Designing Your Large Renovation

When you are looking for a contractor to take on a large renovation that includes kitchens, bathrooms and large parts of the actual layout of your home or chalet then its not just important to find a contractor that can do the work but they also will need to be able to help you with the overall layout and flow of the home.

What do I mean by the layout and the flow of the home? Well if you were building a new home it's something that your architect would be worried about. It's how the home actually functions for you and your family.

Now style is important when doing any renovation but its not the only thing that you have to consider. One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they get so wrapped up in the style of the home that they forget about how the home is suppose to perform and function.

Whatever style you like has to be able to work within your life, that means that you shouldn't be planning renovations that don't improve the quality of your life just to fit a trend or style.

Here are some things to consider when you are planning a large renovation of your home or chalet;

Placement

The placement of the rooms in your home is very important. If your planning to move things around in the house make sure that you are not putting the bathrooms all the way at one end of the house, farthest away from the rooms that you use all the time. Nobody wants to miss a big part of the movie because it takes to much time to walk to the bathroom and back.

Openness

This is one of the biggest changes in houses in the last 25 years. Homes went from having designated and closed off rooms to being open and flowing from one room to the next. Kitchens should flow into the next room whether that room is the dining room or the living room. People cooking want to be able to interact with their guests and vice versa.

Flow

If you have a living room filled with couches and chairs that is hard to navigate through just to get to a main area like the kitchen then you don't have good flow. You want people to be able to move around your home in designated walk ways so that travel from one room to another is simple and obvious. That doesn't mean that you need hallways everywhere, just the opposite actually.

In new homes this is all organized by the architect as they draw the house they give you ideas of the best possible way to achieve Placement, Openness and Flow. But in an existing home that is about to undergo a serious renovation its up to the homeowner to achieve these 3 things.

But how do you as a homeowner do this? Well the simplest thing is to find a contractor that can do this for you, someone that can not only give you the high end renovation that you desire but also help you in the planning an layout of the home. A good contractor will have plenty of experience doing this for people and will already understand the basics of placement, openness and flow.

Now you can have plans created by a draftsmen or interior designer, these will help but once walls start coming down and floors are stripped there are always changes that have to happen, these changes are best handled by the contractor working with you.

Where do you find a contractor that can help you with all of this?
You just found them....

Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

We don't just help people with new custom homes, we also spend a lot of time renovating peoples homes and chalets. Usually we are doing this with little too no plans from the homeowners or other design professionals. Communication is the key, the more informed choice you are able to give the homeowner the better, the more information they have from us will also help the project move along at a faster pace and have a much smoother finish.

If you are planning a large renovation project and think that we could help you with it please feel free to email us at greatlakescustomhomes@gmail.com

Let us help you,

Rob Abbott
Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

Create A Renovation List For Your Wants And Needs

At least once a month I meet with a perspective client at their home to talk about what they would like in terms of renovations. Once I am there and we start talking about what rooms they want to renovate the list becomes longer and longer.

The longer I actually stay with the homeowner the more the renovation list grows as we talk about what they would like and how they would like the house to function when the renovations are completed. 

One of the problems with this scenario is that the renovation list grows as we talk about it from an initial single renovation like a kitchen to a multi room renovation or a whole house renovation. This on the surface is good for us the contractor as the job grows in size but in reality when the job becomes to large then the homeowner gets scared away from doing any renovation by the large price tag of the entire home remodel.

As the contractor I try to refocus homeowners to make a list of their renovation requirements, it should be broken down into wants and needs. Here are some examples of what a want is and what a need is;

Wants;

• New light fixtures.
• New Paint.
• New Floors.
• Open concept rooms by removing walls.

Needs;

• Fix leaky roof
• New Kitchen.
• Replace old windows.
• Repair rotten areas.

A want is something that you want to help the home function better for you or an update that will bring the home up to newer style. A need is something that needs to be completed before any of the wants list can be completed as it will cause problems or damage to any renovations that are completed. Anything that leaks water should be repaired or replaced before you ever get to the stage of renovating for an update.

If you start with a list like this then you will start to understand the cost of your needs list first and that will then tell you how much you will have leftover for your wants list.

Remember that a contractor can only make recommendations on what you should do to your home, ultimately its up to you the homeowner to decide what you want done. Make your wants and needs list, it should help focus you down on not only what you want to achieve in the renovation but what you can afford.

Rob Abbott

Village Builders Inc. 

