Benefits of Installing Window Awnings

Window treatments don’t have to be limited to kinds that go inside your home. Exterior window treatments like window awnings can be an excellent way to help control the amount of light and heat that comes in through your windows and make your home a more comfortable place and help you get even more enjoyment out of your vinyl replacement windows. Window awnings can provide a lot of amazing benefits, both inside your home and out, such as:

Reduced Heating and Cooling Costs

Many homeowners want to be able to keep their homes cool on hot summer days without having to keep the air conditioner running all the time. One of the best ways to accomplish that is by blocking the heat from the sun before it has a chance to enter your home. Strategically planting trees in your yard is a great way to do that, but it can take years for trees to fully mature so they can provide the most shade. Installing awnings on windows that get the most direct sunlight can provide you with all the shade-providing benefits that trees offer, but without having to wait nearly as long. Window awnings can reduce solar heat gain by as much as 77%! If you decide to have retractable awnings installed, you can always close them in the winter so you can let the sun heat up your house naturally.

Improved Curb Appeal

Window awnings can be a great way to compliment your home’s exterior. Awnings are available  in all sorts of different colors and styles so you shouldn’t have a hard time finding something that looks great with your home’s decor. Your awnings wouldn’t even have to be a permanent fixture on your home if you don’t want them to be. Retractable awnings are very popular with homeowners, so you could only have them extended when you want them to be.

More Fresh Air

Even when it’s raining out, it can still be nice to have your windows open and get some fresh air in your home. Of course, you don’t want to have rain getting into your house, though. Window awnings can protect your windows by helping to direct rainfall away from your window, allowing you to get the fresh air you want while preventing water from getting inside.

Protection for Your Belongings

A room that gets too much direct sunlight can be very uncomfortable to be in, especially if it’s causing a lot of glare on TV screens or computer monitors. But the UV rays in sunlight can also cause things like carpeting, furniture, and pictures hanging on the walls to fade over time. Since window awnings help block light from the sun from entering your home, the things in your rooms will get an added layer of protection and stay looking nice.

Top Features Home Buyers are Looking For

What types of features make up the perfect home? Everybody is going to have a slightly different answer to that question. One person might dream of having a spacious walk-in closet, another person might love a huge backyard, and another person could really want a home with a converted attic space. Despite the fact that people can have such widely different ideas of what the perfect home includes, there are trends in what sorts of features home buyers are looking for. If you’re thinking of putting your home on the market, here are just a few of the most popular features buyers are looking for right now.

Open Floor Plans

In recent years, open floor plans have become extremely popular. Rather than having homes that have clearly defined rooms, lots of people love the idea of having spaces that flow into each other and allow them to feel connected to the other people in their home. This tends to be most popular in kitchen/dining room/living room areas so that people can easily interact with their guests and parents can keep an eye on children while they cook.

Durable, Low-Maintenance Features

Certain things in your home are inevitably going to see lots of wear and tear from day-to-day use, like flooring and kitchen counters. For things like these, people looking for ones made of materials that are going to stand the test of time and won’t require a lot of effort to maintain. For example, carpeting was very popular for a long time, but many people now tend to prefer hardwood floors that won’t get worn down as easily. Instead of ceramic tile or laminate kitchen countertops, home buyers are looking for granite or quartz counters.

Energy Efficiency

There are lots of different things a person can do to start leading a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle, such as walking to work instead of driving or bringing reusable bags to the grocery store. But many people who are in the market for a new home are searching for homes that have features that will allow them to make a bigger difference. Things like ample insulation, vinyl replacement windows, trees in the yard that provide natural cooling, steel-core exterior doors, and Energy Star certified appliances are all things that are very likely to make a potential home buyer very happy. Not only are these types features good for the environment, they help homeowners save money.

Storage Options

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t need a place to store things. Spacious closets, linen closets, kitchen pantries, basement storage, garage shelving, shelving throughout the house -- all of these are things home buyers would be thrilled to see. Of course, those aren’t the only types of storage home buyers are looking for. Get creative! If you have any other ideas for unique storage solutions, potential buyers who are looking at your home may be very excited to see your ideas.

