New York Renovator

We can only wish. Then we’d have nowhere to go but up.

According to Bloomberg, this may be the year the housing market bottoms out. Hmm. I am skeptical; we’ll see. I haven’t seen any moves by anyone to tighten the belt or hit a diet supplements routine. Instead, I still see an awful lot of gorging!

U.S. home prices will reach bottom by the end of the year, concluding a slide that will have cut values 36 percent, Moody’s Economy.com said today.

“Notwithstanding the intensifying economic gloom, the bottom of the housing downturn is within sight,” chief economist Mark Zandi said in a statement today. “Presuming we see strong action by policymakers to help support the economy and the housing market, prices will begin to recover by the end of this year.”

Demand for new and existing homes began to fall in 2005, marking the end of a five-year U.S. housing boom fueled in part by easy credit for subprime borrowers. Existing home prices tumbled from an average high of $230,200 in July 2006 to $175,400 in December, according to data from the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors.

U.S. home prices will fall another 11 percent on average before stabilizing, according to Moody’s Economy.com. The Case- Shiller home price index will fall 36 percent from its 2006 peak to the bottom this year, Zandi’s study said.

About 62 percent of U.S. metropolitan areas surveyed will record double-digit declines in home prices by the end of the slump, according to today’s report. Prices will fall more than 50 percent in former boom areas such as southeast Florida and parts of California, including Riverside.

The rest of the nation is experiencing what we in New York State have been seeing for the past 15-20 years. So here, the housing market decline is not as unbearable… to every cloud there’s a silver lining, I guess… *laughs manically*.

You know, when the American people were clamoring to the government, demanding that the government “create jobs,” I think Americans forgot to tell the leaders– “Uh, we meant create more jobs for AMERICANS.” Because that’s a lot of the problem, here– the outsourcing of everything, everything except retail industry jobs. You just cannot base an economy on “Paper or plastic?” and “Do you want fries with that?” DUH!!!

Anyway, it’s really up to us to make this economy work. Shopping our way out a recession is not going to work– getting out of debt, building savings, and living frugally is what will do it.

Well, despite gloomy news in the housing market, people still have rickety old houses that need renovating (like yours truly). I’ve been keeping my eye on “trends” for renovations and new construction for several years now, trying to stay slightly ahead of the game; so, when it comes my time to gut my kitchen or bathroom, I’ll be modernized and efficient (and therefore won’t have to re-update in 5 to 10 years like so many of my neighbors do). One thing I have learned is– keep it simple. You can’t go wrong with keeping things simple. I try to think beyond design and make systems and functions simple, too.

According to the UK’s House to Home, the bathroom trends for 2009 are:

• Natural Beauty
• Hotel glamour
• Freestanding baths
• Shower power
• Bathroom storage

I like that list (nice and simple!), however it’s missing one thing– a trend toward “universal design.” Universal design is what I am considering to be the ideal standard bathrooms design. With the majority of the populace getting older (Baby Boomers and such), universal design is becoming almost standard in new bathroom design, but it is commonly overlooked in renovation. I am using it in small ways myself now, and intend on going that route entirely when I remodel the bathrooms.

Universal design is kind of like the ergonomics for bathroom accessories. For example, instead of round doorknobs, which are more difficult for older hands to twist and open, use lever door handles. Instead of moulded bathtubs that are integrated into the wall (bathtubs that are very difficult to climb in and out), use kudos showers that have doors, even wider, bi-fold doors,– you can just walk in. Some showers even have stools and should definitely have handles.

Common universal design features:

• Grab bars in tub/shower and around toilet area
• Walk-in tubs and/or showers; showers with seats; tub handles placed to the side and not inside the tub/shower
• Elevated (taller) sinks and cabinets, to eliminate bending to wash hands and face
• Lever door handles and lever faucet handles
• Wider doorways and wider tub/shower entrances (36″ wide) to accommodate wider people and/or wheelchairs
• Taller toilets, or toilets on pedestals, to eliminate bending; elongated toilets instead of round ones

So while I like natural neutral colors, hotel glamour, and “shower power,” I think a trend that should remain consistent and never become outdated is universal design. Don’t overlook this when renovating or building! You will thank yourself when you are older.

Am I an eternal optimist? I keep entering sweepstakes to win my dreamhome.

By the way, my definition of dreamhome: electricity in all the rooms; plumbing that WORKS; no leaks; new kitchen; nice floors. I guess I’m pretty easy to please, huh?

