Start From The Ground Up

Eco-friendliness starts at the moment construction starts. If you are custom building your residence, make sure to work with a company that values the environment and knows how to keep it protected throughout the duration of the work. Using recycled materials when appropriate and responsibly manufactured products when recycled material won’t work is a cornerstone of this kind of building practice.

Design For Sustainability

An energy efficient home is an environmentally friendly home. There are many ways that you can adapt a new design or an existing property to make it more efficient. Using Energy Star rated appliances is a good start. Many of our clients update their appliances as part of San Diego home additions, but you don’t have to wait. It’s not just those ancient appliances that are wasteful – even relatively modern items may be surprisingly bad for the environment.

Use Responsibly Sourced Materials

The basic building materials aren’t the only part of your building that can potentially harm the environment. Think about what it takes to manufacture something like kitchen cabinets. San Diego doesn’t have many factories because it’s impractical to build right around here, but other states and countries feel the impact of manufacturing these items. Make sure that your kitchen cabinets are made with eco-friendly materials. You’ll appreciate the lack of an odor as they outgas and so will the environment.

Even The Smallest Accents Count

Finally, don’t neglect the impact of the furniture and other elements that you put in after construction has finished. Remember, each of these items may have been made in a factory as well. Even if not, they may have been shipped from overseas or had to travel through multiple states, dramatically adding to their environmental footprint. Whenever possible, buy things that are made locally using eco-friendly materials that have been minimally processed and treated.

Since the new year, economic data and indicators have been mostly positive. Unemployment is going down, housing prices are stabilizing, and credit is becoming available once more. As you’d expect, Lars has seen an increase in San Diego home additions during this time. People are easily able to afford the remodel, and they’re choosing to put their money into their home and increase their investment.

Image courtesy of 401K

There are two common ways to finance San Diego home additions. The first is to remortgage or take out a second mortgage against the value of your home. This works best if you’ve paid off a substantial part of your current mortgage. Even if you’re not thinking of remodeling, it might be wise to look into renegotiating or adjusting your mortgage simply because the rates are so low.

Depending on the project, you may be able to leverage the second option to finance your remodeling project. Banks are sometimes willing to offer unsecured loans for expenses like remodeling. Alternatively, you may need to offer some form of collateral. What is available to you depends on a number of very personalized factors.

Whatever kind of credit you pursue, your timing is good. Interest rates are low, credit is available, and there’s nothing better to do with your money than invest it back into your home. But be sure to move quickly – the low rates may go up before long as the recovering economy is judged healthy enough to bear an increased cost for credit.

Building For Comfort

A lot of aging in place is simply about ensuring that you are always comfortable. New innovations like higher toilets, lower tubs, and even tubs with rising walls or doors help reduce unnecessary movement. We see a lot of demand for this in San Diego bathroom remodeling: it’s often substantially more comfortable for people of all ages and abilities.

New Technology, New Opportunities

As technology continues to evolve, we’re seeing a lot of new features make their way into bathrooms. Rising baths would not have been practical just a few years ago. Now, companies are focusing their innovation efforts on products which cater specifically to people who might want more assistance in their bathrooms.

Building Now To Accommodate Future Needs

If you’re considering re-doing your bathroom now, you might want to think ahead and plan for the future to avoid another re-do in a few years. It’s very possible to have a San Diego bathroom remodel that looks attractive and functions well for both current and future needs.

Lars Remodeling & Design is proud to offer San Diego bathroom remodeling designed for aging in place. We can help create a beautiful space that works with your current requirements, but is also set up to support you and your family as you grow older. Contact us to learn more about making your San Diego bathroom remodel truly timeless.

Patterned Paint

Traditional paint techniques are giving way to exciting designs. These new motifs include lace, hound’s-tooth patterns, color blocking, and more. It’s becoming more uncommon to see a plain wall painted in simple colors. Even when the wall is meant to be a backdrop for the fine furnishings and other elements within the room, home remodeling in San Diego is increasingly trending toward patterns.