Laundry Rooms

Believe it or not, dedicated laundry rooms are a pretty big deal to a lot of home buyers. According to the 2013 “What Home Buyers Really Want” report from the National Association of Home Builders, 57% of people who were looking for a home with a laundry room considered it an essential feature. We all need to do our laundry and it’s a much more enjoyable chore when you have a laundry room complete with surfaces to fold laundry on, a place to hang things that don’t go in the dryer, and places to store your detergent and fabric softener.

Common Reasons Why People Sell Their Homes

Buying a home is one of the most significant investments the average person makes during their lifetime. You spend hours searching through real estate listings trying to find the perfect home for you and your family. You take the time to thoroughly research the neighborhoods you’re considering moving to. And, of course, you take the time to negotiate the best possible price. But even with all the effort, research, and planning that goes into choosing the right home, there’s still a good chance that you won’t stay in your home forever. So, what are some of the most common reasons people decide to sell their homes?

It’s No Longer a Comfortable Size

It’s not at all unusual for first-time homebuyers, particularly younger single people and newlyweds, to buy smaller two-bedroom homes and later sell it as they have children and outgrow their homes. But in many cases, homeowners decide to sell because their home has become too big for their needs. This often happens when the homeowner gets close to retirement age and their kids have grown up and moved out on their own, leaving extra bedrooms sitting empty and unused. Not only do they have too much space around the house, larger homes are more expensive to heat and cool and can require more maintenance than the homeowner is willing or able to put in.

Job Changes

While some people will spend much of their lives working for the same company, many others will work at lots of different places over the course of their careers and those jobs might not all be in the same general area. They may get transferred to a different location, have the opportunity to take their dream job in a different state, or just get a new job that’s located a bit further away than they’d like to commute to every day.

Changes in Health and Lifestyle

Over time, it’s only natural for our lifestyles to change and sometimes, you might have to sell your home to keep up with those changes and live comfortably. For example, if you and your spouse bought a small starter home when you first got married, you may not have been thinking about what the schools in the neighborhood were like. But now that you have children, you want to move to a home in a better school district. Or as people age, they might have a harder time climbing stairs and want to move to a smaller one-story home so they can have full access to their home.

Changes in the Neighborhood

When you moved into your home, there’s a good chance that one of the things that really sold you on it was the neighborhood. Maybe you loved things like the location, how safe it was, your neighbors, or the businesses it was close to. But neighborhoods often change over time. Those neighbors you loved may have moved away, the crime rate went up, or the businesses you liked to visit closed up shop. But not everybody who decides to sell their home because of changes in the neighborhood does so because the area changed for the worse. Sometimes, a neighborhood can improve to the point that property values have gone up significantly since you moved in. In this case, selling your home because it’s become so valuable can be a very attractive idea.

Improving Energy Efficiency With Window Treatments

When you’re looking for new window treatments, you might be surprised by how many things you have to consider. Of course, you’ll want to choose ones that work well with your home’s decor. You also have to consider how much privacy you want to be able to have in a room. But your window coverings are more than just a decorative statement. If you’re serious about improving your home’s energy efficiency, you can use window coverings to control the amount of heat that comes into a room so you can be more comfortable without having to rely so much on your furnace or air conditioner.

Even if you’ve had energy-efficient vinyl replacement windows installed in your home, you can still save even more money on your heating and cooling bills simply by choosing the right type of window coverings.

Curtains

When you live in a place like Michigan, where it can get hot during the summer and bitterly cold in the winter, you may want to change your curtains according to the seasons. During the hot summer months, curtains lined with a reflective material will help prevent heat from the sun from getting into your home and making it uncomfortably warm. By using this type of curtain in the summer, you could be able to reduce your solar heat gain by as much as 33%. Once winter starts to roll around again, you could switch to thermal curtains to help keep cold air out and keep the heat from your furnace inside your home.

Honeycomb/Cellular Shades

Honeycomb or cellular shades are an excellent option if you’re looking for both privacy and energy efficiency. Unlike regular blinds, honeycomb/cellular shades have a unique design that is excellent for helping to control the amount of heat generated by the sun. Honeycomb shades come in all sorts of styles, ranging from blackout shades to ones made of a rather sheer material, so you should be able to find a honeycomb shade that works for you, no matter how much light you want to let in.

