Home Improvement Blog

Tips for Keeping Your Southeastern MA Home Addition Construction on Time & on Track

February 25, 20160

Keep your home additions on the right track.

Home additions can easily get off track.

It takes a lot of planning and preparation for a home addition to proceed smoothly from start to finish. Most project delays can be traced back in one way or another to a fault in planning. Weston home additions are far more likely to go according to plan, starting and finishing on time, when you start with a plan, not disorganized scribbling on scraps of paper, but well thought out, detailed plans for the addition, project funding, building permits, paperwork and materials, and the flow of work, from start date to end date.

Planning the Addition

Countless decisions are involved in the creation of custom built floor plans in Weston. Smart planners don’t just plan how space will be used today, but also for how it may be used in the future. An addition slated to be a rec room today may house aged parents tomorrow. It makes sense to design today’s addition with that eventuality in mind, such as planning wide walker and wheelchair accessible doorways and a bathroom spacious enough for someone using mobility equipment to maneuver comfortably.

You lose time if work has to come to a stop while you decide between ceramic tiles and wood floors or whether you want a door to open inward or outward. Changing your mind disrupts progress as well, especially if you do it multiple times. If you want your home addition finished by its projected end date, complete your final version of the plans well before the purchase of construction materials.

Learn how custom built floor plans can finish on time.

Keep your custom built floor plans on track and on time.

Make Sure Funds Are in Place

Increase the probability of the project being completed on time by avoiding last-minute financial wrangling over loans and other money matters, a common source of construction delays. A well planned project has the funding in place prior to engaging contractors and is prepared to sign contracts, make financial agreements and to schedule payments as needed.

It’s natural to be in a hurry to get your southeastern MA home addition started, but it is better to wait to begin building until after all funding is secure. This reduces the chance there will be a work delay while you work feverishly to raise money to pay for more materials or because construction had to halt because a financing deal fell through.

Preparing for the Start Date

Make sure you are clear on what tasks you are responsible for and what tasks the contractors will handle. Permit applications must be turned in on time because work can’t start until they are approved and at the work site. Materials need to be ordered early enough for an on-time delivery. Prior to the start date, your local southeastern MA home addition expert will have a detailed work flow plan ready for review. Talk to your contractor daily so you know how close the work is running to schedule.

Benefits of Natural Lighting for Your Custom Built Room Addition in Scituate

February 23, 20160

Natural light is important when you design your own home.

When you design your own home, natural lighting can help.

Natural lighting holds many benefits, not just in terms of interior design and reduced energy consumption, but also in terms of health. If you are planning to adding to your home in Scituate, you may want to consider ways of maximizing the amount of natural lighting brought into your home. Window placement and style can bring sunlight to just about any room addition or room improvement project in your home.

Practical Value

Making sure your custom room addition plans in Scituate allow your home to be filled with natural light has practical value. With natural lighting, you use less electricity, which saves money on your monthly utility bill. Skylights can bring sunlight into your home in ways windows can’t. Use smaller windows to bring natural light into closets and pantries so you can keep the lights off. Window installation and placement can stylishly brighten hallways and foyers.

However, reducing electric light use isn’t the only way natural lighting can reduce your energy costs. You can position your home and windows to use the sun’s heat instead of your utility company’s to meet a major portion of your winter heating needs. A passive solar system design features a lot of south-facing glazed windows to collect the heat of the sun during winter. Precisely measured and positioned overhangs on those southern windows help prevent too much sun from coming through during the summer months. That could cause the home to overheat, and the cooling system to work too hard.

Talk to your local southeastern MA premier home remodeling and additions specialist for ideas on how to incorporate this type of solar planning into your custom home design. You may even want to consider going all the way, completing your passive solar system with a heat absorbing thermal mass to enable you to gain even more utility cost-cutting benefits from the sun.

Use natural light in your custom built room addition.

A custom built room addition requires natural light.

