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Things You Need to Know from Remodeling Companies
There are times that we want to ask questions from remodeling companies about their intentions and plans. We believe that we need to get to know more of their services to decide whether to get their service or not. We all know that they want to help us when it comes to remodeling our home. It is not about the entire room, but there could be some selections where we can start from. Most of the time, we want to do it step by step to see if they’re effective or not.
It is challenging for beginners to get a remodeling company, especially since they have no clues about the different services. It is nice that you can ask them questions to have reliable answers coming from their mouth. There are instances that it will be tough for you to get a response because you have to contact them through their website. This is one of the visible reasons why you need to get their telephone numbers so that you can give them a phone call and ask for those questions you have in your mind. You can check this one for free from ADU garage conversion.
It is nice to ask them about the air services and how they can bid for the service. You have to know more about the demolition process after the said service. It is challenging for you to get another service to clean and remove dirt and debris. If they can do it for you, that would be great, especially since you don’t have to think about the extra cost here. There are times that you have to consider the framing and the different types of carpentry services. Some companies have this kind of service that will save you so much time. You can ask them for further breakdowns of other things they can do, or they can be included in one service.
Some house owners are perplexed when it comes to the price. You have to be clear with the company whether this will be an estimate only or the possible fixed price. It is nice that you can also know whether you have to pay them for a couple of days before they can finish it, or at once. It is hard to estimate the total days they have to work with your remodeling plans. This is one of the confusing things and reasons that they should give you the full quotation and the possible expenses you may have.
We should also get some ideas coming from them regarding their partner hardware. It will be easier now for you to get in touch with the different designs and colors you want to use for the project. You may have an additional option when it comes to choosing the tiles you’re going to use for the bathroom. They can also give you a brochure or a magazine where you can see the different projects they have done in the past.
Cost of Building an Outdoor Kitchen
Do you like to tackle a new recipe on your outdoor BBQ every summer? If so, you have probably wondered how much it would cost you to build an outdoor kitchen. Don’t worry because you are not alone. There are tons of homeowners out there wondering the same.
On average, the cost of an outdoor kitchen is around $13,000. The cheapest kitchen you can build is around $2,500. On the other hand, the most expensive outdoor kitchen can run around $40,000.
Today, we’re going to share with you the factors that affect the cost of an outdoor kitchen Fresno installation.
Average Cost of an Outdoor Kitchen
Prices greatly differ. As mentioned earlier, the cheapest outdoor kitchen can run around $2,500 while the most expensive one can run around $40,000. The only limits on what you’ll spend or save are your wallet and your imagination.
Materials
Countertops, finishing, and framing are the 3 main elements of your new outdoor kitchen. You will have to pick these materials depending on your budget, climate, and style.
Countertops
You can’t have an outdoor kitchen without a countertop. Countertops need to encompass the function and style of your kitchen. Because of this, you need to ensure you choose a material that works well for your climate.
- A stainless-steel countertop can cost around $70 to $100 per square foot
- A granite countertop can cost around $65 to $75 per square foot
- A concrete countertop can cost around $60 to $90 per square foot
- A ceramic tile countertop can cost around $6 to $45 per square foot
Finishing
Think about what type of exterior finish you would like on your kitchen setup.
- Stucco can cost around $5 to $8 per square foot
- Natural stone can cost around $20 to $40 per square foot
- Manufactured stone can cost around $15 to $25 per square foot
- Brick veneer can cost around $9 to $15 per square foot
- Stucco can cost around $5 to $8 per square foot
Framing
You can purchase prefabricated framing or you can construct your own. Typically, it is less expensive to purchase prefabricated framing. Aluminum and wood framing averages around $400 per linear foot. On the other hand, steel framing averages around $550 per linear foot.
Size of the Kitchen
Perhaps the biggest factor that affects the price of your outdoor kitchen is the size of the area. Because of this, you need to consider the maximum and a minimum number of individuals you plan to host and how you plan to utilize your outdoor kitchen.
To make your life easy, you can use the average pricing per square foot. This is the typical price of building an outdoor kitchen depending on the size.
- For a large outdoor kitchen, you will have to spend around $13,000 to $40,000 for a 400 square feet space.
- For a medium outdoor kitchen, you will have to spend around $9,750 to $30,000 for a 300 square feet space.
- For a small outdoor kitchen, you will have to spend around $3,500 to $10,000 for a 100 square feet space.
Tips on How to Sell Your House Without a Realtor
Selling a house without a realtor may sound a little it intimidating at first especially when you do not know how to process things and attract potential buyers, and this is why even without a Realtor, you still probably need some help from other professionals.
