cloth and wiping hard. If any colour comes off, it is oil based paint. If nothing happens, it is latex. But that didn't always work. Sometimes if the paint was very old, nothing at all came off.

Now a product has come out that reverses those rules. These swabs have acetone in them and they have no affect on oil based paints, but do take off latex. If the surface is stripped, it is Latex paint. If it just cleans or polishes the surface, it is Oil/Alkyd paint. Instead of the special swabs you could just use acetone and a contrasting coloured rag, if the paint colour shows up on the rag, it is latex. Acetone will do nothing to oil based paints. Old fingernail polish removers were made with acetone, and many still are -- look for a bottle that does not say 'without acetone'. You should test it first on a surface that you know is latex paint to be sure you have acetone in your liquid.

By the way, if you really want to paint latex over oil -- you can do it if you sand off the gloss and apply a "super adherent latex primer" first. Then you can continue with ordinary latex paint!

Dave - www.360renos.ca