Natural Light Is Healthier

Numerous studies during the past decade have confirmed natural light holds benefits for health. Natural light is important for proper eye growth and development. Too little exposure to sunlight can contribute to the development of vision problems in children. Spending three hours a day in natural light can reduce the risk of children becoming nearsighted. Separate studies in different countries found bringing natural lighting into work sites and schools improved productivity rates for both adults and children. Spending time in sunlight during the day can yield longer, deeper sleep at night and can improve cognitive function and mood.

Plan to Benefit

When you design your own home in Scituate, plan your windows carefully, positioning them so you can maximize the health and energy benefits natural lighting has to offer. Talk to a southeastern MA premier home remodeling and additions expert who uses 3D design technology to help you experiment with window placement until you find an attractive arrangement that yields the amount of sunlight you want throughout the day.

Use These Design Tips to Decorate Small Rooms in Your MA Home

February 18, 20160

Decorate smaller rooms in your custom built floor plans.

Do your custom built floor plans include smaller rooms?

Smaller living has become trendy and stylish. The tiny house and smaller living movements have produced a veritable wealth of design tips to make your small rooms fabulous. The use of light, color, illusion and scale can make small rooms look and feel bigger than they are. Your eastern MA premier home remodeling experts can add custom designed built-in features to enhance that sense of space a well decorated small room has.

Windows and Lighting

If your small room looks out on the yard or has a nice view, you may want to talk to contractors for home additions in Needham and the surrounding areas about replacing the room’s windows with larger ones. The big windows will open up the space, and the natural lighting is the right kind of lighting for a small room. When lighting a room of this size, avoid dark corners, which will make the room look small and dim. However, the lighting shouldn’t be harsh, stark, operating-room bright either. Accentuate the vertical line and draw the eyes upward for that sense of spaciousness by choosing pale, sheer curtains for the windows, hanging them from the ceiling instead of using standard curtain rod placement.

Scale Down

Avoid over-stuffed, large furniture like the standard sized living room couch or stuffed chair. Instead, use smaller scale items, such as a fainting couch or an airy vintage or reproduction love seat with gleaming blonde wood and richly colored seat cushions. Try delicate, almost spindly side tables in a light wood or skip the wood and go with glass to reflect light. For a bedroom, consider a brass day bed or a foldable futon. If remodeling a small bedroom, another option to think about is custom built floor plans in Needham featuring a stylish Murphy bed.

Decorate small rooms with the help of contractors for home additions.

Contractors for home additions can help you decorate small rooms.

Create Space With Color

Avoid dark, deep colors except as high-contrast accents or to add a touch of warmth to a cool color atmosphere. Use these colors with a light hand and, with rare exceptions, keep them in the lower half of the available vertical space so they don’t break the eyes’ upward sweep and mar the illusion of height and space. A pale, monochromatic color scheme is another way to use color to create a feeling of openness.

Clutter Can Be Suffocating

The elegance of simplicity is an excellent concept to bear in mind when decorating a small room. Ideally, the space can be meticulously planned and created from custom built floor plans in Needham. This keeps things out of sight in custom designed, almost invisible storage spaces, leaving clean lines and open space broken by just a few carefully chosen objets d’art. Less is more is another important phrase for small room decorating. Arrange fewer pieces of furniture in the room, rather than crowding the room with many pieces.

Confused About Building Permits? Newton Home Improvement Contractors Have the Answers

February 16, 20160

Get the permits you need through home improvement contract.rs

Home improvement contractors can help you get the permits you need.

Building permits can be confusing for a lot of people. After all, building permits aren’t something the average person typically has to deal with, unlike professional contractors. Regulations governing these permits aren’t uniform. They can differ from state to state and, because counties and cities can add to state requirements, rules and regulations can vary from town to town. In some places like Newton even something as seemingly innocuous as putting up kitchen cabinets requires you to fill out a permit application and pay a fee to the city.

When you are working with a reputable eastern MA home improvement contractor, you don’t usually have to deal with obtaining building permits. A good contractor usually handles that sort of thing for you or gives you close guidance on the right way to get it done if, for some reason, you prefer to do it yourself. In fact, it should raise your suspicions when a contractor won’t handle the permits. It can mean there is a license or insurance problem since license information is required on the building permit application and workers’ compensation insurance information must be filed with electrical permit applications.