I know the odds of me winning those sweepstakes is next to nil. I’m not counting on winning them, though. I’m just hoping! But I know I can’t wait forever to get one. I’m working on the house I have. I’ll be happy to have a new kitchen! But if you’re making plans for your dreamhome, check out one of the top-notch crafters of dreamhomes in Louisiana: Schumacher Homes. I’ll bet they are seeing a lot of business, rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina! Schumacher builds homes all across the United States, not just Louisiana. Look them up when you are ready to build. Then YOU can stop entering those sweepstakes and give me more of a chance to win!

My local news source linked to a Move.com article detailing some exprected trends in kitchen remodels. To be honest, I really question the trends. They seem extremely extravagant. Now I know, I know, I live in Upstate New York, not exactly within the realms of the Beverly Hills/Manhattan Home Re-Do specialists. And I admit, I do view “trends” with a wary eye. To me, “trends” are less about “what’s hot,” and are more about “stuff that corporations are marketing to consumers.”

Here are some of the trends that are being marketed to us this year … everyone is buying so we have to have it too … becoming popular:

1. Granite countertops.

Are they kidding?! There was a flurry of news reports in July and August, claiming that granite countertops emit radon. I blogged about it, too. Besides, granite is THE most expensive countertop you can buy (unless you want gold plate). I am highly suspicious that granite countertops are the new “trend” at the same time that people are losing their 401Ks and manufacturing jobs continue to be outsourced (by the way, do we still have any manufacturing companies in the U.S.?)

2. Personalized, decorative tile backsplashes.

Again, this is a highly customized feature. I seriously doubt that people are going to want to spend 5 times more for decorative tile for their backsplashes.

3. Glass front cabinets.

Not terribly thrifty, but glass front may eventually be cheaper than solid wood. Still, it’s another semi-custom feature. I think consumers are going to lean toward more stock items, things that are durable and easy to maintain.

4. Stainless steel appliances and white appliances.

When did white appliances go out of “trend”? I think 99% of us have white refrigerators, right? Stainless steel appliances have come a long way. I think they used to be priced right around $2500 when they first came out; I saw one at Lowe’s for about $1,500 recently. Still… a refrigerator is a refrigerator. Does it really matter if it has a micro computer memory chip to make the perfect ice cube? Do you think you’d pay $1000 more for a fridge because it has stainless steel covering? Not me, anyway.

5. Turquoise and pink colors.

*screams in horror*

I FINALLY got rid of all the turquoise and pink paint from when they did it to my house in the 1950s! Noooooooooo!

“It’s any color pink. Pink is the hot shade. Bubblegum, raspberry pink, cherry pink… all those pinks are big. The other big shade is turquoise. Turquoise jewelry is hot and we’re starting to see that in fabric and wallpaper design. It’s just now starting but it will get huge.”

Ladies, if we want the men to pitch in in the kitchen, JUST SAY NO to pink.

6. Round or oval tables.

7. Hardwood floors.

Again, #6 and #7 are in moderately higher echelons than the other existing choices– rectangular tables and vinyl flooring. I have seen some very nice hardwood-looking resilient flooring at Home Depot. The stuff is amazing– my local Walmart actually installed it recently on their floors. The stuff is beautiful and incredibly durable. It’s called “Trafficmaster Vinyl Plank flooring.” It installs in strips, like laminate flooring, but it has sticky tabs that make it stick together. When I re-do my kitchen, I’m using that stuff. It wil last forever, and be a breeze to maintain.

Well, that’s my take on what the talking heads are saying about kitchen trends. I’d really like to know what you think about all this. I read these “trends” lists with a skeptical eye, but I do wonder if it’s just me being too cheap, or do I really have a pulse on the average homeowner’s thoughts? Let me know!

This concept is new to me: the strawbale house. From what I can gather, it’s a type of house construction that uses hay bales as walls. The walls are plastered with a clay mix. The house foundation and roof are built like any other home: a concrete basement or slab, a wooden joist floor, a sill with wood studs that support a roof. Bales are placed in between the wood studs of the walls.

The strawbale homes are acclaimed for their insulating abilities, and many builders also add energy-efficient systems (like solar panels) to the house.

Is this really a good way to construct a home? Honestly, I have my doubts. I mean… hay?? When I think of hay, I think of dusty, moldy, scratchy bales of yellow hay. Hay gets wet, it absorbs humidity, it degrades, doesn’t it? And laying plaster on the bales of hay seems impermanent. Plaster cracks, from subsurface movement, the drying of wood framing over the years, from winds, and from movement within the house. And where would the electrical wiring and plumbing go? I’m as baffled about this as I am about unlocked cell phones– what are those?

