Whether you’ve owned your home for five days or five years, it’s always exciting to make changes that increase your comfort level with your dwelling. Replacing older products in the home and making renovations can help personalize your house while adding value to the property for future resale.
Homeowners who invest in their homes tend to get the most out of them,” says James Carey, co-host of the home improvement radio show, On the House with the Carey Brothers. “Owning a home means more than just sweeping the sidewalk and keeping the grass mowed. A home’s style and personality can change as a family grows. Making continuous investments in a house can be exciting for the homeowners while adding value to the property at the same time.”
A third-generation contractor with 25 years experience, Carey recommends personalizing both the interior and exterior of a home. From his vantage point of reviewing thousands of products and projects each year, Carey offers 10 suggestions of how homeowners can personalize their homes:
Tip #1 - Turn cabinets into personalized furniture for the home. Cabinetry embellishments are the secret to an elegantly appointed kitchen. Consider adding a selection of large and small scroll corbels, split turning spools, French legs or decorative rosettes to kitchen cabinetry. These pieces add an extra element of detail, texture and character to base and wall cabinets.
Tip #2 – Look twice at how your friends and family enter your home. Personalize your entry door to match your home’s architectural style. Add a selection of stunning decorative glass doorlites and transoms to complement the entryway and fill the interior of your home with natural light.
Tip #3 – Nothing sparkles like jewelry. And, for your home, you can add personality and glitter to any room with a decorative glass window. Made of swirls of colorful and obscure glass pieces entwined with brass, nickel or black leading, these non-operable windows help provide privacy in the home while adding a distinct, eye-catching feature to any room.
Tip #4 – Be bold and wave goodbye to white interior walls. Add color to rooms by adding a bright accent wall of paint, a unique wallpaper design to a room or by faux finishing the walls in a hallway that connect several rooms within the home.
Tip #5 – Enjoy the rich, warm look of wood on your windows with none of the maintenance hassles. Woodgrain interiors on vinyl windows are easy to maintain while adding an elegant woodgrain look to the inside of the home.
Tip #6 – If you’ve ever dreamt of lazy summer afternoons on the front porch with a pitcher of lemonade close at hand, turn your dreams into reality with an expansive maintenance-free porch. Made of durable urethane to resist insects, rot, mildew and all forms of weather, the addition of a balustrade system can transform the look and feel of your entire home.
Tip #7 – Have your family and friends help personalize your home by having a full wall in your entry foyer devoted to pictures and personal comments. Start by hanging framed pictures in a scattered array with lots of space around them. Encourage guests to view your “memory wall” and write a message to you directly on the wall!
Tip #8 – Make sure that the style of your master bathroom offers a soothing way to both start and end your day. Some companies allow you to design a new bathroom using an interactive tool on their web sites which allows you to choose your faucet styles with matching accessories to coordinate with various sink, countertop, wall and cabinet colors.
Tip #9 – Stand outside your house and pretend you’ve never been there before. Does it appear warm and welcoming? Try personalizing your home with new accessory pieces such as decorative flags, welcome mats, and planters with colorful flowers. For a positive change, invest in a new energy-efficient fiberglass door system and trim it out with fresh new moldings.
Tip #10 – If you crave more organized space and less clutter in the home, invest in cabinet organizers that can transform unused kitchen space into multi-layered service stations. Ideas range from supercabinets to roll-out pantry kits. Pieces look like furniture but are actually built-in upgrades for the home.
By: Warren Clark - BMC West |
