Today, North Shore homeowners are using their remodeling dollars smarter than ever by designing spaces to accommodate more practical, family needs such as areas for sports equipment, computers and schoolwork. In this housing market, value and need are replacing more extravagant or purely decorative remodels of the past. These are just a few home remodeling trends for 2012.
Mud Room Additions and Remodels
A lot of homes in this area have mudrooms – a room off the garage that you pass through to get into the main part of the house. Since most families enter their house through the garage, especially in the cold winters, this mudroom serves as a drop zone for snow boots, coats, and backpacks and is often utilized as a laundry room as well. Remodeling this room to incorporate better organization such as cubbies, shelving or even built-ins can help your family better utilize this space both in summer and winter. If you have plumbing for a sink, this is an added convenience too. When you sell your home, having a large, well-organized mudroom will have an instant appeal to potential buyers with children, and they will appreciate the extra space for storage.
Open Family Rooms
A trend becoming more and more sought after is the open family room concept. Instead of the formal living room and separate spaces, an open family room very often incorporates the kitchen, living room and dining room into one large open room space. Not only does this open your North Shore house up for more natural light and the allure of more space, but it is proving to be better with energy consumption, requiring less heat and A/C. A professional contractor can tell you which walls in your home are non-lode bearing to open up your area and it may not be as expensive as you think.
Create a Lifestyle Space
Laptops have consumed all aspects of our daily lives. In fact, it isn’t uncommon for one to be in the kitchen area for easy reach to recipes while cooking, for kids to do their research and homework with supervision and to pay bills. A built-in desk adjacent to the kitchen or breakfast nook can replace the need for a formal office in a room closed off from the rest of the house.
Compared to the trendy excessive upgrades of the past, these may seem mundane and ordinary, but in the downturn of this economy, it has given us the opportunity to reassess what is necessary in a home to be functional and has forced us to use our remodeling dollars to better focus on family needs, better energy efficiency, and opening up space to accommodate use.
Some remodeling projects can increase your home’s resale value. If you are looking to sell your North Shore home and unsure of your home’s value, call The Marla Schneider Team. We can do a free Comparative Market Analysis of your home to help you sell your home for the highest price possible.
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