While you’re gearing up for the summer BBQ’s and backyard picnics ahead, here are some of the home trends you can incorporate into your preparations.
Summertime Home Design Trends
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How to Maximize Limited Living Space
Whether it’s a kitchen, bathroom or family room, transitioning a small space from frustrating to fantasy is absolutely achievable. No matter the part of the home, maximizing limited living space always starts with defining your goals for that particular area. Do you have a small kitchen, but you love to entertain? Have you found yourself with a lack of sitting space for those friends and family members who drop by? Or maybe you feel the walls closing in on you in the master bedroom? Before pulling your hair out, try picturing your limited living area from a new perspective.
The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Wood Flooring for Your Home
Natural hardwood floors are an understandably popular option in both traditional and modern homes. With different finishes, plank widths and lengths, and other options to choose from, wood offers a nearly endless range of beautiful looks from classic to cutting-edge. But with advances in construction and design, homeowners desiring wood floors have also been able to choose from engineered wood products as well as wood-look ceramic tiles that look just as beautiful as natural hardwood. So which option is the best for you?
Top 5 Energy-Saving Home Improvements
With the cost of water and electricity rising year by year, many homeowners take energy efficiency into serious consideration when deciding how to remodel their homes. Whether you’re primarily concerned with lowering your utility bills or with reducing your environmental footprint, you’ll be happy to know that energy-saving home improvements can also increase your comfort and improve both the aesthetics and resale value of your home.
Adding a Fireplace to Your Home
A fireplace has positive associations for many homeowners—it’s an attractive focal point as well as a cozy, relaxing spot on a cool evening. Since many houses built in the last four decades have not included fireplaces, adding one is a popular update. Here’s what you need to know if you’re thinking about adding one to your home.
PINK CHAMPAGNE CUPCAKES FOR MOM
What could be more perfect for Mother’s Day than Pink Champagne Cupcakes! We found this great recipe that we are baking in our newly remodeled kitchens to celebrate all the Moms we have here at Sea Pointe Design & Remodel: Monica Olson, Monica Fuerst, Sally Shore, Veronika Kuznetsova and Jenny Bias! Thanks for all your hard work ladies! Check out more fabulous recipes on our Pinterest page – https://pinterest.com/seapointeconst.
3 Things to Consider When Picking Out Custom Cabinets
Kitchen cabinets often represent the single most costly item in a kitchen remodel. A custom cabinet design can help make the most of your kitchen, creating an efficient and attractive space for you enjoy as you cook and offering you nearly unlimited options as to style, material, and finish. What should you keep in mind as you pick out new cabinets?
How to Prepare for a Home Remodel
When you’re planning your home remodeling project, don’t forget to put some thought into how construction is going to affect your daily life, the rest of your home, and your nearby neighbors. Thinking ahead can help minimize disruptions, protect your furniture and belongings from harm, and keep the peace in your neighborhood.
Home Improvements That Increase Resale Value
Conventional wisdom says that homeowners tend to live in their houses about 7 years before they sell and move. Whether you intend to stay in your own home a longer or shorter period than that, you may be considering how the improvements you make might affect the resale value of your home down the road. Not all home improvements will give you the same return on investment, so you need to choose wisely if you want to boost the value of your home without overspending.
5 Signs You Need to Repair Your Rain Gutters
Rain gutters can be invaluable for protecting your house, because they direct potentially damaging moisture away from your foundation. A properly installed set can last decades. However, gutters need regular upkeep to function properly. If you’re not sure whether or not your gutters are still in good shape, some signs can make it clear if your gutter system is in need of repair. Knowing what to look for can help you address small problems before they become large ones.
How To Find Your Room’s Focal Point
Often when we enter a room our eyes are instantly drawn to a particular spot of interest. This area beckoning the attention, from you and your guests, is called the focal point. These eye-catching features and statement pieces are responsible for tying together décor, adding intrigue to the space and breathing life into the room. Without a highlighted focal point, your room can end up feeling lackluster or unexciting.
