Washington Home & Garden Blogs

With the economy in recovery, homeowner confidence is returning and we are seeing a marked increase in remodeling activity. But many homeowners are surprised to find that, even with excellent credit scores and solid incomes, financing options for a major remodeling project are much more limited now. Before the recession, lenders routinely approved loans based upon the projected value of what a home would be worth after remodeling. No more; that lending practice is dead and not likely to return soon. The new reality is that lenders will not loan against the future value of your home. For most of us, that leaves the Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) as the only viable financing vehicle for home improvement projects. So here are a few tips on how to navigate the HELOC process.

1. Shop carefully for the best lender: The amount of equity you can tap is restricted by the lending institution’s Loan to Value ratio (LTV). Most lenders today work with an 80% LTV; meaning the maximum amount of total debt you may secure with your home is limited to 80% of your home’s appraised value. But Federal Credit Unions often have more attractive terms. Recently some of our clients have secured loans with a 90% LTV by joining a Federal Credit Union. Don’t assume that you can’t join; you may be surprised to learn how easy it is to qualify for membership.

2. Put your home’s best face forward: Appraisers are human and subject to the same emotions as the rest of us; they will reward a well kept home with a higher appraised value. Prepare your home as though you were having an open house to sell it. Remember the three “P” rule: pick-up, put away, and primp. A neat home seems larger and gives the impression of being well maintained. And don’t’ forget the yard – a good cleanup and mulching will go a long way!

3. Brief the appraiser: Meet the appraiser personally and tell him how much you think your house is worth and why. You know the quirks of your home and your neighborhood better than they do. Don’t be shy, but don’t be aggressive; just let them know what your research suggests.

4. Help the appraiser: If you have plans of the house, make a copy for the appraiser. At the least, have a copy of your survey plat available. If you know when your home was built, tell them. Make a list of improvements you’ve made since you purchased the house (descriptions only – not dollars).

5. Challenge the appraisal: If you don’t agree with the appraisal, speak up. Don’t bother if it is a small amount, but if it is significant you should contact your lender and ask how to challenge the appraisal.

6. Phase your renovation: Many of our clients use a strategy I call the Equity Bump. Essentially, this means focusing first on projects that will have a disproportionate impact on the value of the home relative to the value invested. Then the home will re-appraise for more and you can borrow against that increased equity for the next project.

7. Repeat as necessary. I am not an expert in financing, but I deal with it everyday on behalf of my clients. Let me know if you would like to have a more in-depth discussion of financing options. I’m glad to help if I can.

We have all seen countless advertisements on HGTV for dream homes. It's an enticing sales pitch -- a uniquely designed, fully decorated home on a picturesque site. Who wouldn't want to live there?

Well I see every home as a dream home waiting to be realized. Far too often we focus on the negative aspects of our homes instead of looking for opportunity and potential. Intoxicated by television and print images, we dream of someday aspiring to have this or that, and it usually looks nothing like what we currently have. As an architect who has devoted himself to remodeling homes, I love showing clients that their dream home is right in front of them.

So what is it about these dream homes that make them so appealing? To me it's the attention to detail. Every space is tailored like a custom garment. Architectural detail is not sacrificed, it's celebrated. For many the images flashing across their television screen define "home." You can have this too! And you don't need to move to the wine country of Sonoma, California.

Your house should be more than just a roof over your head. It should be unique. Dream homes evolve from the collaborative efforts of professional architects, master builders and trusting homeowners. Let me show you how to make your dream home a reality.

Stuff seems to be taking over the world, certainly it seems so in a small home; lack of storage can push you around.

Designing renovations for the older housing neighborhoods of Arlington, Bethesda, McLean and Chevy Chase, I have often found that the best way to make a smaller footprint live large is to put stuff away, to make a place for the stuff of life, and de-clutter our living spaces.

Sometimes getting the storage we need is to make better use of the storage we have....often simply enlarging the access to the closet you have gives you use of the hard to reach ends....alot of older homes have a single 24-inch or 30-inch door to a 4-foot or 6-foot closet, so widening that opening and putting on a pair of doors gives you full access to the closet you have, without finding new closet space.

