Maine Modular & Custom Home News

Planning, planning and more planning is the guide to being satisfied with your new custom built home.  I found a great website for helping you research and do your homework on every room in your new home.  It includes ideas for anything from a home library to a private sports complex.  Lighting, furniture, design and many other areas are touched upon.  Some of the ideas need to be incorporated into your initial building plan to be viable.  Others ideas help you make your new home reflect your own special personal touches.  Visit the Home Building Center and find links to take your creativity into a whole new realm.

You don’t have to go broke making your new home look classy.  Small changes and little details can change the appearance of the ordinary and turn it into the extraordinary.  I especially like the high end accents found in This Old House Magazine.  Cambria makes quartz switch plates and and knobs that will match your countertops, giving your room a pulled together, high end home design feeling.  The great news is that it won’t empty your wallet.  These pretty little additions start at about $15 each.  Browse through all of the “Bang-for-Your-Buck” ideas and see if there is one that catches your fancy.

The future for building new homes in general is changing rapidly.  New green building techniques are appearing all the time.  Creative architecture is becoming more popular in all types of building; commercial as well as residential.  However, if you had asked me the future of modular building technology, I wouldn’t have come up with some of the ideas found at the MoMA’s exhibit in Philadelphia.  The exhibit includes the “Cellophane House” which is a glass house with solar and photovoltaic panels, the “System 3″ which features a wall less bathroom and the “Micro Compact Home” which is described as an Airstream trailer on stilts.  I’m pretty sure I’m ready for new energy ideas, but the wall less bathroom hopefully won’t come into vogue until I’ve departed this earth!  To read more about these exciting new ideas for modular building technology read this article in the Philadelphia Weekly or go to the MoMA blog.

If you are a visual person you probably don’t need help imagining what your bedroom will look like painted your favorite hue of lilac.  However, if you need a little help seeing just how that ivy colored trim will look with your lilac walls, check out the color assistant at My Home Ideas.  This great tool lets you choose from a variety of rooms and styles and then peruse through hundreds of color choices for the walls, trim and ceiling.  You can point and click trying literally thousands of different combinations - instead of guessing what your choice will look like, the virtual room will change colors right before your eyes - then you will know for sure if your room will be everything you imagined.  It’s lots of fun - try it out : The Color Assistant

Some green building has hidden benefits - the incentives, tax rebates and tax credits that are hard to keep track of.  The Green Made Simple website lets you search for all kinds of free bonus and incentive programs for making your home more green.  All you need to do is put in your zip code and search by category and you will be enlightened to all kinds of savings and benefits you never knew existed.  It’s like shopping a super sale…gotta love that.  Check it out at Green Made Simple.

Or VOCs as they are fondly referred to.  VOCs are found in the off gassing of harmful chemicals and pollutants commonly found in solvent-based finishes, adhesives, carpeting, particleboard, and many other building products.  One of the more common ways that VOCs escape into our living habitat is through paint, stains and sealers.  Safecoat paints and primers offer a full range of ecologically safe enamel paints as well as other safe sealants and stains.  The paints are taintable with zero VOC colorants in a variety of shades.  Their products are fully LEEDS certified and they are available throughout the U.S.  The air we breathe is polluted enough with everyday toxins.   Check out the Safecoat website at www.safecoatpaint.com, to view their full range of environmentally safe products.  They offer downloadable spec sheets on their products so you can compare them to other products you might be considering.   Using zero VOC paints and stains can help our immediate surroundings to be a little more healthy - and that’s a good thing.

If you are a first time shopper for home owner’s insurance, here are a few tips for saving money.  These are common areas that most all insurance companies will allow discounts for.  First, you will need to decide how big of a deductible you are comfortable with.  In general the higher deductible on your policy, the lower the cost.  After you decide your deductible ask about discounts:

• Discount for using same insurance company for both auto and home insurances
• Discount for having smoke detectors
• Discount for having a burglar alarm
• Discount for have a sprinkler system
• Discount for not living in a flood zone
• Disccount for being 55 or over
• Discount for a radon or natural gas detector

 Of course you should shop several insurance companies and find out which ones offer the best deals. And finally, make sure you ask for an explanation for anything that is in fine print.  It’s better to not have any surprises.  Know what to expect before that incident occurs - the one that causes you to call your insurance agent.

Some of us are better at saving money than others….I happen to fall into that “others” category.  Everytime I save twenty dollars I seem to get an unexpected bill for fifty dollars.  Always one step forward and two steps back.  After reading Saving For A House Ain’t That Hard, I learned some very practical steps for saving money.  A lot of it appears to be just attitude; convincing yourself that you really can do it.  Apparently once you get started it doesn’t take as long as you would think.  I have to admit, for my first home I did follow one of the recommended steps - I asked my mother for the money.  Back when I was trying to get into my first home, there were no such things as on line savings accounts and automatic payroll deductions.  These are great tools to use, and I do feel that it makes saving for a down payment much easier.  Get started today, and while you’re waiting to get all that moolah together, follow another recommendation - come to one of our Home Buyer’s Seminars in either our Oxford or Bethel Maine location. You can sign up by clicking right here.  Along with all the great tips you will learn, It will help you keep a focused goal in mind and keep you excited about building your very own new home.

What do they have in common?  Not a lot.  But what we have discovered at Schiavi Home Builders is that they make a perfect complement to one another.  Timber framing is a beautiful building process that has been in use since Midieval times, and was used in building many of the great cathedrals throughout Europe.  Gorgeous exposed beams add grandeur to the interior of any building and allow for an interior design like no other building process.  While timber framing is strong enough to support the largest buildings, as with everything today, cost is a factor.  That’s where the complement comes in.  One of the ways to keep cost manageable, yet still incorporate the beauty of timber frame construction is to do a combination of modular and timber frame.  One idea is to start with a timber frame great room and add other rooms in a modular building process.  That way you can incorporate the timber frame aesthetics into a shared area where you spend a lot of time, yet keep the cost down by using modular building on the other areas of your home.  If you can’t picture these two building processes together, make sure to visit our Bethel, Maine Model Home Center.  We have added a timber frame mudroom to one of our model homes, so you can visualize just what it looks like to combine the two technologies.  I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Building is more than picking up a hammer and nails and let’s have at it! Modular Home building is becoming more and more specialized with detailed carpentry added to customize your home just as you envision it. To help you communicate with your builder, here is a quick guide to a list of building terms. Referencing the correct terms can help insure that you and your builder are talking about the same thing. As far as I know gusset, mullion and lintel could all be part of tonight’s dinner recipe - yet there they are on this list of building terms. Check it out for yourself.