CrossTeam Properties Offers Advice on Home and Garden Improvements

You may not be planning on moving house immediately, but improving your home in sensible ways can add significantly to the value of your property. Here are a few ideas, some DIY, some more in the field of property development.

Building a well-designed extension can add between 10% and 50% to the value of your home. Choose wisely though, if you’ve got a couple of bathrooms, but a claustrophobic kitchen, the kitchen should win as the site for extension. Adding a glass extension to a small dining area can create the enchanting effect of eating al fresco whilst being protected from the elements in centrally heated comfort. Unless it’s a major project, like adding a new storey or doubling the floor area, you won’t need to employ architects, but a good builder will be invaluable. Even if you can’t afford a new kitchen, just replacing the doors, wall tiles and worktops and installing new appliances can give it a dramatic facelift.

Replacing old, tired bathtubs, basins and WCs doesn’t necessarily involve calling in a plumber, none of these is too difficult to install if you’re not changing their locations. Replacing the tiles and flooring, too, can make the room look fabulous.

A painting and decorating facelift, both inside and outside the home, may be a little time consuming, but can have a truly dramatic effect, making your property look like a gleaming show home for relatively little cost.

Finally, if your carpets have seen better days, getting a new one; bold, funky colours and stripes are in vogue at the moment, will add a razzle-dazzle finishing touch.

With the advent of a superb new generation of hand and power tools, DIY is no longer about fixing a wonky melamine shelf to the wall or tiling the bathroom in what looks like glazed crazy paving.

Today, it really is bringing quite serious property development within reach of ordinary people, even if the property being developed is the home you’re living in.

There are plenty of home improvement skills you can teach yourself – you don’t have to be a master builder or an architect. In today’s credit squeezed times, a big budget overhaul of a property may not be realistic, so that loft conversion or extension may have to wait a little longer. There are, however, a few simple improvements that will give your home a real facelift at little cost.

A good starting point is the kitchen: if you’re selling any time soon, it’s likely to be the first place that potential buyers notice. Even if your budget won’t stretch to a completely redesigned kitchen with new units and appliances, simply changing the doors on the cupboards and replacing the work surfaces can convincingly create a modernised feel, especially if you can throw in a new sink and up-to-date taps.

New wall tiles and hard floor covering will also create the illusion of a revamped room. If you’re feeling adventurous, new lighting will add real panache – although approach a qualified electrician to install them safely.

Just finish off by practicing (or acquiring) your painting and decorating skills – a new coat of paint works wonders in lifting a room out of tired blandness into clean elegance.

One of the most difficult places to undertake a renovation project can be the kitchen, it is after all one of the most important places in the home and is used constantly that is unless we are eating out for every meal!  Whilst you may have a wish to have a kitchen that emits a special grandeur budget constraint mean common sense has to prevail.

We can often suggest savings which entail re-using such items as the extractor hood by using all the mechanical workings but redesigning the hood over the cooker. Choices for kitchen units can also influence the final price and often it is possible to utilise some or all of these by redesigning the layout of the room, perhaps with a peninsular unit and a breakfast area. Modern lighting can also change the look of a kitchen which combined with sympathetic decoration can mean that your kitchen can be transformed without breaking the bank.