360renos: Points To Consider When Looking For A Renovation Contractor

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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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Points To Consider When Looking For A Renovation Contractor

Generally, when planning for a home renovation, we already have estimates about the things we want to refurbish in our houses. These great ideas are intented to add more solace in our homes and make our homes a true haven for each members of the family. Employing a professional however is a smart choice, holding more experience and knowledge than we do, they can add and even transform our ideas into something that we did not even concieve of. We need to be very careful though, knowing that in any area of work, there are always good ones and bad ones. Thus before moving any further with any renovation project, choosing the right contractor is a must to spare ourselves from possible headaches.

Always take things one step at a time. Many of us would think that finding a good contractor is easy, it is the other way however. To avoid landing on the wrong contractor, there are some points you can follow.

Once you have started your saga, center your mind on engaging a professional and well experienced renovation crew. Seek for references. A good contractor should be able to show off samples of their work of art. It is best that you check at least more than five projects they have done. Upon seeing their work you will be able to gauge if they have the capability of handling your renovation project.

Another thing to ask contractors is if they have licenses and insurances. You will never know what could take place during the renovation particularly to the crews doing the actual renovation, an insurance in place will save you from any possible troubles.

Always remember to place everything you have agreed on with your contractor into writing. The contract should clearly define what type of work needs to be done, when it will be completed and what are the materials needed. The contract should of course state the payments plan for the project, stating the amount of down-payment, payment once the renovation project sets out and the payment when the project is already completed. It is also wise to add in your contract the resolutions for things such as deadlines that are not met. This will restrict any possibilities of wasting time during the project.

Author articlespace.cz.cc

Dave - 360renos

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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