Then, really thinking about how you best use that space can double its storage ability...double hanging, cubbies & drawers, deep shelving are just some of the ways to really pack it in.

Often good storage is not building an extension on the garage, it is about storing in the space you already have. The garage storage system that lines the wall, or the pull down stair to the garage rafter spaces, the under eves access door or slide-in drawers...or re-capturing the under stair space, the above washer.dryer cabinetry...these are the strategies to de-cluttering and better using the spaces we do have.

I know that pantries are not sexy architecture, but the well placed, thought-out pantry is a gift to the smoothly functioning small home. Carefully planning shelf placement and depth, tailoring your shelving to your storage needs, will maximize your use. And the pantry can be a cabinet or a room, as long as it makes place for stuff.

A place for everything and everything in its place will make your spaces work better for you and make small feel big.

I look at those magazine photos of a huge room with about three pieces of furniture in it and say "who lives like that?" Not my friends and me.

But, that sense spare, of space, of seeing the walls meet the floor, seeing the furniture all sit on a single rug, like an island, makes the room seem huge.

When furniture is pushed up against the walls, the room feels closed in and the couch kinda comes out of the wall. And the end tables become part of the couch and stuff starts knitting it all together until the walls and floor bend together.

Give your furniture some space and the whole room will breathe, inviting you to sit in open space.

Group your furniture so that seated heads are no farther than 10 inches apart, and the couches or couch and chairs, and thus you and your guests, feel in relationship with each other.

Especially in tighter spaces, I like my furniture to do double duty, where the coffee table is a chest for storing stuff, and the end tables have room below for newspapers or laptops, and the bookcase beside the fireplace hides the TV and drawers for DVD's and the sound system, as well display with some lighting.

Pick furniture that fits the room. The sofa doesn't have to be huge and heavy looking, let the floor go under it. And the chairs can be see-through with rounded backs allowing that extra critical few inches for getting around. A table behind the sofa can give some place to a sofa in a long narrow room, allowing the sofa to go across the space and not along the length of the room.

The large round dining room table squeezes into the rectangular room while a 40-inch rectangular table will sit everyone nicely.
Or, built-in furniture can tighten up a grouping for a connected, cozy and integrated feeling, like fitting a breakfast table into a bay, or creating a vital niche space in a larger room.

So, when it comes to furniture, I feel that less is truly more.

We experience the world in three dimensions, yet most of the drawings I produce when remodeling homes throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C. are representative of only two dimensions (plans, elevations, sections, etc). This can pose a major challenge when trying to express the complexities of a design to my clients.

It is difficult for most people, architects included, to fully visualize a space when looking at two dimensional drawings. Fortunately, computer-aided drawing programs allow me to construct three-dimensional models I can inhabit with my clients. The power of this technology is amazing and is an essential tool used in all of my designs.

Incorporating a 3-D design approach, I am able to walk clients through a virtual remodel of their home. Together we remove walls, enlarge window openings and explore different cabinetry and casework options. The interactive nature of a virtual model offers my clients the unique opportunity to inhabit their remodeled home before the first nail is driven on the "real" project. This goes a long way to building client confidence in the decisions they are making.

Designing in three dimensions is of great benefit to me as well. The freedom of a virtual environment allows me to balance technical know-how with artistic vision resulting in a sophisticated, cohesive design solution. I learn from the model as I build it, refining every detail until it is just right.
 

My wife is extremely sensitive to smells and sounds due to an extended illness that has left her nervous system raw. So when we decided to update the boys' bath, we knew it would be important to not build-in any chemicals and nasty fumes.

My understanding of how challenging this would be went up several notches when I was putting down some painter's tape, you know the blue stuff that isn't too sticky, and I had gotten down 3' of it when my wife smelled it, from thirty feet away, and she was suddenly extremely flushed and in physical distress.

I threw it outside and she was OK in time, but the concept of bringing in chemicals and making them part of our house became vividly scary.