Blinds and Shutters

Blinds and shutters are always a big hit with homeowners because they make it very easy to control the amount of natural light and fresh air that comes in through the window. If you want to prevent heat from getting into your home, blinds that are white or reflective can help prevent the sun from heating up your house when they’re lowered and closed. However, blinds are often made of materials that aren’t particularly good insulators, like aluminum.

Another option to consider is having exterior blinds installed on windows that get a lot of direct sunlight. Exterior blinds tend to be more effective than interior blinds at keeping rooms comfortable because they block heat before it enters your house.

Shutters tend to be made of heavier materials like wood and vinyl so they’re better insulators than aluminum blinds. Many homeowners prefer the look of shutters over regular blinds. Shutters are also unique for being the only type of window treatment that can add value to your home, since they stay with the home when it’s sold.

Getting Ready for Your Kitchen Remodel

Whether you’re getting ready to put your home on the market or are planning to stay in your home for a while longer, a kitchen remodel can be one of the best home improvement projects to take on. Since many home buyers tend to put a lot of emphasis on kitchens, renovating  your kitchen can help add some value to your home and make it more appealing to potential buyers. Or if you want to stay in your home a while longer, homeowners who renovate their kitchens typically report being extremely satisfied with the results and find it adds a lot of enjoyment to their home.

However, kitchen remodels are often complicated and very expensive. The last thing you want is to get overwhelmed by unexpected costs and construction taking longer than you expected. Before you get started, here are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind to make the process go as smoothly as possible.

Take Time to Plan

Once you’ve made the decision to go through with a renovation project, it’s totally understandable that you might want to jump right in and get started as soon as possible, but it’s very important to take the time to thoroughly plan your project. Before you start calling up contractors to get estimates, figure out exactly what you want to accomplish with your kitchen remodel. Are you just trying to get rid of some outdated decor and fixtures or do you need to correct a larger problem like a layout that just isn’t functional?

What your main needs are will make a significant difference in what the total cost and scope of your project will be. A remodeling job that involves changing the placement of your electrical and plumbing systems will be a much bigger and more expensive job than one that involves only cosmetic changes. Plan your renovation down to the smallest details; what types of materials you want to use, what your color scheme should be, what type of backsplash you want, what hardware you want to have. Once you know exactly what you want from your project, you’ll be better able to communicate your needs with your contractor and avoid the extra costs that come with changing your mind later on.

Establish Your Budget

The total cost of a kitchen renovation job largely depends on the scope of the project. A job that involves completely tearing everything out and practically starting from scratch can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars. Talking to a few contractors and getting some estimates will help you see exactly where your money would be going, making it easier for you to figure out where to cut costs if necessary. For example, you may decide to stick with the countertop and flooring you want, but skip the recessed lighting and kitchen island. Cabinetry is another thing that can add a lot to the total cost of a kitchen renovation, so if you need a more budget-friendly plan, you may want to try finding less expensive ways of changing the way they look.

Since renovation projects are notorious for becoming more expensive than originally planned, don’t forget to leave some extra room in your budget for unforeseen expenses. Also, be sure to ask for itemized estimates from contractors so you can avoid unexpected hassles by knowing exactly what services they’ll be providing. It’s not uncommon for homeowners to hire a contractor based on their low estimate, only to find out the hard way that the contractor’s price was lower because it didn’t include something like trash removal.

What About Appliances?

With so many brand new things going into the kitchen, many homeowners are tempted to get new appliances while they’re at it. If you’re trying to keep on a budget, you’ll obviously want to try to keep your current appliances if possible, but if you really do need to replace them, make sure you measure how much space you have to work with before you head to the nearest appliance store.

Many homeowners get so excited by the idea of new appliances that they don’t think to figure out whether or not that amazing new stove or refrigerator will fit in the space where their current fridge or stove are. In some cases, homeowners aren’t even able to get their new appliances to fit through their doorways. If you really want to have a larger stove or refrigerator, changes may need to be made to your kitchen layout to accommodate them. Since this will have a big difference on the cost of your job and how long it takes, it’s important to consider this early on in the process.