Five Ways to Brighten Up Your Home
The brightness of a room has the power to affect both the emotional and aesthetic appeal of your home. Opening up your space to light can be inviting to guests, while still maintaining the coziness of your space. Your home can experience the enticing benefits of natural light unmatched by artificial alternatives with just a few isolated changes to your space.
How Paint Can Impact a Room
Picking the right paint for your home can be a challenge, as anyone who has faced an array of paint chips can confirm. You may feel like you don’t know where to begin in picking the right color or finish. It’s worth taking the time to think about, because the right choice can set a mood, provide a focal point, or help make a room look larger or brighter.
The Power of the Playroom
Having kids can make a once-spacious home feel cramped. However much you love them, you probably don’t love having their toys take over every part of the house. You may be thinking that the only way to get some elbow room is to move. However, moving is an expensive proposition—think higher mortgage and higher property taxes just for starters, the hassle and expense of the actual move, and the difficulty of finding the right house in the right neighborhood.
Spring & Summer DIY
With summer quickly approaching, don’t be quick to remove all spring decorations. The wonderful thing about both seasons is that they go hand in hand. Adding décor to the interior and exterior of your home can help change the mood and get ready for all the fun in the sun to come. Decorating doesn’t need to blow your budget, either. In fact, here are some fun and affordable DIYs to get your home spring and summer ready.
5 Tiny Homes You Have to See to Believe
1. The Ravenlore Nicki just moved into The Ravenlore, a colorful victorian-inspired tiny...
Tips for Maximizing a Small Room
Compact space in your home may make you feel enclosed and claustrophobic, lending to smaller rooms not being utilized for daily use. Maximizing a small room may seem impossible and intimidating when you first look at the task. Whether you want to start utilizing a spare room, or you’re feeling cramped in a tiny master bedroom, there are ways to transform a tight area into what seems large and spacious.
When Is It Time to Remodel?
When life changes, you need to adapt. Knowing the perfect moments for change can be challenging. You might have been putting off remodeling, but here are events that call for a revision to your home.
Closet Designs for an Organized 2015
For many, a new year means a fresh start… but it can be difficult to practice what you preach with last year’s clutter laying around. If you are ready for a small change to your home that will make a big impact, consider remodeling your closets. Whether you have a lot of space to work with, or what most would consider a cubby, optimizing your storage space will lead to a cleaner and happy home. Check out these closet design ideas that will transform your closet and clear clutter.
Home Remodeling Projects to Start During Winter
Here in sunny Southern California, we are lucky enough to not have to worry about elements such as snow to make our winters harsh. This makes our job as Orange County home renovators a little bit easier, since we are not slaves to the weather in terms of what construction projects we take on. Plus, there are a number of home maintenance and remodeling projects that are best done during the chilly months. Whether it’s the weather that makes them ideal, or the comfort they add to your home, these projects are perfect for starting during winter.
What You Need to Know About Repainting Your Home
A fresh coat of paint can make your house the shining star on the block. Whether you’re repainting the stucco on the outside of your home, or touching up scuff marks in your kid’s bedroom, it’s important to know how to do it correctly. Painting is a great way to breathe life back into your home, but both indoor and outdoor jobs can be quite a task. Keep reading to discover what you need to know about painting your home to ensure a successful paint job.
Ways to Add Wood to Your Home
When you walk into a hardware store, it is a sure fact that you will find aisles of wood. Wood comes in an array of cuts which make for perfect materials to use in our homes. While we might not realize all the various ways wood can enhance our spaces, it is a material in particular that deserves to be highlighted. Whether your home’s theme is rustic, modern, vintage, or contemporary, wood can be used a number of ways to refurbish the look of your home. Here are some ways to utilize the earth’s gift of timber.
Creating the Perfect Kid’s Room
We all want to give our little ones the world, but how about their own world? A child’s bedroom can become so many different places when left to their imagination—a faraway kingdom, a concert stadium, a pirate ship! Wouldn’t it be amazing if your kid’s room resembled their creativity and fun loving nature? Here are some ideas we have come across that will help you accomplish turning your child’s room into a place of excitement, while also catering to their basic bedroom needs.
