Tips To Make Your Home Look More Expensive

By Jamie Wiebe

Tips to make your home look more expensive
TIps to make your home look more expensive

Want your place to look like those home design website images you drool over? Of course you do! Problem is, your budget may not match your design aspirations. Fear not! Making your home look high-end isn’t always about spending tons of cash.

It’s a matter of taking the time and care to arrange things in an eye-pleasing way—and making small, inexpensive updates that have a big impact. In other words, it’s about being sneaky.

Here are a few tricks to pull if you want to add the illusion of luxury.

Continue reading…

Fire-Tower Style Living at its Finest

By Zillow

 

They saw it coming: the mushroom cloud of smoke.  Dabney Tompkins and Alan Colley were on their deck enjoying the view when the Stouts Creek Fire broke out earlier this month. They’d read about moments like this — spotting a forest fire from a 40-foot-high tower — but nothing could have prepared them.  They weren’t staffing a fire lookout, after all. They were at home.

Tom Hanny/ZillowAlan Colley, left, and Dabney Tompkins wouldn't trade their life above the trees for anything.
Tom Hanny/ZillowAlan Colley, left, and Dabney Tompkins wouldn’t trade their life above the trees for anything.

Treehouse Without the Tree

Tompkins and Colley’s lives changed course on a ferry ride several years ago. Quite literally stumbling upon a book about fire lookouts used by the U.S. Forest Service, they learned how the structures on stilts were used to spot forest fires throughout the 20th century. Now largely replaced by satellites, very few lookouts are still standing.

 

Tompkins and Colley, who had downsized from their big Dallas estate to 1,400 square feet in Portland, wanted to know more.  “It was a magical moment that the book sort of fell off the shelf to us,” Colley recalls. “We called the ranger district and said why don’t we rent this thing? That was the beginning.”  The urbanites rented several fire lookouts before …read more

Source:: Lifestyle

 

How to Get a Chef-Worthy Kitchen for $50,000 or Less

By Trulia

 

Even grilled cheese tastes better when made in a stylish kitchen.

For those who love to cook, a gourmet kitchen is the dream. However, unlike a living room or bedroom, this space is much harder to remodel. Kitchens can’t be rearranged at whim, cabinets can’t be easily changed, and counters — well, there’s very little you can do to hide 1980s laminate countertops. (Their existence is proof that not everything comes back in fashion.)

But don’t shelve your dream just yet. It’s possible to get a luxurious look for under $50,000, which is close to the average price spent on a budget kitchen remodel. We asked designers where they’d splurge, where they’d save, and other projects to consider for a space worthy of your culinary creations.

Before you start, carefully consider the space and your lifestyle.

“Design your kitchen for the way you live 90% of the time,” says high-end kitchen designer Karen Williams. “Not the holidays or a visit from the in-laws.”

She ranks the overall layout as the most important element in a kitchen renovation. “Good design is good design. A proper prep center, cooking, and cleanup [space] is essential.” So before you get carried away …read more

Source:: Lifestyle

 

Which States Have the Oldest Homes? You Might Be Surprised

By Zillow

This 1954 California home designed by architect Cliff May has been updated in a retro style.

By Catherine Sherman

Zillow looked at single-family houses built from 1900 to 2014 to see which decades are most represented by the current housing stock. Turns out, many homes in the Northeastern states were built in the ’80s. But in California, the ’50s remain the dominant decade for homes still standing.

Washington, the nation’s capital, is holding strong as the area with the oldest decade — the 1920s — most represented today.

 

  • 1920-1929: District of Columbia
  • 1950-1959: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin
  • 1970-1979: Hawaii, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, West Virginia, Wyoming
  • 1980-1989: Alaska, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia
  • 1990-1999: Delaware, Indiana
  • 2000-2010: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington

Knowing when the largest share of homes was built isn’t just a fun piece of trivia. It also provides a window into the character of real estate in your state. Check out some of the most popular styles through the decades.

<a target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” href=”http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2015/08/21/which-states-have-oldest-homes/” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent link to …read more

Source:: Home Buyers

      

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