by

Tips For Home Sellers: Sprucing Up the Interior

It’s that time of year again, when sellers are frantically preparing their homes for the spring real estate market. After several years of declines and uncertainty, market values are definitively rising again.

Haddad Hakansson has been helping realtors and clients stage their homes for sale successfully for over 10 years. Here are some tips we’ve learned along the way:

Neutral paint colors sell. You may be able to get away with splashy colors in a perfectly designed room with tons of architectural details, but in general, toning it down can nudge your sales price up. If you are having trouble finding the right neutral, a good place to start is with the Benjamin Moore Historical Colors collection.

Charming Manor traditional entry

 

Speaking of neutral … consider removing big floral curtains or anything that is too specifically your taste. Pack them up carefully for the trip to the next house. Ask a friend for advice if you aren’t sure.

Declutter those shelves, closets and everything else. If you are a book lover, pack up at least half of them and store them neatly in the basement or garage. Same with your clothing. Even smaller storage spaces can look more generous if you let your items breathe.

Hillgrove Project traditional living room

 

Take a hard look at your family photos. Are they everywhere? If so, try to put most of them away. Buyers like to envision themselves – not your family – in the home. However, if you have a beautifully arranged and modern gallery in a hallway or on a feature wall, consider leaving it up as inspiration to your buyers.

Make your bathrooms sparkle. Even a dated bathroom can look fresher with a good scrubbing, clean grout and a fresh coat or two of mildew-resistant paint.  Have an ugly, old glass tub enclosure? Look to see if you can locate the screws to remove it. Take it out and gently scrape off old caulk or adhesive with a razor scraper.  Clean, caulk any small holes and hang a pretty shower curtain and some new towels.

This goes for the kitchen too. Clean, clean clean. Clean again, then clear the countertops. The Cuisinart goes into a cabinet (or the attic!).

Best of Both Worlds contemporary kitchen

 

Clean windows, carpets and everything else. If your trim is white, consider caulking the gaps in the baseboard and moldings.

Hide your pet’s accessories and check to make sure your house has a fresh, neutral smell.

Finally, bring a little life in with a handful of pretty and healthy potted plants. This will keep your pared-down environment from looking too sterile. See how the right plant or arrangement can make a photo look amazing? The same goes for your home:

French Country Kitchen traditional kitchen

 

Still feeling unsure? Consider hiring us for an hour or two and we can help you choose paint colors and handle the finer points of home staging.

by

Custom Cabinetry: Not Just for Kitchens & Baths

At Haddad Hakansson we love getting the opportunity to work with clients to get the most out of their spaces. Sometimes we work with clients who are just looking for a relaxing place to retreat or to freshen their decor.

Increasingly, though, we find they are looking for solutions.

Solutions to what problems exactly? These are common:

  • An awkwardly configured space
  • Not enough storage
  • Multiple things happening in one room … and none of it organized.

Very often, we use custom cabinetry to make sense of the space and improve our clients’ day to day lives.

IMG_3707

 In this office space in a new townhouse development, we used Pennville Cabinetry to create a custom corner desk with all the seating space and office storage the client could want.

SudburyProject

On the other side of the room, we designed a custom bookcase that warms a corner and adds shelving space.  The bookcase is attached to the wall, but at first glance appears to be a freestanding, antique piece.

WestwoodProject

In another home – also new construction – we used this long wall to create a dramatic, incredibly functional media and storage system, again using Pennville cabinetry. Not only is there ample storage for the client’s books, a flat screen TV and collectibles, an entire home office is available when it’s time to get back to work.

Interior Photos

Young families especially tend to need space solutions, but they also want them to be beautiful. This hardworking mudroom crafted from custom cherry cabinetry with an amber stain fits the bill. Each family member has space for coats, shoes, bags and any extras that find their way inside.

Slate-look tile and a complementary paint color make this the perfect spot to walk in the door at the end of the day.

by

Suddenly, Remodeling is Hot Again

Nationwide, studies show that homeowners who have been waiting for the “right time to remodel” are increasingly deciding that the time is now.

Home sales are up, so are housing prices …  and homeowners have remodeling on their minds, according to an April study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

The study reports that spending on remodeling was up 9 percent in 2012 over the previous year, and growth in 2013 is expected to be even stronger.

Kitchen looking toward eating area and Living Room

A survey this spring of U.S. homeowners by Houzz.com and Edge Research shows that 53 percent believe now is a good time to remodel. Most of those who plan projects within the next two years say reviews are “very important” (81 percent) when deciding whom to hire, while just 8 percent cited “lowest cost option.”

Not surprisingly, bathrooms (28 percent) and kitchens (23 percent) are the rooms that most homeowners with remodeling plans are looking to upgrade.

Of course, even if remodeling feels like a safer bet these days, the buyer still must beware.

Kermit Baker, the director of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard, said “contractors and subcontractors are having more difficulty finding skilled labor” to meet the increased demand. Also, he added, materials costs currently are unusually volatile and it is worth shopping around.

Our takeaway:

  • Check reviews and references on any contractor or design firm you want to hire.
  • It’s worth waiting for the right professionals for any job, large or small. Look for teams with low turnover. That’s a good sign of a well-run business and a happy crew.
  • Consider a design firm that offers project management. Not only does this help minimize headaches, it makes it easier to stay true to the original vision.
  • Planning is essential! Best not to start until you have that vision in place.
by

Check us out at HGTV.com

 _DSC3684epaintnew

Our English Country Kitchen-inspired remodel has been featured in an HGTV.com article, “Top Kitchen Design Styles.”

Among the styles profiled are modern, country, coastal, cottage and traditional. Our furniture-like kitchen hutch design for the remodel of a Royal Barry Willis cape was highlighted under the “traditional” category. Click here to go right to the page and see the corresponding slideshow.

The hutch, custom crafted of maple with inset doors, is painted in Benjamin Moore’s Louisburg Green, HC-113. The drawer pulls and upper cabinet with divided lights “add to the traditional appeal,” according to the article.

To read more about this fun and challenging project, see our blog post here.

by

Welcome Jaye!

 

Image

We are glad to announce that Jaye Gordon, a student in the kitchen & bath design program at the Boston Architectural College, recently joined Haddad Hakansson as an intern. Over the past few months, Jaye has proven herself to be creative and extremely detail-oriented, two qualities integral to kitchen and bath design.

Jaye has long felt the pull of the design field, even while in the business world. She has an MBA in marketing and worked many years in the telecom business. But … (and isn’t there always a “but”?) “I liked it – I didn’t love it,” she says. “My passion always was design. More and more, people would ask me to help them with their homes. It happened all the time.”

A BAC student since 2010, Jaye calls her personal style “contemporary with a traditional twist” and loves mixing details from different periods. She is currently working on a renovation of a kitchen and family room space in Andover, helping Haddad Hakansson transform a spacious yet inconveniently laid out kitchen into the ideal family gathering spot.

The project still is in its early stages, but Mark Haddad says Jaye has already shown to be a great asset to the team.

“Her designs exemplify her ability to listen to what the client wants,” Mark says, “and bring those ideas to life on paper.”

 

by

Reminder: See Mark & Kurt on NECN Tomorrow!

Image

Tomorrow is “Money Saving Monday” on NECN’s morning show and Mark & Kurt will be sharing their looks-like-you-spent-a-fortune design tips!

See their segment with Leslie Gaydos beginning at 7:45 a.m. In case you miss it, it should be posted on NECN’s website by midmorning.