Archive for November, 2009
If you’re going to have a door as elaborate and beautiful as this, you’d better have a damned impressive house for it to open into. Otherwise, it’s all disappointment once you cross the threshold.
This door, created by Matharoo Associates for a diamond merchant in India, is flat-out crazy. It’s 17 feet tall, five and a half feet wide, and is made up of 40 sections of Burmese teak. The door uses a counterweight, 80 ball bearings and 160 pulleys to create the incredible effect of reconfiguring into a sinusoidal curve when you push on any one section. Amazing.
[Architectural Review via FastCompany]
An $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers has been extended to cover contracts signed by April 30, 2010. A real estate professor writes that those seemingly free dollars might not save you any actual cash, however.
Photo by omniNate.
Joseph Gyourko, chairman of the real estate department at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, runs the numbers on five myths of home ownership, including the standard “buying is always better than renting” argument that we’ve previously posted about (and considered as a calculator). About the tax credit that’s regularly in the headlines, Gyourko suggests the savings may vanish quickly if you’re buying in an area with a moderately competitive market:
Just because you got an $8,000 tax credit toward the purchase of a home doesn't mean that you actually saved $8,000. In areas where there is strong demand for housing and the supply of new housing is limited — including the Washington metro region — tax credits may result in the bidding up of home prices. In other words, the program has probably led to higher prices in these areas than we would be seeing without it. This means that some of the benefit of the tax credit is being passed on from homebuyers to home sellers.
Has the new buyer credit made you think twice about buying a home? Do you still consider home ownership a solid, if not exactly profitable, investment? Trade your takes in the comments.
Italian home furnishings brand Poliform and their kitchen design brand Varenna have developed an inspirational site that showcases their products and the possibilities of small spaces. My Life in 80m² — that's about 860 square feet — is a beautiful collection of photos and ideas that maximize functionality.
Late last year, my Mum moved into a colonial farmhouse located in Connecticut’s historic Litchfield County. Surprisingly, the old home was in “turnkey” condition — that is, except for the barn out back. Built in 1944 as a hen house, the semi-finished outbuilding was just begging to be converted into a workshop. Now, nearly one year later, we’re about to kick off renovations and Apartment Therapy has the inside scoop on our coop conversion.
We spent a lot of time in the Kitchen over the last four days, whether it was preparing our Thanksgiving meal or foraging for leftovers two days later. Had there been a mirror in there, we might have been able to talk ourselves out of that third slice of pie.
Builder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes remained at 17 in November, unchanged from October, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI). The component gauging home sales expectations for the next six months rose two points in November to 28, compared with October. Many of the responses to the HMI were received prior to congressional action to extend and expand the federal tax credit for home buyers.
In a special questions section of the HMI survey, one-third of respondents indicated they have recently lost sales due to low appraisal values, up from one-quarter of respondents who indicated as much in a survey taken in July. Builders report that low appraisal values often are tied to the use of foreclosed and distressed properties as “comps” in the appraisal process.
Source: NAHB
Don’t give up on painting your laminate furniture just because it seems nothing could stick to the glossy laminate surface. Use this simple guide to change it to the color you want.
Laminate furniture is created with wood, almost always a particle board, that is covered with a thin laminate veneer. If you’ve ever dinged the side of a cheap desk or file cabinet with “wood” grain and seen a different kind of wood underneath you’ve seen a piece with a laminate finish.
You can’t just take a gallon of latex paint to it, the adhesion is poor and the surface won’t look right when you’re done. At the craft and design blog Living with Lindsay, they turned an armoire from fake wood laminate to a nice bright white with some elbow grease, 220 grit sand paper, and a liberal application of primer and paint. Check out the link below for photos of the process and some more tips for working with laminate surfaces.
Have a painting trick of your own? Let’s hear it in the comments.
Home sales increased 1 percent in October in California compared with the same period a year ago, while the median price of an existing home declined 3.2 percent, C.A.R. reported today.
Closed escrow sales of existing, single-family detached homes in California totaled 562,400 in October at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate. Statewide home resale activity increased 1 percent from the revised 557,050 sales pace recorded in October 2008. Sales in October 2009 increased 5.9 percent compared with the previous month.
The median price of an existing, single-family detached home in California during October 2009 was $297,500, a 3.2 percent decrease from the revised $307,210 median for October 2008, C.A.R. reported. The October 2009 median price rose 0.3 percent compared with September’s $296,610 median price.
Source: C.A.R.
Following our popular Scandinavian Interiors Roundup, here are 10 Scandinavian homes from Apartment Therapy’s House Tour archives.
Following our popular Scandinavian Interiors Roundup, here are 10 Scandinavian homes from Apartment Therapy’s House Tour archives.
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