The best home remodel ideas for improving the value of your home are, happily, the most affordable and the easiest to do yourself. Ask any real estate agent for tips on how to prepare a home for resale and you will be told that the house and yard should be cleaned and all clutter removed. Creating suitable home storage facilities and painting the interior and exterior of your house, therefore, are the jobs that top the list of desirable improvements. Interior painting and exterior painting should be next on your list of home improvement projects. Fresh paint helps make your home look clean, bright, and spacious. When selecting colors for the exterior, don’t forget to do something about that bland front door. Fresh, harmonious colors add beauty and personality to your home both inside and out. (more…)
Custom-designed homes can be risky, but there could be a big payoff
Independent Austin architects and designers are making footprints on the cityscape in thoughtful and fiercely original ways.
Drive down a street in Hyde Park lined with bungalows and you’ll probably find a modest jewel of a house tucked behind a tangle of trees.
Who built that? Who lives there? The unfussy lines and calm silhouette say modern, but the tawny limestone and rustic expression are pure Austin. The house is earthy and simple, yet sophisticated. It doesn’t shout, but it grabs your attention. (more…)
BOB BEITCHER says he and his wife, Carol, want their newly built home in Santa Monica to be a showcase of sustainable practices “without being granola-y, if you know what I mean.”
Their house off San Vicente Boulevard has been carefully designed by architect Warren Wagner to optimize solar energy and the use of recycled and renewable materials. Yet the modernist dwelling seems more about the panache of architectural possibilities than the virtuousness of green design.
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Tearing down is becoming so passé.
Once a trend, it has become almost required in American building that old houses be demolished to make way for homes that are bigger and grander.
But The New American Home at this year’s International Builders Show makes a big statement of its own, that just about any house can be saved — if the owners are willing to pay to move and renovate it.
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This strong preference has driven his choice of buildings for his company not once, but twice in the past six years.
In 2001, he located his offices to the historic MacKenzie building at the corner of West State Street and First Street. In 2007, he will relocate his company to the historic YWCA building at the corner of Cajon Street and Olive Avenue. Nothing new about either of these buildings.
However, they are rich in character and style. That’s what intrigues Cutler about the old buildings.
“I want my office in a building that has a lot of character, and I want to have a window that opens,” he said. (more…)
