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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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Ways to get Government Incentives and Save

Retrofit Your Home and Qualify for a ecoENERGY Grant
To help homeowners save energy, save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Canadian Government has created the ecoENERGY Retrofit Program. The program awards homeowners with rebates of up to $5,000 for home energy improvements. This matches up to $5,000 available from the Ontario Home Energy Retrofit Program- for a total of up to $10,000.
See the list of provincial, territorial and municipal entities offering grants and incentives below.

Sounds good, isn’t it? But how real this grant and what exactly do I need to do to get it?

It was reported on February 27, 2009 by Natural Resources Canada that
Due to the greater-than-expected number of Canadians participating in the program in its first year, some homeowners have experienced delays in receiving their cheques. has resumed payment of retrofit grants to Canadian homeowners.
This is the good evidence, that program works and help homeowners to cut their energy costs, emissions and get some cash back from the government.
Because of the immediate and lasting benefits to homeowners, the economy and environment, Canada’s Economic Action Plan includes an additional $300 million for the ecoENERGY Retrofit-Homes program. This will allow as many as 200,000 more homeowners to participate in the program over the next two year


Here’s what you can do to reduce your energy consumption and receive grants through ecoENERGY Retrofit:

1. Before you undertake any energy efficiency renovations, hire a Natural Resources Canada certified energy advisor to perform an energy evaluation of your home. The advisor will give you a pre-retrofit evaluation report and an EnerGuide rating label for your home.
2. Select your improvements and implement the recommended energy upgrades, leaving time to ensure your post-retrofit evaluation is completed within 18 months or before March 31, 2011, (whichever comes first).
3. Call your energy advisor to perform your post-retrofit evaluation, to confirm your new energy rating and to submit your grant application.
4. Wait no more than 90 days of your post-retrofit evaluation to receive your cheque.

Here are examples of improvements that are covered under ecoENERGY Retrofit Homes: Replace your heating system with an ENERGY STAR® qualified oil or gas boiler that has an 85.0% AFUE or better – $600 grant amount; Install a CAN/CSA-C448 compliant earth-energy system (ground or water source) -$3,500 grant amount; Replace the heat pump unit of an existing earth-energy system (ground or water source). The system must be compliant with CAN/CSA-C448 – $1,400 grant amount.


Courtesy of BestBiddy


Dave -
360renos

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