She has researched everything that comes into the new space ... from the tile adhesive to the cabinet plywood, the paint and caulks ... even the drywall compound, which turns out to have some nasty stuff. And we want all the products to be as green as possible so that we are not adding any chemicals to the environment in the future, as well as to our space now.

No, or low VOC is just the beginning, and there are paints and glues and sealants that are getting better at not off-gassing, and are not hard to find these days. It is the cabinet maker that uses formaldehyde free plywood, FSC certified wood, and no VOC glues, that you can't get at Home Depot.

The green solutions aren't all perfect, as we found out with the chemical free drywall compound making it harder to do drywall patching, and getting rubber gaskets to replace the PVC plumbing fittings. And, there is a green and odor/chemical-free way that isn't costly, to make sensitive inhabitants happy and safe space happen.

It's hard to afford, or sometimes even find, more space in mature communities where lots are small, and houses tight. As an architect in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area, I have often been asked to make the small house feel bigger without extending spaces. Here's a tip -- visually borrow space, so while room size stays the same, your eye can go places.

Replacing a wall with a half wall allows your eye to travel from room to room, say from living room to dining room, and if that half-wall becomes built-in cabinetry with glass doors, showing off your collection, perhaps with columns to an architrave above, you have found storage as well as a visual feast.

Then, to continue opening walls, I love to replace those dining room windows with French doors ... glass to the floor, to the garden or deck ... or if you can't get out at that point, just open the doors to a railing/balcony, that way you feel invited to another place, making this place more interesting and feeling less cramped.

Now your eye can have a delicious journey across the living room, stopping at the bay window to the front garden, (an invitation in itself, more on bays later), through the cabinetry with columns half-wall to the dining room and then out the French doors, down the steps to the patio and garden. And you haven't changed your square footage.

Decades of stripped down "Builder Colonial" homes have left Washington home owners
starving for architectural detail.

Before World War II, even the simplest home boasted a bit of architectural detail and artfulness. But since then, the American home-building industry has been increasingly obsessed with the mantra of "faster and cheaper", compromising and minimizing architectural details almost to the point of caricature.

Thankfully, the tide is turning -- it seems that decades of stripped-down "Builder Colonial" homes, have left Washington homeowners starving for architectural detail. They've developed a keen appreciation for the wonderful homes of the early twentieth century, and they expect similar attention to detail from today's architects and builders. This addition to a home in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chevy Chase, Maryland shows the difference that detail can make.

Photo: Brenneman & Pagenstecher

One of the most frequent questions that I get from new clients is this: Should we buy a new house or remodel our current home?

I always point out that moving - even to a home of the same value - has its own inherent expense. Between Realtors, appraisers, home inspectors, title attorneys, and professional movers, it is not unusual to spend an additional 10% of the purchase price just to make a lateral move. A family can easily spend $50,000 to $100,000 just to move to a different home in the same price range.

Occasionally, this makes sense - all homes are not created equal, and some homes just can't be improved enough to justify the expense. But for most families, the equation quickly tips toward remodeling when they factor in the intangible value of a known neighborhood and good schools. Throw in redecorating expenses, years of landscaping, and a wealth of family memories wrapped up in a home, and the decision is made. Take the best of what you already have and improve upon it.

As an example of the strategic, but dramatic changes we made for one family recently, here's a picture of what the above room looked like before the remodel:

The room is not just brighter -- although the new architectural lighting was a critical element of our design. Notice the new windows that emphasize the proportions of the room. And the new French doors where the picture window was; this really brings the outdoors-in. We made many other improvements to this space (as indeed we did to the entire home) but it looks like it was always supposed to be this way. The family has already forgotten how dark the home used to be!
Maybe the best possible new house is hiding inside your existing home already.

#3 IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES:

It looks like that 1960's contemporary in Chevy Chase is going to get a new roof and a new lease on life! I am very happy for the homeowners, because the roofing contractor has agreed to tear-off his new roof as well as the old roof beneath, and replace everything from scratch, to my specifications. That's the right thing to do and I applaud him for stepping-up -- particularly because it is going to be very expensive for him.

Even so, the homeowner has spent