HOME REMODELING FOR YOU VS RESALE
Many home renovation projects are started by seeing a dream project that strikes a chord with you. You may have gotten some helpful inspiration at a showroom, a recently remodeled friend’s house, or a local open house.
CHOOSING THE LOOK FOR YOUR HOME REMODEL
So you’re thinking about remodeling your house. Maybe your goal is to have your home renovated by summer? Maybe needing to just spruce it up a little bit? Maybe needing to make your best investment more valuable? Maybe needing some more space for your family to spread out in? Whatever your reasons, it should be a well-thought out process which will benefit you and your family for years to come.
WHEN HOME REMODELING GOES AWRY
Did you know that 96 percent of contractors go out of business in the first 5 years according to Qualified Remodeler Magazine? And 50 percent of those operations are actually out of business in the first 2 years? No wonder we’ve all heard of the remodeling horror stories.
THE LETTERS BEHIND THE NAME
Responsible homeowners like the idea that the people they hire to work inside their homes are experts. They’re not going to be taking any short cuts when it comes to the safety and quality of workmanship in the family home. Another reason is that when potential buyers are looking for a new home to purchase in Orange County, they’ll want to be assured of the dependability and reliability of the home improvement projects previously made to the property purchased.
SHADES OF WHITE
Repainting is the least expensive of your home remodeling projects but it’s also incredibly key since colors are so important in setting the mood. Colors can relax your mind, making your moments sweeter. It’s as simple as what colors your eyes see in your home environment that can affect you emotionally. Colors you surround yourself with can make you feel passionate or mellow, stimulated or subdued. Warm colors fall around the colors found in the flames of fire–yellows, oranges, reds and the indigos. These warmer colors are helpful in making you feel stronger with more energy. Cool colors are anything like the refreshing tones found in bodies of water, the greens and the blues. The cooler colors seem to bring your attention to your breath, to your calmness and your serenity. Somehow greens and blues help you to feel peaceful.
SUDDENLY SERENE: FROM CHAOS TO FENG SHUI SUCCESS
Keeping clutter to a minimum is not as easy as it should be. Wouldn’t you feel relaxed without having stuff all over the place? Even if you have it all neatly stacked in little piles and you very well may know how to find that certain piece of paper when you need it. But really, just looking at the to-do pile(s) gives you grief and makes your finest procrastination skills come to the fore.
HOME RENOVATION: NEEDS VS. WANTS
When finally embarking on the house remodel you’ve been putting off for a while, you can’t help but focus on details¦lots of costly details. Whether you’re thinking about how to increase the square footage in your home, or just some bathroom updates, those particulars of home renovation and design are all you can think about. To get some ideas you read home design magazines and browse through remodeling books, watch all the HGTV shows, and talk to friendly experts. You list what you want and then go from there you find yourself comparing the length of your to-do list with the width of your wallet. So just how are you supposed to make the best choices to get the biggest bang for your buck?
CUSTOM CABINETRY SELECTION OVERLOAD!
Custom Cabinets Deliver Endless Options
GENERAL CONTRACTOR VS. HANDYMAN
Sometimes it doesn’t take much thought in whether or not to hire your neighbor’s friend’s sister’s uncle to come in and change a ceiling fan for you. And sometimes you just know when it’s time to call-in a roofing contractor to put on a new top to your casa. But what about those times when you need a general contractor even though you could really could get away with bringing in a handyman (who’s always served you right in the past) to do a job so you save a few bucks if you passed on the residential contractor route? Do you take that risk? What are those risks? And what are you getting yourself into if things go awry?
