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Archive for January, 2010

Home improvements can be a way to both increase the value of your home and to simply make living there more comfortable and enjoyable. But do you have to do a major remodeling job to accomplish that? Well the answer is no.

In fact if you’re considering a major improvement like a room addition or a complete remodel of a kitchen or bathroom, you may want to stop a moment and figure out how that’s going to impact on the value of your home. If you’re planning on staying in the house then it really doesn’t matter but if you plan on moving at some point, then you don’t want to overbuild. If you addition makes your home the most expensive on the block, you’ll have a more difficult time selling it than if you had made smaller changes.

An example of a small change that also has a great return on the investment is a steel entry door. If you haven’t looked at these recently you’re going to be surprised because they don’t look anything like steel. They come in a variety of attractive styles and mostly resemble rich hardwoods.

Thanks to the steel door’s appearance, security, and durability it has a return on investment of nearly 130% according to Remodeling Magazine. That’s pretty amazing when you consider that most home improvement projects will only return 8% of the original cost.

Following the steel door as the top small home improvement projects were adding an attic bedroom, adding a deck, minor kitchen projects like new counters or new flooring, and replacing siding. With the exception of the siding and the electrical and plumbing parts of the attic bedroom, these projects are pretty much do it yourself capable. Read the rest of this entry »

The yurt is finding a home in the catalogue of home options for North Americans who have an inclination for unusual and eco-friendly living options.

Although the modern yurt design is based on the traditional Turkish yurt or Mongolia ger, the new design offers several essential advantages over the time-honoured Asian structure. Durable, fire-retardant, UV-resistant fabrics with lifespans of 15 to 20 years, space-age foil-backed insulation that provide R-values exceeding R10, and creative ventilation techniques using wind turbine roof vents, directional dome skylights, customizable opening locations and durable plastic windows with zip-up rough weather covers are just a few of the innovative improvements.

The yurt’s round design, with walls and exo-skeleton held stable by the pressure of the cone-shaped roof system that rests on wall top plate, provides lightweight structural stability. A thin cable attached to the inside upper perimeter of the lattice wall & fabric frame draws the walls inward while the weight of the roof structure pushes outward. This stasis makes the building very stable in the most extreme winds.

Today’s yurts are easy & inexpensive to heat, largely due to the decreased wind resistance of the circular design and open-room concept. Yet, these homes are able to incorporate either conventional heating systems or eco-friendly systems. Because many yurt owners prefer to build in remote locations, the use of green energy, such as solar, ground source geothermal or wind energy is essential.

Typically, yurt costs run from $11 per square foot to $23. This compares very favourably to costs for conventional frame houses, with construction prices ranging from $60 to $120 per square foot.

Yurts and gers were designed to be mobile. The ability to tear down and reassemble these homes was a critical consideration for the nomadic homeowners who used them over the centuries in the mountains of Asia. Similarly, modern yurts provide that same flexibility, with average assembly time seldom exceeding five days. This versatility means that the yurt is easy to set up in a remote area, but structurally sound enough to live in year-round in the coldest climates. Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest problem that most of the families face is when their family is growing up. It may mean that the number of your kids is growing or your kids are growing up. In either case, the biggest concern of the family is the space in the house. Therefore, people need to expand their living spaces as their families grow.

When kids grow up, you need to expand your home as well as they ask for their own private space in the house. Therefore, it becomes the biggest worry of most of the parents to find ways to expand their home somehow or increase the living space in their house. There are many different ways in which this can be done.

One way is that you move to a bigger house. If you are living in a small house or an apartment and you have more family members or your kids are growing up, you can opt to move to a bigger house. If you have enough savings or if you have enough income to afford a bigger house, there can be no other better option.

As the kids grow up, they will go to school, and they might need to go to the doctors once in a while. Therefore, you must get a bigger house in a locality which is near the schools as well as health facilities. In this way, you will not only solve the problem of small living space but you will also move to a place with better facilities.

On the contrary, not every one has enough resources to get a bigger house. Therefore, people must look into other options for creating more living space for their family. The best thing to do is to look into your existing house and see which places are lying useless in the house and can be used as a living space for the family members.

Two of such places are the attic and the basement. Most of the times, we overlook both of these places and never consider them as an option for a living place. We always take them as the place to dump our useless stuff. However, they can prove to be very useful living spaces, especially if you cannot afford a bigger house. Read the rest of this entry »