Category Archives: Home Maintenance

The Magic in Listing Preparation

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Home Maintenance, Home Seller Advice, Moving, real estate

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If you’re thinking about putting your home on the market, you’re likely to interview more than one agent. Some will show up, look at your house, discuss pricing and put the sign in the yard. Others will take the time to talk to you about staging, photography scheduling, pricing and how to make sure your house wins against the competition. If it’s been a while since you’ve sold a home, you might think the 2 agents are comparable to one another. However, you really need to look deeper.

You see, there’s something that second agent knows (and the first one might, too). Every single residential resale home that is put on the market to be sold needs to win a beauty contest in order to secure the highest price in the least amount of time. Continue reading →

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Curious About Color?

06 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by in Decor, Home Maintenance, Home Seller Advice

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The latest trend in interior color is gray. The colors have gone from white and brass, to beige and brass, to beige and brushed nickel, then taupe and oil rubbed bronze (still popular), to gray and brushed nickel.

Another popular combo for the master or children’s rooms is a Tiffany blue with cream colored woodwork. Think of a Tiffany’s box.

The colors, for the most part, have gone much darker than we’ve seen in years past. It used to be all about light, bright colors and rooms and now the colors (on everything) all have a richer tone giving the home a more opulent look overall.

Cabinets are dark, rich mahogany; counter tops are darker. With most walls going to gray, you’ll see various pops of color throughout since gray goes with as many things as beige does.

I’m personally a fan of both styles. The new, almost cold, grays, blacks and silvers and the less recent taupe, mahogany and bronze.

If you’re looking to update your home to put it on the market, or just because you’re tired of the current style, feel free to walk through a few open houses and to browse through the hundreds of pictures of homes that are listed. To get the best idea, check out the higher price range homes or the brand new model homes. Most builders have a good handle on the latest trends.

Happy Updating!!

Cedar Siding Maintenance

10 Friday Sep 2010

Posted by in Home Maintenance

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Tonight, we’re going to divert away from real estate sales and delve into a little home maintenance. I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been pretty busy around the house….well, very busy.

Being in real estate, I think about curb appeal all the time and most often when I’m pulling into my own driveway. We purchased this home 6 years ago. We fell in love with it because it’s not your average cookie-cutter house, even though it’s on a cookie-cutter street.

The front of our home is covered with beautiful cedar siding. We didn’t know anything about cedar siding when we bought the house, all we knew was that we liked the look.

In the spring, yes spring, we were hit with an extreme two hail storms right in a row. This storm damaged everything. Tore our screens to shreds, damaged our roof, put a hole in the hardboard siding on the side of our house—-you get the picture. Since then, we’ve been having everything fixed and replaced. We’d like to leave it in better condition than when we bought it. Anyway, this has put us outside a lot and I’ve been looking at the cedar siding even more than usual and it’s become an eyesore. It’s all dark, old, and stained looking.

So, we do our research and read several blogs about how to maintain our siding. Step 1, spray down with diluted OxyClean. Step 2, clean siding with a brush. Step 3, rinse. Step 4, waterproof/stain. Perfect, sounds easy. We get the OxyClean, the sprayer and a brush, and we get started one Friday night after work.

OHHHHH MYYYY!!

Sounds easy. Mind you, we haven’t touched the siding for the 6 years we’ve lived here, so it’s probably a little extra dirty. Either way, we were not prepared for the amount of work that ensued over the next 3 days—-we finished Monday afternoon. Here’s the REAL instructions: Step 1, spray down with diluted OxyClean until wood is saturated. Some pieces may even need a second coat. Step 2, wait about 15 minutes for the OxyClean to do its thing. Step 3, scrub each and every board thoroughly until it’s free of dirt and grime. (We found this to take about 5 minutes per board) Step 4, rinse and scrub at the same time. Step 5, completely rinse entire area free of debris and start on the next section. Step 6, well that would be waterproofing/sealing—-we haven’t gotten to that step yet. Maybe this weekend?

Needless to say, the siding looks great already, our driveway?…Not so much.

See ya on the flipside—I’ll be back to my usual posts soon.