YOUR HOME ENVIRONMENT CAN RELIEVE STRESS
It’s those little things that can bother you they get right under your skin. Who’d think that small stuff would irritate you so much? Like those big living room windows that saw better days with years of water deposits leaving a cloudy view of the spring flowers you dutifully planted. Or the old, sagging kitchen cabinetry that you’ve repaired countless times but you still must put forth special effort every time you pull out those bothersome drawers. Or the outdated colors in your bathroom that you somehow liked decades ago. You’ve been dreaming of custom bathroom designs for eons but just never got around to doing a bathroom renovation. Those niggling things actually create an uncomfortable home environment for your family. Stress isn’t something you want at home. Home should be relaxing and peaceful, not annoying.
PLANNING FOR YOUR CUSTOM CABINETS
According to HGTV Remodels, you can expect to spend nearly a third of your kitchen remodel budget on cabinetry. This being said, you want to make sure you make the right decision for you and your family when selecting custom cabinets. Before you start shopping, make sure you and your design consultant have put together a well thought-out plan. You will need to identify your objectives and priorities while keeping in mind the amount of money you are willing to invest into your project.
EASING THE STRESS OF HOME REMODELING
We all know home remodeling can be stressful. Money. Inconvenience. Intrusion. Dust. Decisions. Just to name a few. Here are some of the key causes of home remodeling-related stress and how we help to prevent it.
SLASH ENERGY COSTS IN YOUR HOME REMODEL
If you’re considering a home remodel in Orange County, you may want to think about ways to incorporate upgrades that will reduce your energy bills. With a large project scope that involves opening or moving walls, just bringing your home up to current building codes will provide dramatic improvements to energy usage. But overhauls of drafty windows, under insulated walls and timeworn cooling and heating systems will minimize monthly bills and keep your family more comfortable year-round.
BE THANKFUL FOR YOUR HOME: Care for It!
Easy Care for High Maintenance Surfaces
HOME SAFETY CHECKLIST
Summer is a great time to tackle those home-improvement projects, such as painting the dining...
ROOM EDITION REMODEL BEWARE!
It may come as a surprise that there are many methods for calculating the square footage for a...
MISSION VIEJO PERMIT FEES WAIVED
Free Home Improvement Permits The City of Mission Viejo created a program called "Improve Don't...
HANDYMAN SERVICES MAKE FOR A GREAT MOTHER’S DAY
Moms are always the last ones to get spoiled in the family.Show her your appreciation this...
SWEAT EQUITY
If you’re like most people, your home is one of, if not THE largest investment you’ll ever make and maintaining it is key to protecting its value. With Spring upon us, there’s no better time to put a little sweat equity into your home!
HIRE THE RIGHT CONTRACTOR
Remodeling can be a big and costly step, how do you know if you’re hiring the right contractor?
Here We Go
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. - Henry...
REMODEL or MOVE?
Q: "We need more space! Would it be wiser to buy a new house or add on to the house we already...
INSTANT HOT WATER HEATERS
Would you like to take a hot shower for as long as you desire? There is now an alternative to the standard, bulky water heater with its insulated tank: tankless heaters, which produce hot water only when needed. Some advantages are that they’re relatively small and can deliver an endless supply of hot water quickly & inexpensively. Tankless units can also reduce energy costs because they only heat water when you need it. The number of faucets & water-dependent appliances along with how you use them helps determine the size of the unit you will need. Your Sea Pointe salesperson can help you select the unit that’s right for you!
HIGH TECH TILE
The recent explosion of new color palettes, exotic patterns, and striking shapes & sizes in...
ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF GOOD DESIGN
What is good design? It’s more than making rooms look good or translating someone’s idea of style. Good design enhances the quality of your life. It uses a range of design details line and balance, color and texture, lighting and architectural elements to please your sense of touch and space while transforming rooms into special places. Good design must satisfy three criteria.
ORANGE COUNTY’S DESIGN/BUILD DESIRES
O.C. homes have evolved dramatically over the past several decades in part, to reflect the shift in how we live. When remodeling, Sea Pointe’s clients usually request layout changes that take previously formal areas and makes them more casual & open. Other popular Design/Build favorites include…
HOW TO HIRE THE RIGHT CONTRACTOR
Remodeling can be a big and costly step, how can I be sure I am hiring the right contractor?
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