A Building Permit Offers Confirmation

The regulations governing building permits are based on a locality’s building codes, zoning laws and other restrictions that may be at play, such as land covenants and home owner association rules. This group of regulations governs construction and structural safety standards, land use restrictions, community standards, fire safety code and regulations, restrictions and standards governing sewage, water, sanitation and electrical work. Building permits offer confirmation the plans for the work have been reviewed by local officials and judged to be in compliance with all applicable regulations and standards.

The right permits are needed for custom built home plans.

Custom built home plans require the proper permits.

Types of Permits

Depending on the project, there may be multiple permits required. The specifics of a construction or remodeling project will determine the types of permits required. That’s one of the reasons its often easier for Newton home improvement contractors to handle the permit process. They know what the work entails and what permits they need so there’s less of a chance of delays due to error or missing paperwork. Simple remodeling projects with no electrical or plumbing work often require only the basic building permit.

When building a home using custom built home plans in Newton, expect to need a handful of permits, including one allowing a generator at the site during building, if it’s needed. Local contractors deal with permit officials frequently, building professional relationships over time. They know exactly who is in charge of what and are up-to-date on permit requirements. Contractors working regularly in an area are often extended a little professional courtesy, allowing them to get permit applications through the approval process a bit quicker than the average non-professional person.

Contact us to learn more about what types of home repairs require local building permits. What may be fine to do without a permit in one city may cause trouble in another. Always use reputable contractors to avoid the costly problems that can arise from improper permits.

Your Hingham Home Improvement Contractor Can Help You Design the Perfect Front Door

February 11, 20160

Choose the right front door with the help of a home improvement contractor.

Your home improvement contractor can help you choose the right front door.

Curb appeal matters, impacting the overall attractiveness and even value of your home, making your choice in a front door an important one. However, security and function are also important considerations when choosing this door. If you are adding or remodeling a porch, updating an entryway or simply replacing a door that has seen better days, talk to your Hingham home improvement contractor about the best front door options for your home. That way, you’ll have a better chance of finding a door that is a great fit for you and your home.

Define Your Perfect

Some people find front doors with lots of glass attractive, perhaps having their eastern MA premier home remodeling team frame the front door with additional decorative glass panels set into the wall above and to either side of the door. They may use stained or frosted glass for both style and privacy or may just let the sun shine through. Others may frame the door with decorative glass, but prefer a solid wood or metal door without windows. Some use no glass at all, relying instead on decorative molding, stylish hardware and other accents or a distinctive door shape in a fine hard wood or use rich or vibrant colors to create visual appeal.

Style isn’t always the highest priority. Many people take a more utilitarian view of their front door, and consider strength and security to be the most important factors. They look at a glass door and see a security risk, the possibility of broken glass and unauthorized entry. For them, the perfect front door is heavy and strong, features top-quality locking mechanisms and is resistant to tampering. They may look toward reinforced steel cores and have less concern about color and style.

For others, the perfect front door is one that prioritizes function over fashion. They want a door that is well insulated and draft-free, helping to keep heating and cooling costs down. They may talk to their home improvement contractor in Hingham about adding a practical storm door to their front door for added protection against drafts in the winter with sturdy screens to let in cooling summer breezes. Their perfect front door is low maintenance, retaining its good looks without repainting every few years and resists stains, scratches and scuffs. A fiberglass door with a insulating foam core may best meet their front door priorities.

Choose a new front door for premier home remodeling.

Your front door is an important part of premier home remodeling.

Front Door Priorities

Decide what your top front door priorities are and ask your contractor for suggestions. Your contractor may be able to suggest a highly secure steel door that also offers an attractive style or recommend a door that offers red hot curb appeal but is also designed to provide a higher degree of security. You might just find the trendy, stylish front door you fell in love with is also designed with tight weatherization in mind.

Contact us to learn more about the different types of doors on the market and how to choose the front door that best meets your style, security and function priorities.