Refacing Your Home “On The Cheap”

If you’re cutting costs right now like most people, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great time to give your home or interior living space an update. In fact, now might be a better time than ever to start those little home improvement projects you’ve always dreamed of.

“It’s a great time to build,” says Keith Dunlop, Manager of Special and Projects for Mill Valley-based Caletti Jungsten Construction. Dunlop specializes in construction for clients who want to design small projects but who don’t want to remodel a whole house. His business right now is booming. “We are utterly astounded by the number of clients we have brought in specializing in this area,” he adds. “We can draw a line straight to the clients who don’t have millions.”

Part of the reason for the surge in small projects is that remodellers are sharpening their pencils and keeping their margins as low as possible in these difficult economic times. “So, it pays to negotiate,” says Dunlop. “Subcontractors are all negotiable right now. There has not been a better time to build in the last ten years.”

According to Dunlop, there are a number of things people can do to update their interior living spaces without spending a lot of money. “If you really want to make the biggest impact with the least amount of money, says Dunlop, “think about finishes.” There is currently a multitude interior wall finishes available on the market ranging from eco-finishes, soft pastels and textural products, to specialty Calvin Klein colors and hand-mixed paints. You can change the color of your walls, or the finishes on your floors to create a whole new vibe in your home. 

Dunlop suggests hiring a designer or decorator to work up an interesting color scheme, and then painting your home to give it a new look. “I have one client in Mill Valley where we refinished the floors and are painting the interior. The house is going to look like a million dollars.” According to Dunlop, the interior painting cost about $12,000, and the floor finishes around $9,800. “For under $20,000 it’s going to look like a brand new house.” 

Another option includes just choosing one room and focusing on that. “Instead of spending a lot of money on a whole house, we can work up one room,” says Dunlop. “It’s all about making that room a sanctuary—making it so that you want to go home from work and spend time in that room,” he explains.

For example, says Dunlop, if you love your den and music, think about putting in bamboo floors or cork while working up a new design. Or you can hire a carpenter to build some new cabinetry in FSC-certified wood to store your favorite books, DVDs or art objects. You can even go over to local mills in your area and personally pick out the recycled or salvaged wood for your new cabinets. Or another inexpensive improvement is to hire someone to build you a home theater. It can cost as little as $10,000 if you choose the accessories yourself. Dunlop recently designed an award-winning home theater in Tiburon and says they are especially popular right now. 

A couple of great ideas for finishing touches on your home theater are flat-panel wall mounts for your flat-screen TVs and universal remote controls. Both are a great ways to add wow factor when your friends and family come to visit without >> spending a fortune. OmniMount has added their new MotionPicture series of motorized cantilever mounts that will hold just about any flat-panel monitor up to 55 inches and 110 lbs! Wall mounts are great for rooms that have a lot of light. Glare on your screen can easily be removed with a touch of the included remote. Your TV can instantly be moved 15 degrees up, or up to 20 degrees left and right. 

To keep your home theater under control, Universal Remote Control offers their Digital R50 universal remote. This remote can control up to 18 components, and features an incredibly easy to use setup wizard. Its large color LCD screen allows you to easily program all of your home theater equipment without the aid of the Internet or a PC. The important thing, says Dunlop, is to not “spread the money too thin by thinking about your whole house.” Make a room special. “Then, next year, when you have more resources, you can do another room. One day you’ll look back and realize you’ve remodeled your whole home.”

Eve Simon, a Mill-Valley-based feng-shui consultant and lifestyle designer who specializes in reflecting personality through interior design, agrees. Simon believes a home should reflect one’s personality and uniqueness and not just be a generic duplicate of a magazine article or news trend. Says Simon: “When I go into a house, I find out what kind of people are living there, what their lifestyle is, and what the blockages are in their life. What is in their way is usually reflected in their home.”  Simon says that changing the color scheme in a house is a very easy and inexpensive fix. 

“If you want to have more passion in your bedroom, you shouldn’t sleep in a blue bedroom. You should sleep in a room that has red or orange, to add some fire to it,” she explains. Simon also likes to suggest to her clients organizing and rearranging furniture, objects and even rooms. “Sometimes a room is set up as a bedroom, but it would work much better as an office,” she adds. 

As a designer, Simon tries to use the accessories that are already in a home to make an impact. “I tell my clients that they don’t need to buy anything new. I just work with what is by arranging the place and accessories.” Simon says lifestyle does not have to be expensive. “What’s reflected in your house is reflected in your life. It’s about consciousness. You don’t need to throw things away if you have a conscious lifestyle. You don’t need to recreate yourself all the time.”

If you’re looking to do more structural work on the cheap, Jessica Rothschild, a principal at San Francisco-based Rothschild Schwartz Architects, suggests adding a window or skylight to your home. “Often adding a window is not as much money as people would think,” she explains,” and you get a big bang for your buck.” Skylights create the same effect. The cost for either is about $2-3,000. 

Another money-saving option is landscaping the garden. “Investing in your garden as soon as you acquire your property is a good idea, because by the time you sell your property, your landscaping will mature, and that’s a really good value,” Rothschild explains. A seismic retrofit is also another relatively inexpensive thing to do to update your property—and it only costs $5-10,000 for the job. “You don’t get any visual or aesthetic payback but you get peace of mind,” she adds. 

Marc Melvin, of San Francisco-based Marc Melvin Design, says the best way to update your home without spending too much is to focus on an area of your house that needs organization or improvement and then to add the smaller things that make a difference. 

“We’re doing a remodel for a major CFO here in the city,” he explains. “They already have a home. This was their first remodel,” he explains. “In the bathroom, the owner wanted a beautiful mosaic floor that would normally cost thousands and thousands of dollars. In the end, we designed an area for the vanity and for the shower and toilet. We imbedded a mosaic tile pattern in the floor to look like a carpet—we didn’t do the whole floor. Then she bought beautiful handles that tied into the mosaic. All the little things at the end became a joy, and it told a story. It was all the little things remembered about traveling and said she didn’t have in her other home.” 

According to Melvin, just adding some small touches and the right hardware in a home can make a big difference. “You make a savings by not doing something all the way. You can spread it out and do it in a way that tells a whole story without having one big, huge impact.” 

Whether you’re hiring a designer, contractor or architect, it’s all about money saving these days. So, if you have any money to spend, this could be a good time to invest in your home. “In this day and age, it’s all about money engineering,” says Melvin. “It makes you have to push yourself as a designer. And it forces the client and designer working together as a team to figure out what the priorities are and where you want to spend your money at the end of the day.”