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Home Repair

Home Remodeling – Construction Brings Happiness to Homeowners

Many homeowners shy away from home remodeling because of the expense and the difficulty in getting a project done. Others jump right in with no clear idea of how they are going to pay for it or even how they will accomplish the job. Between these two extremes is a healthy attitude towards upgrading the rooms in your house, doing something positive for your life, and incorporating the proper planning to accomplish your goals. When done this way, changing things up can impart a number of benefits. Here are some of the ways a little construction can bring a lot of happiness to homeowners.
Realizing a Dream House
More often than not, a compromise or two has to be made when buying a house. It could be due to finances, or it could simply be because of availability. After all, are you going to turn down that lovely house on the lake with everything you wanted just because you don’t like the way the kitchen looks? Of course not. But once you are settled in, you can turn your attention towards improving what you have. This is one of the joys of owning a house in the first place. Once it’s yours, it’s yours. You can do with it what you like, and for many, this includes quite a bit of home remodeling.
Fixing Damage
Over time, a house is going to start to fall apart. Whether it comes from storms, flooding, a raucous party, or just time, you’re going to take on damage at some point. When this happens, you can either hide that damage with creative furniture placement or you can start fixing the problem. Few people want to live in a house where a hole in the wall is behind every painting, so they use repairs as an opportunity to do some home remodeling at the same time. Sometimes that wall doesn’t want to be patched up. Sometimes it just wants to be knocked down.
Resale Value
Even if you are going forward with the idea that you will stay in your house forever, it’s always wise to think about your house in investment terms. Anything can happen, and you may find yourself wanting to sell at some point in the future. When that say comes, you want to be able to get as much out of it as possible. This can be done through home remodeling. For best results, unless you’re flipping the house immediately, try not to follow trends. Stick with timeless (or as close to it as you can find) adjustments and upgrades and you can be sure that it will have a positive impact on your resale value.

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Remodel Kitchen

Stick to Your Construction Budget – Home Construction Ideas

I seriously can’t remember ever building a home, when I was working for another contractor, where the construction budget was actually balanced. Whenever they were my projects, I made sure that we finish the job on budget, unless the homeowner really wanted something extra and understood the consequences.
I can’t stress this enough, to anyone who is interested in building a new home, renovating an old one or simply remodeling your bathroom. If the contractor gives you a price of $25,000 to remodel your kitchen and your budget is $26,000, this should send a clear signal that you only have an extra thousand dollars to mess around with.
I was working on a whole house remodel one time and the budget was around $400,000. The contractor that I was working with at the time wanted to please the homeowners and really didn’t think twice about going over, as and on the construction budget.
When the job was completed, the homeowner had spent over $625,000 and that’s $225,000 over budget and I’m sure that it put this family into some strong financial burdens. This isn’t the first time something like this happened to someone that I was working with or working for.
If you’re building a home and the contractor doesn’t give you a fixed price, you need to find another contractor. You must know what the home is actually going to cost when finally completed. In case you didn’t hear what I just said, make sure that you have a fixed price contract from your general contractor and that everything is included in the contract.
The worst thing that can happen to anyone building a home or remodeling one is to start with a construction budget that is already more than you can afford, only to find out later on that the cost overruns are going to force you into financial devastation.

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Basement Renovations

Construction Defects Lead to Home Repairs

Most of the construction workers that work on brand-new homes, don’t realize the problems that they could be creating later for homeowners and even the home builders that they’re working for.
Construction defects eventually lead to home repairs and the biggest problem with this is the inexperienced workforce that is building homes today. The new home building process has become mechanized and workers are like robots going through the process.
Most of the labor is skilled at one specific task and if they run into a problem that they’re not familiar with, they often cover it up or leave it for another trade to deal with, only to find out that the problem was never dealt with by anyone.
Today’s homes are being built faster than ever and it seems like they can build a home twice as fast as they could 20 years ago. I don’t really know if the speed that they’re building these homes with is going to create more home repairs in the future or less, but I do know one thing, it’s never good to cover up construction defects that could eventually lead to home repairs.
Home repairs of course eventually lead to financial problems and sometimes these financial burdens turn into lawsuits. Today’s home builders have different methods of dealing with construction defects and sometimes their solutions are simple Band-Aids and don’t really fix the problem correctly.
It’s never a good idea to hire a home builder who uses inexperienced and cheap labor. Find a home builder who only uses qualified construction labor to build your house. This will prevent a lot of frustration in the future.