Home Building

Everything You Need To Know About ENERGY STAR Labeled Homes (for now)

There's no doubt that now is a great time to buy a home if you are able to qualify for the all-important home loan. If I were in the market, I would try to find an existing home that is qualified as an ENERGY STAR home.

The home that I would seek out would have to be no more than a couple of years old, at most. Any older than that and the energy efficiency and green building techniques involved probably wouldn't be up to the standards of what I'd be looking for in my new home.

An ENERGY STAR rated home would have many of the attributes of what I'd want in my next home, including some of the latest green building construction practices, green building materials and energy efficient appliances and mechanical systems (e.g., efficient HVAC units, tankless water heater). You get the idea.

Continue reading: Buying Energy Star Homes

This Stone Sunburst Fireplace "Shines"

I've literally seen hundreds of fireplace surrounds in my neverending tour of new homes. The stacked stone design of the fireplace seen in the photo below ranks very high on my list of one of the most unusual and beautiful designs I've ever seen.

Its' spectacular design must have been extremely difficult to produce. The stone mason that put all of these slivers of natural stone together on a vertical surface, in what I like to call a "stone sunburst" design, deserves high praise.

Continue reading: Stone Sunburst Fireplace

It's Not A Victorian Home Without A Turret (Tower)

A Victorian-style turret, or tower, is probably the most prominent homebuilding feature that most people picture in their minds when they think Victorian architecture. They may not necessarily know what it's called...for instance, they may say..."that really cool looking round tower thingy", but a turret, or tower, is what likely comes to mind.

The Victorian home that I watched Bonner Custom Homes construct over a 16 month period has some very happy homeowners living in it right now. The Bonner team always does it full-blown.

This post will show interior and exterior photos of a Victorian turret (tower) during different phases of construction.

Continue reading: A Victorian Tower

Damaged Windshields See A New Life As Unique Building Products

What would you think happens to the junk or damaged windshields from all of the vehicles in the U.S.? A lot of it is recycled and given new life as tiles, flooring, landscaping materials, porcelain and counter tops through various recycling and re-manufacturing companies. It's even traded overseas in Asia and Indonesia in the secondary commodity exchanges and later recyled into art glass beads and jewelry.

And now it's being reused in building construction material in many different forms here in the good ol' U.S.of A.. But that's not really anything that's newsworthy. What is newsworthy is the taking not just glass, but car windshields and giving them new life in great new products.

There's a company called SecondGlass that is taking these recycled windshields and making just about anything that you would normally use in any glass application in home and office construction. Things like shower doors and enclosures, artistic room dividers, windows, textured windows and office walls...and more.

Continue reading: Green Glass Building Products

Top 10 Tax Tips For Home Owners, Buyers and Sellers for 2008/2009

Death and Taxes. You can't escape either one of them. You can cheat them, but you can't escape them. Having said that, I've found some great tax tips for home owners, buyers and sellers for 2008-2009. These tax tips are so great that they were declared the Top 10 by HGTV's great new website, FrontDoor.

You want the skinny on capital gains tax. Got it.

2009 tax incentives for home buyers and sellers. Right here.

This post is only available to all home owners, buyers and sellers on a "need to know" basis.

If you're like me, you want to pay as little in taxes as possible while still remaining a "freebird" rather than a "jailbird", and this would be a great place to start if you're about to sit down to figure out who owes whom. 

Continue reading: Real Estate Top Tax Tips

Top 10 Home Remodeling Projects: Cost vs. Value

Times are very tough right now in the real estate market (understatement of the year), so it would be a great idea for homeowners to take advantage of this lull and consider tackling an overdue remodeling project, or two, for a variety of excellent reasons.

 
When the housing market slows, people stay put and renovate their homes to make themselves more comfortable. I've been to the big box home improvement stores just about every weekend for the past couple of months and have noticed a considerable amount of traffic still going on. I realize that sales are down in these stores but many homeowners in a financial position to make improvements to their homes are making the most of it. It's a wise move.

Remodeling Magazine recently released an index of top 10 home remodeling projects showing ROI (return on investment). See how your particular project stacks up against others.

Continue reading: Top 10 Remodeling Projects

Making Sense of WaterSense Labeled Toilets (HET's)

Looking for a list of all of the WaterSense Certified toilet model numbers?

The EPA has come out with an updated list (2/2/2009) of WaterSense certified high-efficiency toilets (HET) that is sorted by manufacturer showing all of the model numbers of the bowls and tanks. That takes ALL of the confusion right out of the picture when shopping for an HET.

WaterSense-Labeled Toilet Quick Facts

• Toilets must use no more than 1.28 gpf. That's 20% less than the standard 1.6 gpf
• Toilets must complete the third-party certification process for both performance and efficiency. Here are the official EPA final specifications for high-efficient toilets.
   

"If every American home with older, inefficient toilets replaced them with new WaterSense labeled toilets, we would save nearly 640 billion gallons of water per year, equal to more than two weeks of flow over Niagara Falls!"
-EPA

On average, Joe Public (not to be confused with Joe the Plumber) will flush a toilet 140,000 times in a lifetime.

If you've decided on a particular brand and style, then all that is left to do is find the retailer with the best price and you're done.

The table of high-efficiency toilet brands and models are listed below.

Continue reading: WaterSense Labeled Toilets

How To Improve The Look Of A Concrete Retaining Wall

It's time for another installment of 'Dumb Homebuilding Ideas". Are you ready? This time I'm featuring an eyesore...I meant to say...a bare concrete retaining wall.

What is so especially dumb about concrete retaining walls? Nothing at all...unless the builder installs it squarely at the forefront of your property and doesn't bother to apply a stacked stone facade or apply a nice, thick coat of stucco to snaz it up so it doesn't have an institutional look to it.  

Continue reading: Boring Retaining Wall Solution

Thinking About Arranging A Mortgage Short Sale?

Here is a yard sign that you don't see every day...well...until recently anyway.

A bank short sale, also known as a mortgage short sale, is when you sell your home "short", or for less than what you owe on it (less than the market will bear).  Your mortgage holder has to approve the offer before you accept it.
 

Now why would anyone want to do this?

Continue reading: Mortgage Short Sale

What Do You Do With Your Old License Plate?

Have you ever wondered where all of the old license plates go to once they have finished serving their purpose? Landfills? Metal recyclers? License plate heaven? I think I have a good idea of where some of them end up. I saw it with my very own eyes today...displayed on the walls of a garage.

We were out looking at houses this past weekend and drove past this old, old garage on the side of the road and I did a double-take. This was another case of "Glad I Had My Camera". I couldn't let the opportunity slip by without taking a few snapshots...I just don't have it in me.

I'd be willing to bet that people all across the country save them or "decorate" their workshops and garages with them? I found the latter to be true while on this "house-stalking" run. I've seen quite a few birdhouse roofs made from them, too.
 
I've seen them plastered on the walls of quite a few restaurants and bars in my time, too (there sure are a lot of parrotheads out there!).

Continue reading: License Plate-Covered Garage