We understand that it is a choice that homeowners make especially when they think that rather than giving some of the sale’s percentage to the realtor as the commission, they would rather do all the tasks on their own and save some money. There are still effective ways on how to do it and this is why we are here. We will help you in selling your home even without the help of the pros.
Consider the following.
Ready your home
You cannot sell something that will not be attractive to the customers and prospective buyers. In order to ensure that your house will attract some prospective buyers, make sure that you prep your home, and this can be done in many steps. First, declutter your home. Decluttering the home means getting rid of the garbage and old items in the house as this discourages some of the buyers. To give you more income, you can try selling some items on eBay, Amazon, and other digital shops. You can also do the following:
- Rearrange your furniture
- Replace some outdated appliances and repair damages
- Repainting interior and exterior walls to make your home appear new
Do some research and be updated with the market
Researching how the market is currently running is an important thing you need to consider if you want to engage customers. Without ample knowledge of how the market is running, you would not be able to set a practical and reasonable price, discouraging buyers. To make it worse, you may even sell your home at a very low price, rendering you on the disadvantaged side. Review some houses that are within your house’s range and study their prices; you can benchmark on these houses to set a reasonable price that is also engaging for the buyers.
List your home
After doing some important research, it is not time for you to list your home. However, before listing, consider and prep the following:
- Information about your home – this involves the date and measurement of your home including the overall square feet size, bedroom count, parking arrangements, and other important details that buyers should know about the house.
- Description – remember that in providing a description, you need to be as honest as possible. It is not poetry that you are making so be direct in making a home description. Make it as concise as possible but without missing important details about the house.
- Images – when selling a house, you need to invest in good-quality images. This is why if you are not a photographer yourself, we advise that you hire a professional photographer to ensure you have the best quality photos of your listing. Images are an important element to catch the buyer’s attention.
Marketing Knowledge You Should Know
Marketing is something that most business owners should master. However, marketing is broad knowledge that requires skills that one needs to master. It will be impossible for a business owner to succeed in the business industry without a good digital marketing strategy since we are now in the digital era and almost all prospective buyers are now living in the digital world.
Some of the business owners skip this part and opt for hiring lead generation services that would do the digital marketing for them. However, you would save a lot of money if you know how to do this by yourself. To help you have a kickstart, here are the important marketing skills you need to know and master:
1. Customer skills – if you do not have interpersonal skills, it would be difficult for you to attract customers. Customer skills involve the ability to understand your customers, know what they want, and attract them into purchasing your product or service. It is important that you know how to segment your customers by dividing them based on geography, demographics, engagement level, and purchasing capacity.
2. digital technology and advertising
Without a good knowledge of how digital technology works and digital marketing, you would not be able to create an effective digital marketing strategy. Digital advertising is an effective way for lead generation and reaches prospective customers that may not be otherwise be reached by traditional advertising platforms. There are different kinds of techniques like the bandwagon effect to catch customers’ attention, highlighting why they need to use your product or service.
3. Communication skills – interpersonal skills would be inadequate if you do not possess good communication skills. Good communication skills allow you to effectively communicate what you need your customers to know and understand. Moreover, this will be essential in the next marketing skills below.
4. the ability to tell a story – the LinkedIn community has recently posted why storytelling is an important element of doing business and advertising. This is the very reason why customers would grow to like your product or service as the narratives could engage even the non-prospective customers. The key to effective storytelling is to know how your company works, what your brand is operating on, and what you can give and contribute to the lives of your customers. In telling a story, you should be focusing on what you can inform your customers and the quality of content you provide, rather than directly advertising your product or service. You can also make it as creative as possible by integrating elements such as images, videos, infographics, and more.
4. time management – doing business can be a full-time commitment. It would probably take all of your time and so, dedication would not be adequate. You also need to have a good sense of time management to avoid making business your whole life and be able to function effectively in your personal relationships.
5. engagement in social media – billions of people now have social media, and for you to reach as many customers as you want, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the spaces you need to explore. Doing advertisements using these platforms requires another specialized skill.
Common Ways to Upgrade Your Cabinets
Are you planning to remodel or update your kitchen cabinets? If so, you should know that there are a couple of ways for you to do this.
To choose the right option for your lifestyle and budget, you need to think about your goals, how much work you’re willing to do, the quality of the upgrade, and much more.
Upgrading your kitchen cabinets is one way to increase the value of your home. Today, we’re going to share with you some of the most common ways to upgrade your kitchen cabinets. This includes buying new models, repainting, and cabinet refacing San Mateo.
