360renos - Home Improvement & Decor

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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Friday, December 23, 2011

Great Article by Mike holmes

 Take a word of advice from Mike Holmes, Canada’s most veneered general contractor of all times.
It amazes me, after doing my television show all these years, that I’m still seeing homeowners making the same knucklehead mistakes over and over. The big one — the one that starts a chain of events ending in disappointment and frustration — is the notion that they want the renovation done “fast” and they want it done “cheap.” And let’s face it:, in the renovation game, fast and cheap add up to just one thing — crap.
Mike Holmes
Mike Holmes
Before you start flipping through the Yellow Pages and calling every contractor in the book, let’s get your expectations on the right planet. You should expect that in this day and age, skilled contractors are in high demand: good contractors are very, very busy.
This means when you do start phoning contractors, don’t be surprised that they don’t immediately answer their phones — they are probably standing on a ladder somewhere with their hands full when you call. Don’t take it personally or assume they are not interested in talking to you, but contractors won’t answer their cell phones every time it rings. Constant interruptions slow down a jobsite. For this reason alone, most contractors wait until they are away from the jobsite before they return your calls.
Depending on the volume of messages they get, it can take at least a few days to get back to you because your average licensed tradesperson is in business as an owner-operator. This means that they do all the work themselves and also do their own bookings. A slow response time is not necessarily a bad sign: it shows that they are in demand and it is a pretty good indicator that they are going to be well worth the wait.
It’s also important to understand that good contractors are booked at least two to four months in advance. If you feel you can’t wait, remember this: Bad contractors are always available right away — because they are not in demand, or worse, because they are more than willing to bump their current renovation in progress to get started on yours. Odds are, that situation will come back to haunt you when, halfway into your renovation, the same contractor will bump you in favor of his latest customer.
If a contractor says he will “try to fit you in as soon as he can” and to “please be patient,” take that as a sign that he isn’t going to take shortcuts on his current project just to get to yours that much sooner. High-quality work takes time. You also don’t want that same contractor to turn around and rush your job just to get to his next one.
Let’s talk about the other part of the consumer equation: cheap. No one wants to spend more than he has to on a renovation, but as the saying goes, “You get what you pay for.”
How much is the right amount? That requires some work on your part, because it means getting as many quotes as possible. In the end, you may get a few extremely high quotes and a few extremely low quotes, and most likely you will get the majority of quotes that fall around the same price. Chances are, one of those middle quotes will be the right price.
The higher quotes sometimes reflect the skill level of the contractor or the price that the market demands for certain contractors who have a reputation for outstanding-quality work. Extremely low quotes often mean that the contractor doesn’t have the experience to properly quote the job, let alone know what it will take to do the job properly, or that he knows how to take shortcuts with your home in order to undercut the legitimate competitors.
So as you start planning your project, be prepared to wait for the right contractor and understand that there are ways to find the right price for the renovation you want.
Source: HGTV

1 comment:

Janey said...

With good contractors being generally so busy how long should I expect to wait before they can come work at my place? I'm looking at some painting contractors to hire for my new kitchen project. I've decided to paint first, and then match everything else to that later. I guess we should be glad that they are willing to take their time to do a great job.