Day: July 20, 2015

Is your beach house, Craftsman bungalow or vintage cottage in need of some TLC? If so, we’re hoping these cottage remodeling ideas will help you make the most of your cottage renovations. 

Prioritize Your Most Important Cottage Renovation Projects

When renovating a vintage home, there’s an important caveat to keep in mind. Aesthetics aren’t the most important part of this sort of project. When you’re remodeling an older home, the structural and safety issues are at least as important as the home’s décor and style.

A home inspector, preferably one with a background as a structural engineer, can help you uncover any hidden structural problems with the cottage. If you would be unlikely to discover structural issues on your own, this is a worthwhile investment to consider.

A home inspector can give you feedback about the status of all your cottage’s major systems and potential problem areas. A home inspection could uncover fire hazards, roof damage, damaged HVAC fixtures, insulation issues, decrepit wiring, or termite problems. If you find substantial damage in these areas, it’s advisable to prioritize them when you decide how to spend your renovation budget. 

Invest in a Home Energy Audit

It can really pay off to have your cottage’s energy consumption professionally assessed and audited. A home energy audit is likely to reveal areas specific to your cottage that you can focus on to make it more energy efficient. Increased energy efficiency will result in lower utility bills, which can offset your renovation costs substantially in the long term. 

Cottage Renovations Offering Significant Return on Investment

If your cottage renovations are motivated by a desire to sell the property for the best possible price, it’s worthwhile to consider some of the renovations that have provided the best return on investment for other homeowners in the recent past. A few of these include:

• Replacing old entry doors with new steel or fiberglass entry doors
• Adding a garage
• Replacing the existing garage doors
• Fixing up the exterior by replacing worn vinyl siding, or installing manufactured stone veneer
• Replacing outdated kitchen counters with granite countertops
• Adding a composite or wood deck
• Remodeling the bathroom
• Remodeling the kitchen
• Refinishing damaged hardwood floors 

Updating the Cottage’s Style and Look

A vintage home doesn’t necessarily need to adhere to the most current trends, or even look remotely trendy. A large part of a cottage’s charm is its vintage appeal. However, many homeowners prefer to incorporate a mix of the new and the old into their cottages’ interior design schemes.

Refreshing tired paint colors can work wonders for making a vintage cottage feel fresh and updated. Replacing damaged tile is another simple task that accomplishes this goal. New kitchen and bath fixtures can rejuvenate these rooms and increase their efficiency.

These are just a few ideas for making the most of your cottage renovations. We hope these ideas will help guide you when you decide which renovation projects to tackle and help you end up with a fresh new look for your cottage.

If you have plans to make major improvements to the exterior of your Toronto home, you may be thinking about timing your renovation project to coincide with the weather. Toronto winters can be long and brutally cold, and at first it may make sense to plan the project to coincide with warmer weather conditions. However, regardless of the season, there is no better time than right now to get started planning your project. 

Exterior Renovation Ideas
An exterior renovation project may be as simple as repainting the siding and replacing the front door, or it may be as complicated as replacing the entire facade with a new material and design scheme. An improvement such as adding new shutters to the home may improve aesthetic appeal. However, remodeling the entire exterior to add a covered porch or to give the entire structure a facelift can add value and can breathe new life into your curb appeal. Some exterior renovation projects will add function to the home, such as installing a new fire pit or deck to the backyard. Before you contact a contractor, spend time thinking about all of the changes you would like to make to your home, and you can discuss these with the contractor during your initial consultation.

The Preliminary Planning Stages
Long before the actual work can be completed on your exterior renovation project in Toronto, careful planning must be completed. You will need to find and hire a contractor to work with, and the contractor will need to work with you to create plans. There may be several revisions to the plans that will need to be made based on the timing and the budget that you have established. The planning stage is a time to finalize the types of materials that will be used, to order those materials and to establish a final budget. This process may take as long as or even longer than the actual work on your home, and this is typically all work that can be completed during any season. 

Scheduling the Project
There are some aspects of an exterior renovation project that may need to be completed when there is not snow or ice on the ground or roof to contend with, but the contractor that you hire will be able to inform you about this. Keep in mind that other homeowners are also planning their exterior renovations in Toronto, and some may have already booked the services of a contractor for the first several weeks or even months of the warmer seasons. When you delay the planning stages of the project, you typically will be delaying getting on the schedule for the contractor as well as subcontractors that you need to hire to complete the entire project.

The sky is the limit when renovating the exterior of your home, and the renovation can improve the look, value and function of your home. You can work with a contractor to begin planning a renovation project that is affordable for the budget that you have established. There is no better time than right now to get started working on your renovation project.