Home improvement projects are, by definition, improvements made to your home. Not all home improvements are created equal though and some ill-advised undertakings can actually end up impacting negatively on your Waterloo Region home, especially concerning if you might be selling up and moving on in the future.
Glossy home magazines and TV shows are often the culprits here. They print a piece or offer a show segment about some hot home improvement project or another and homeowners try to copy it, not realizing that what works in a fancy photo studio is not going to work in their home. Here are a few examples of home improvement trends that you might want to avoid;
Stadium Sized Kitchens
Over the last few years, these pictures of stadium-sized kitchens have kept cropping up. Suddenly it seems that in the eyes of some designers if you do not have room in your kitchen to host an episode of Masterchef it’s not a good cooking space.
But before you go looking for a tradesman to knock out your kitchen walls and extend it into the garden, stop and think. How practical would that really be? Wouldn’t it be easier if you had a kitchen that allowed the cook to pivot easily from the roast in the oven to the vegetables in the fridge without having to put on a pair of Rollerblades? The best kitchens have a spacious feeling while still being practical to work in and a good kitchen specialist can help you achieve that perfect balance.
Badly Placed Porches
Adding a porch to your home is a great idea. A nice place to sit and enjoy the great outdoors, even nicer if you screen it in to keeps the biting bugs at bay. The problem with many porches though is where people choose to add them – right in front of the living room.
Now the homeowner has a great new porch but now in many cases, the view from the living room – which was perhaps once quite a selling point – is completely ruined. All of that wonderful natural light that used to flood the room is gone and peering out of the window loses all its joy when all you see is a darkened space full of lawn furniture.
Instead of ruining your room with a view consult with a good builder and find a different spot for your porch (the side of your home perhaps?) that will not have such a negative impact on the interior.
Lots of Built in Lighting
No one would argue over the fact that any room needs to be well lit in order to be functional and attractive. Most interior decorators recommend that any room have a layered lighting system that provides both task and ambient lighting.
Built-in lighting can be an attractive part of a lighting scheme but only if it is done the right way. Too many recessed ceiling lights and the space begins to look pockmarked and too much track lighting looks more like department store décor than cosy home illumination which is probably not quite the look anyone (including potential future home buyers) would choose.