The Possibilities of Kitchen Cabinet Remodeling
When you’re considering a kitchen renovation, the best way to get the most out of your money is to upgrade the kitchen cabinets. For those who don’t know, around 80% of your kitchen’s vertical space is cabinets. Thus, here are some of the most common options available if you want to improve your outdated kitchen design.
Buying New Models
Buying new, stock cabinets from a home improvement shop can be appealing. However, it might not be an ideal option if you aren’t handy.
You can obtain great savings and restyle your kitchen with reasonably priced replacement cabinets. However, keep in mind that when buying unfinished or finished-stock kitchen cabinets, it’s your job to measure accurately and order the right sizes for your kitchen.
Because of this, it might be best to work with a professional for help if you want to buy new cabinets.
Repainting
This option has become popular recently due to the rise of DIY projects. Though this is one of the most affordable options, the result often falls short of what the homeowner is trying to achieve.
Painting your cabinets will require a lot of labor. You will have to get rid of existing drawers and doors, prepare the area to paint, and then paint each component painstakingly.
To make things simple, you are left with the same door style. In addition to that, if your existing doors are damaged or warped, you will be left with the same issue and a bigger possibility for the paint to chip. Because of this, repainting your cabinets isn’t the best option if your cabinets are old.
Cabinet Refacing
Refacing your existing cabinets can save you around 50% of the total cost of buying new cabinets. However, you should know that this option only works if your existing cabinet boxes are in excellent condition. Cabinet refacing is also only ideal if you don’t want to change the layout of your kitchen.
To achieve the best results, you will have to hire a professional cabinet refacing company for help. They can easily change the function and look of your existing kitchen.
Cabinet refacing includes changing the drawer fronts and doors of the cabinets. Compared to installing new cabinets, the installation time for cabinet refacing is a lot shorter. Because of this, you should expect the project to be complete in 7 days. This is particularly true if you hire a professional to do the job.
3 Landscaping Secrets You Probably Do Not Know
Doing landscaping is not for everyone. Whether in finding the right plants, choosing and installing hardscape features, or arranging all of these elements, it is something that needs to be done with skills and expertise. While we recommend that you hire Visalia landscaping to make things easier, you can also take these secrets that landscaper pros know and apply them when you opt to do landscaping on your own.
Thinking like a professional landscaper will save you time, money, and effort. Additionally, this will also make your landscape professionally built, taking into consideration all the little elements and making it as sophisticated as you would like it to be.
Without further ado, here are the three insider’s secrets that will transform your landscaping project into a successful one.
1. Be decisive when it comes to choosing the right hardscape structures and elements
Always remember that while expensive hardscape features can be nice and aesthetic to look at, they are not necessary to make a beautiful landscape. You need to prioritize those structures that are important and critical to your landscape. For example, if you are planning to have an elite patio, then opting for a simpler version with complete features would be much better than opting for purchasing more expensive materials with incomplete structure. Aesthetics aside, take note that not all expensive materials are durable. It is more about finding a good shop that delivers quality materials.
2. Save your time by doing effective hacks – as what people say, your time is the most valuable asset you have. And saving time is like saving more money and effort. Some of these hacks include mowing your lawn through a mulching mower and laying down a mowing strip. A mowing strip consists of a row of paver which separates the grass from a structure of the area. When you put a mowing strip, you can mow on any of the sides on the top of the strip. As a result, you will have a cleaner cut. Moreover, you can save more time by opting for a mulching mower. It will give finer shredded clippings of the grass and at the same time avoid removing the bad, emptying it, and putting it back again for another mowing activity. These two hacks alone save you a lot of time, which makes you more efficient in doing landscaping.
3. Balance variety and monotony – while most people think that variety is more preferable to monotony, the pros would beg to disagree. Complete variety without monotony would result in a chaotic design, where all elements tend to not have a pattern or a motif to follow. This is the very reason why you need to strike a balance to mix variety with monotony and take into consideration the overall design of your landscape. There are many concrete steps you can do including varying the eye level of the viewers by selecting plants with different heights. Of course, you need to vary colors but follow a certain pallet of colors.
Takeaway
If you do not agree with all of the pros’ landscaping secrets, you can also try manipulating all their tricks and coming up with your own hacks.
Effective Ways to Update Your Smart Home
Just a couple of years ago, smart homes just existed in fictional movies and stories. Now, there will be more than 400 million homeowners that will possess a smart home by the year 2025. There are no questions against this as smart homes deliver a lot of benefits that make life much more convenient and efficient. Home security systems Seattle, for example, have made some homes safer than ever before. The thing is, if you have installed smart home years ago, it is probably the perfect time to upgrade your home technologies.