So I found this video about strawbale homes. It didn’t give me a lot of answers, honestly.

I am 100% in favor of alternative housing materials. I hate all the toxic chemicals being dumped into our homes. But to me, hay seems like another problem. It isn’t permanent, is it? I’m sure a house with hay in the walls must be very warm, but what if a person has allergies? Or if mold starts to grow? Or if a roof leak causes water to seep between the walls? Or you have a plumbing leak, or a wire short in an outlet receptacle? And do you need a special type of business permit for this? It seems so unconventional!

I checked my local library for any information about this unusual home building system, but found nothing in any library across 5 counties. Then again, I wouldn’t expect strawbale hoems to be veyr popular in a wet, intemperate climate such as Upstate New York. So I’m off to investigate more about this, on the Internet. If you have any input, I’d love to hear– leave a comment!

This is a little notification I heard through the grapevine. With the home improvement season advancing, prices for materials is going to go up. I’d heard some estimates that prices will soar 10% by the end of March. Unfortunately, I don’t have the funds to buy all may materials before then, but if you do, you might want to take advantage of the opportunity now. Prices are only going to go higher, due to gasoline costs and the devaluation of the dollar. They sure are making it hard to fix a house, aren’t they???

I’ve watched, from a distance of course, the rise of popularity for radiant floor heating. It’s a terrific invention, I think. I have lived all my life with central heating, and I’ve come to have some strong opinions about it!

Most of the homes I’ve lived in had forced air heating systems. I dislike them greatly. They create drafts and the house never seems warm. There is a ton of dust. And if you have an odor in one end of the house, within one minute of that furnace kicking on, it’s permeated the house. I dislike forced-air systems very much.

I’ve lived in a few places with radiator heating. All places were very old apartments with very old radiators. I didn’t care for the radiator system, either. If you were within five or six feet of the radiator, you’d be warm. But radiators didn’t radiate very much.

I’ve lived in a house with a wood furnace (far to much work) and electric baseboard heating (far too expensive and noisy).

I’ve watched with interest the introduction of radiant heating to this country. Radiant heating is not “new.” It’s been established in Europe for a long time.

In the 70’s here in this country, radiant heating was added to ranch houses with concrete slab foundations. It was not very well thought through when it was introduced in modern homes. Radiant tubing of copper pipes was placed in the subfloor, and a fresh coat of concrete poured over it all. Hot water from a boiler flowed through the pipes and warmed the floors. It was a lovely idea. But you cam’t stop physics. The exchange of hot and cool temperatures causwed the pipes to shift a little. Concrete doesn’t like shifting. Pipe seals broke, leaked into cracked concrete, and before you know it, it’s a disaster. Not only have you lost your heating system, but you’ve lost your floor.

So I’ve watched and waited. I’ve seen the introduction of PEX tubing to the idea. I like PEX tubing, but I have my doubts if it would really work here in Upstate New York. It gets cold, bone cold here for long periods of time. And I’m not too keen on anything being “set in stone” or, in this case, concrete.

But radiant heating is extremely appealing. Heating with water has got to be the best means of heating anything, and water is doubly efficient because the same water you use to heat your rooms can be the same water you use to wash your dishes or take your bath. Radiant heating heats the floors, which in turn heats objects. No drafts, no exchange of one kind of air for another. You can also install hardwood flooring– usually a chilly option for homes in the North– and still stay warm. As a matter of fact, hardwood floors are recommended with radiant heating, because the wood doesn’t insulate the heat from the room, as a carpet would. It’s very appealing indeed.

You can even install radiant heating with PEX and aluminum flashing to existing homes. Although, I wouldn’t in my house. Older homes have a plethora of problems and situations unique to newer homes. The way my sill sits on my foundation, for example, and how my home’s framework is built (balloon frame). There are a lot of drafts within the foundation and between the sill-plate and wall-framing that I cannot access. The wood is old, it has shrunk, my basement is very drafty. I also have a century’s worth of pipes, drains, and wires protruding every-which-way. I couldn’t even begin to imagine where I’ve have the space to install radiant heating to the floor. Unless I ripped everything out to the house’s barebones and started from scratch. But then again, why do that? Just build new. So I really think that to install radiant heating right, you’d have to build new, with proper preparation and installation.