Black And White

Once considered stark and cold, this color combo is seeing new life. It’s dynamic in a variety of settings, but we’ve seen it a lot in tiling for San Diego home renovations. Bathrooms and kitchens in particular are favoring black and white, using designs like staggered black and white tiles, or black tiles used to make a particular pattern in an otherwise white floor.

Alternatives To Red

Red is as old as time. Why not try a new color? There are a lot of bold options on the market right now. Blues, greens, deep purples, and tangerine are all quite popular. We’ve seen a lot of rooms that incorporate shades of the same bright color. Avoiding too much of a single bright color might seem like a prime directive of San Diego home renovations, but if recent trends are any indication, sometimes this rule is meant to be broken.

Pre-1900 Designs

Ancient designs arose more out of practicality than a desire for beauty. Leaving beams exposed was easier than covering them. Fine millwork was a luxury that settlers could not afford. Their décor came from rich textiles and the clutter that accumulated naturally as part of daily life. This design aesthetic fell out of favor for a while as ultra-clean modern designs started to proliferate.

Now it’s back, with a distinct appeal for today’s family. The relaxed, comfortable feel is very comforting, and it’s a very forgiving design style if you do have children. Messy and cluttered are all part of the design here. Home remodeling in San Diego to capture this look typically focuses on exposed beams and rough-hewn logs as part of the structure of the home or added on top of existing structure. Today’s homeowners often update the look with sleek accents or bright colors, making it a new twist on the old style.

Vintage Retro Made Modern

1960s retro is a very distinctive look. Featuring bright colors, rich textures, and patterns or symbols, these rooms are quite easy to spot. Today’s San Diego home renovations that go retro update the look by adding eco-chic elements. Bamboo accents, natural wood, and recycled or repurposed materials are very common. Cork flooring has become a huge trend in home remodeling generally, and is a common flooring choice for rooms like this.

Kitchens Blend Old And New

Another common trend we’ve seen in home remodeling in San Diego involves kitchens. Many designers are inspired to blend older cabinetry or reclaimed flooring with sleek, modern appliances. The resulting look is simultaneously old/traditional and new/contemporary. It’s a great interplay between the two with a lot of visual interest.

Come visit us in the Pat O’Brien Pavilion, booths 438/439. We’ll be showcasing some of our recent San Diego remodeling projects. We’d love to talk to you about your plans for an upcoming remodel or addition. The show is free to the public. We hope to see you there!

Your Finish Is All About Details

In San Diego remodeling, it’s often the details that make the entire project. Your structure is rarely visible at the end of the job. Everything has been covered by drywall, painted, tiled, or otherwise covered by materials designed to create a beautiful finished product. It is these items, not the underlying structure that supports them, that will be seen every day. They are what give a room its feeling and flavor. They are the architectural elements and the design elements that make it truly stand out. And yet they’re all too often neglected.

Spend Time On The Little Things

It can be tempting to rush into a home remodeling project once you have the basic structure determined but before all the details are worked out. This is a recipe for projects that will yield imperfect results at the end. Take time and plan all your details before you ever break ground or start demolition.

Choose Contractors Who Appreciate Structure And Detail

A lot of San Diego remodeling companies have a strong emphasis on structure or detail, but not both. At Lars Remodeling & Design, we have always believed that the two must always go hand in hand. We start with a strong structural design, and then we finish with impeccable detail work. Having just one aspect of the work be outstanding isn’t enough. Both the structure and the finish have to shine in order for you to get the best value out of your San Diego remodeling project.

That’s why Lars Remodeling & Design has partnered with Causelife to help deliver this important message to the community. As San Diego remodeling contractors, we want to help open the eyes of our entire community to help the world, and Causelife does exactly that. Causelife provides a multitude of assistance options in countries where clean water is hard to find. In particular, they dig clean water wells in some of the neediest areas.

A letter from Emily, in response to our Causelife ad.

Recently, Lars Remodeling & Design provided the funding for an informational campaign to help people throughout the San Diego area better understand the plight of countries that lack clean water. We hope the campaign will help our community focus in on ways we can continue the good work of Causelife internationally through well-digging initiatives, and locally through education and sustainability programs.