There are many ways you can update your smart home including the following:
Upgrade your Locks and Boost Your Security
Smart home technology is not for everyone as it can be expensive as well as the gadgets inside the smart home. Given this, thieves may rush into your house. The more you accumulate devices and update your technology, the more you need to upgrade and strengthen your lock and boost your security. Smart locks allow you to lock and unlock doors using your phone no matter where you are. In this way, you will never worry even if you forgot to lock the doors because you can do so by just pushing a button on your phone. Aside from this, try putting on some security systems and doorbell cameras to enable you to see and access every part of your house.
Automatic Gardening
While smart home focuses mainly on the insides, you can always extend the technology to the outside of your home. You can do this by installing smart lawn sprinklers or some self-watering pots that take care of the plants and give water whenever the plants need it. Other options include automatic lawnmowers and self-feeding plants.
Install Some smart Lights
Smart lights are the most popular smart gadget you can have in your smart home, and they are very cheap and easy to install. All you need to do is to switch your lights to these variations. These lights are more energy-efficient as they turn on at a specific time or when they are needed so. You can also turn them on and off using your phone even when you are away from your house.
Use a Smart Thermostat
A connected thermostat is very energy-efficient as well as convenient. Using a connected thermostat enables you to save more energy as it automatically adjusts according to the indoor temperature.
Get a Smart Assistant
Having a smart assistant makes accomplishing tasks easier and more efficient. So, if you do not have any like Alexa or Google Assistant, you should have one. Between the two, Alexa is compatible with more than 100,000 gadgets and smart devices at home, so it is more ideal if you choose Alexa. Before making a decision, ensure that your assistant is compatible with the gadgets you have at home.
Other things you can do to update your smart home are to expand your WIFI, add some sockets in order to make it tidy and clean, and automate your garage door for more convenience. If you are successful in adding all of these technologies and gadgets to your home, it could potentially boost power-saving features and comfort.
Fun Outdoor Design Ideas for the Upcoming Holiday Season
Now the winter is setting in, you definitely need to start prepping your home for the Christmas holidays! And fortunately, there are many things you can do to improve your home and give it some Christmas spirit. You can do painting San Francisco to make sure your home looks new and vibrant, and some decorations indoor and outdoor. Here, we will share some fun outdoor design ideas you can do to prep for the Holidays!
Have some outdoor greens
Decorating the railings, front door, and windows with garland and other greenery is a classic holiday staple you should not miss. There are pre-lit plastic garlands that you can purchase from the store, or you can opt to put on some bows for a simpler look. Wrap your railings with some evergreen pine garland for that classic look.
Make sure there are lights
The holidays will never be complete without the festive lights you can see in any house you see in the neighborhood. Lights will always be ubiquitous and therefore, you should not forget about them. There are many options to choose from: you can have some incandescent lights, twinkle lights, or some lighted snowflakes lights — there are many options to choose from! Put them wherever they would be visible and do not forget the spaces that need illumination like trees, shrubs, walkways, windows, etc. Do not forget to set the lights on the timer to save some energy.
Do not forget the wreath
Besides the lights and greens, a wreath is also the most classical decor you can put on your outside space. You can choose to make your own or have some pinecones and balsam fir. Hang them on your front door, garage door, and even your gate. Do not forget to put on some Christmas or fairy lights!
Have some Christmas planters
when you like plants, then planters would be a great structure to decorate. Whether you have large or small pots, you can decorate your winterberry and pinecones with some ornaments and lights.
Choose a welcoming doormat
A very simple thing you can add to welcome your guests is to put a welcome doormat and make sure it is festive. Choose one that has cute greetings or holiday phrases.
Put some lanterns on your porch
Lanterns in your porch make the space warm looking besides illuminating the whole space. There are many flameless lanterns you can choose from in different shops but if you want a more personalized lantern, then you can try making your own. Use your everyday items like old jars and bottles and put on some lights inside with some decors. Just make sure you choose glass and other safe materials to avoid fire accidents.
Add some statues
Statues may be expensive and they are also optional. However, adding them beside your door or your porch would be a game-changer. Life-size nutcrackers or Mouse King can be very attractive to look at. You can even add Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that can really get the attention of the youngsters.
Other things you can do:
Set up a wagon or a sled
Decorate your chairs in your deck and other outside spaces
Light the trees and shrubs
Decorate your mailbox
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