It’s an interesting system and one I intend to monitor for a little while longer. If I ever build a new house, I think I would choose radiant heating above all else. So far, I think it’s the best system out there. But even that makes me sad. That’s the best we have? We’ve been to the moon, sent a robot to Mars, and we still have a heating system that’s only one step advanced from the stone age?

I just finished flipping through my New Old House magazine. I got it a few weeks ago (it’s the winter 2008 edition) but hadn’t gotten to it until now. An excellent article by Russell Versaci, Pennywise, got me very excited. It’s a topic that’s been on my mind for over fifteen years, ever since I became interested in homes and home-building.

It sounds so… so…. simple, doesn’t it? But over the course of my time spent reading books and magazines on home building and improvements, and flipping through countless architectural books and designs, the McMansion– that banal behemoth of excess home-building and wasteful sprawl–was very alive and well, and growing.

I’d read an unusual book (for the time) many years ago, The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live by Sarah Susanka. In it, she laments the bloated blueprints of modern housing, and prescribes building smaller, more efficient homes. Her book, published in 2000, is called “groundbreaking” by the publishers. That gives you an idea of when the push for efficient modern housing began– at least among designers and builders. Actually, I don’t think builders have even caught on yet.

Back to the Versaci article, I was impressed with some of his ideas about the “new” little house (not that they were new to me, but perhaps for some of his readers).

Home builders toting bulging portfolios of generic bloated McMansions have little to offer new arrivals who want smaller, more authentic homes. The five-bedroom, five-bath, 5,000 square foot behemoth is a relic of another idea. [yeah, Louis IV of old France!]

Living in Upstate New York watching the rich get richer and the poor get much poorer, I’ve noticed the change. Older houses (like mine) are crumbling, farmers are selling their land, and huge castle-sized homes built on the hilltops are gobbling up resources and crowding everyone else out. It sends the environment, the tax base, and the sense of community all awry. It is also interesting to note that rarely do these opulent five-bedroom homes house large families. Large families tend to be poorer, and have poorer and smaller houses. How ironic. And wasteful. And disrespectful of the rest of the community.

Now, old houses can be very inefficient and wasteful, too. Most of the houses in New York State– built before 1970, built even before 1900– were constructed in a era where “energy” meant wood fires for cooking and heating. Old houses waste resources, too. So don’t think I am holding the poor old homes at a nobler standard. However, modern home-building cannot claim any excuse for their excessive wastefulness except greed.

Well, Versaci continues and I nearly bowled over when I read the next few paragraphs:

Construction costs are out of control because builders are still using a delivery system that hasn’t changed much since the Middle Ages. We still gather up sticks and stones, bring them to the job site, trudge through mud and snow, go up and down ladders, cut and hammer in the blazing sun or driving rain, and generally build like medieval house wrights. Stick bulding houses is expensive and outmoded. With the home-building industry in shambles, there must be a better way.

And there is! It’s something that was under the noses of rich city-slickers for decades, those Fifth Avenue architects who snubbed their noses at what was happening with the “little” people– the people who had to be efficient, who had to work smartly:

GASP! No! Say it isn’t so!

It’s the new wave of the future! Well, it is now that the Fifth Avenue architects have “discovered” it.

Here are my suggestions… look at systems of home delivery that offer a better alternative to stick building. I’m putting my money on factory prefabrication. One hundred years ago Sears, Roebuck & Company conceived the idea of a house in a box…. still prized by ther owners and coveted by home buyers.

…The fact is that America has a huge industry equipped for prefabrication. After touring a dozen plants, I am convinced that their standards meet or exceed those of stick building.

Yes, manufactured (or, “prefabricated”) housing is much more efficient. It isn’t terribly new, either. It was invented in the early 1900s by a company catering to middle-class families looking for comfortable middle-class homes in middle-class neighborhoods. But the building boom after World War II blew the home kit away. “Planned communities” began in cities like Levittown, and the plague spread to the rest of the country.

I believe that a lot of our traffic, stormwater, and property tax problems today stem from such “planned communities.” It is an idea whose funeral is deserved, in my opinion.

With the mortgage problems in this country (due to exponentially high consumer debt), the energy crunch, globalization policies like NAFTA and SPP that are killing our labor force and industry infrastructure, it is time– yea, past time– to end excessive waste and the glut of consumerism that infects our culture. From home-building to neighborhood planning to individual lifestyles, change is required. This is a critical time for our country. Can we really scale back and tighten the belt before more collapses?