Renovating that house you just bought

Here's a typical scenario, people buy a house and from the time it takes for the offer to be accepted to the day that it closes and you get to move in you are dreaming about what changes you are going to make to the home.

Everyone wants to change something in the home that they just bought, whether its wall colours or larger more extensive changes like kitchens and bathrooms. My advice to people is that you should start by repairing anything that requires immediate repair and work from there.

For example; if there is a leak in the roof or the foundation then have that fixed, or if the furnace doesn't work properly then have it replaced or repaired. Painting is another thing that you can do as soon as you move in as it doesn't create a lot of dust and the cost is relatively low compared to other renovations. Besides the best time to paint is before you have hung your pictures.

If you can have the major problems fixed before you move in then that is ideal, but most people don't have the luxury of getting their home early and not having to move their furniture in until the demolition and repairs are completed.

Once you have the immediate problems fixed or repaired then you can start to concentrate on other things like storage, kitchens, bathrooms, floors, additions, fences and decks. These are all things that should be thought about and planned out before you go ahead with them. 

What you will find is that if you live in the home for any length of time you will find that the answers, designs and styles of what you want to renovate will come to you organically. The best way to find out how a home will function best is to live in it.

Once you have a plan in your head then you can talk to a contractor about the cost of the renovations and the timing for them.

Bathroom and kitchen renovations can be disruptive but only in small parts of the house, these types of renovations tho inconvenient can be easily worked around while you are living there.

The best advice I can give is that you should take your time to plan properly before starting any major renovation, the old saying "fail to plan, you might as well plan to fail" is correct in this case.

Rob Abbott

Village Builders Inc.   

Trends in custom Kitchens for 2013

2013 trends - Kitchens

There are emerging trends in new custom home and custom renovations as we are now in 2013. A lot of the things that we did in the 2012 construction year were the same as in previous years. But there were things that were new in 2012, and have more and more home owners opting for them which is creating the new trends in 2013. I am focusing on kitchens and their current trends.

Kitchens

Here is a list of the trends that have stayed the same over the last several years;

• Sub-zero is still the most popular for refrigerators.
• Viking and Wolfs are the most popular ovens and cook tops.
• Larger islands are still popular and there increase in size is as well.
• Stainless steel is still the most popular for appliances.
• Multiple sinks are still popular, usually a large main sink and then a small separate sink that is used to wash fruit.
• Multiple ovens are still popular.
• Painted kitchen cupboards are still the most popular choice over stained wood.
• Under mount stainless steel sinks are still the most popular option.

Here are new trends in kitchens;

• Granite had been the most popular choice in kitchens for a long time. But with the invention of new manufactured products for counter tops that are comparative in price with the traditional granite, you are seeing a lot more home owners choosing Caesar stone, Quartz and Corian. These products have a lot of the same characteristics as granite, some of them are also cheaper and they come in a variety of colours and styles. The big trend right now is to do a mix of manufactured and granite. This adds a little variety to the kitchen and can also solve the problem in large kitchens of trying to find enough granite that matches for every surface.

• Glass back-splashes instead of tile back-splashes in kitchens are becoming popular; you can paint the back of the glass to add colours or patterns to the glass. This gives you a clean seamless surface.

• High gloss on cabinetry is becoming more and more popular; this is a more modern look to a kitchen and helps the kitchen stay looking new longer.

• The main sink is now placed in the island instead of on a wall under a window. The main sink in the island faces toward the living room so that people working in the kitchen can interact with their guests. This goes along with the kitchen being the hub of the home.

• Convection ovens that double as microwaves are quickly replacing the traditional stove with the microwave/hood vent over top.

• A growing trend is the large white country sinks that protrude out the front of the cabinets showing a finished white face.

• Multiple dishwashers are now popular in large kitchens.

• Under mount microwaves were a novelty a couple of years ago, but today it is becoming extremely popular, it is a great way to hide a microwave in your brand new kitchen, especially since the microwave/hood vent combination is falling out of popularity.

• White is a colour that is back in for the kitchens, rapidly replacing the darker bolder colours of the last couple of years.

• Cabinets specially designed for the spaces and other specific things instead of just different sized cabinets that you fit things into, such as pot drawers, spice racks, custom dish racks and small speciality drawers that hold your wash cloths and dish soup.

These are just some of the new trends in kitchens in today’s new custom homes and custom renovations.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.