Paint Colors 2011 Miniseries: Part 2– Kitchens

May 7, 2011 By Kelsey Lane 9 Comments

As part two of The Listing Look’s take on Paint Colors for 2011, we decided to first explore kitchens.

Traditionally, great kitchen colors have ranged from white, off white, to many neutrals and on to greens and yellows — however, with the new trending there is no limit to the bold possibilities. Some of my personal favorite kitchen colors are Kelly Moore Home and Hearth (or Tortilla Chip or Iced Chai from the chip) and Glidden Springwater. I once also used a richer color that coordinated with a red/pink/black granite called Cinnamon Diamonds from Olympic (available at Lowe’s). I adored it and would even go a shade darker to Barn Door. Be careful with this one though — depending on how you round out your decor it could end up looking too mauve and too 80′s style.

Out of Glidden’s most popular colors for the year, the pale yellow Corn Silk would be great in a kitchen, as would Woodland Mystery (a soft sage) or even the neutral Tuscan Tan. Two other neutrals that could work well are ones Kelly Moore is currently tracking — Balsam Brown, a neutral yellowish tan (which I have used before in other rooms and loved– also incidentally KM says this matches The Color Marketing Group’s top color pick of 2011 which is called Yellow Hue Honey Moon.) The other is Star of the Garden, a lighter yellow-influenced neutral which Kelly Moore is claiming as its current go-to color.

Valspar has a current trends brochure with gorgeous, unusual colors and from their dreamscape collection, Summer Mist which is an extremely pale green would bring a nature-inspired feeling into a kitchen redo. Or, a green from them that has a little more blue in it and a shade deeper called Shade Moon which is part of their New Romanticism palette.

Behr gets a little edgier with their color presentation for kitchens — Eastern Amber is one they show (a light orange) and Butter Cookie (a very pale peach with orange undertones).

Sherwin Williams said that their all time most popular neutral (a taupe/tan) is Kilim Beige. And similarly, I’ve used Oyster from Kelly Moore. These are very safe neutrals to try.

Please let us know what your favorite kitchen colors are. We love helping people we know with color ideas and we also work with getting your house ready to sell (in addition to all the normal Realtor responsibilities) so we enjoy continually learning new things about remodeling, as we are coordinating staging and the like.

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Home selling? Find out your home value & start the consulting process for getting your house ready to sell by clicking My Home Value in the top navigation. Or, if you are interested in a complimentary 30-Minute Consult on getting your home ready to sell, call Kelsey Lane today to set a time: 408-316-0660, kelsey@kelseylane.com.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: contractors, fixer upper, high end, kitchen, kitchen cabinets, paint, painting, rehab, remodel, staging

Paint Colors 2011 Miniseries: For Living in & Listing your Home

April 22, 2011 By Kelsey Lane 3 Comments

Current Color Trends

If you don’t count black, white, brown and gray, there are really 6 colors to choose from in the rainbow spectrum. But oh the variations. Whether a purple is muted or bright, how light or dark it is, and other factors add to its current trend appeal. Since there are so many ways to look at which colors make good current, seasonal choices, we will take on the topic as a miniseries over the next week or so.

I’ve been roaming around finding out which paint colors each company is rolling out this spring, dubbing the color trends of 2011 (Kelly Moore, Glidden/ICI, Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, Olympic and more). But no matter what the trends are, a house is only a home if the owners enjoy it and if they are surrounded by what they love. So, we can all take the trends with a grain of salt but it’s fun to know what they are. Paint companies, fashion designers, and retail stores in general spend crazy amounts of money on which colors will sell best every year—so if we’re concerned with following trends for our own paint palettes, there’s no need to recreate the wheel. The information is ready and available. All that’s needed is to walk through a department store or home décor outlet to find out. Or, pop into all the paint companies’ stores like I did.

And whether you’re getting your house ready to sell, or planning on living in it a long time, the trends might play a part with your paint decisions. If you’re home selling, your situation will be a bit different as you need to generally appeal to a wider audience (but please still do not be afraid of color) – see our blog post on whether neutrals or colors are better when getting your house ready to sell. And if you are staying in your home (which will be the case for most of our readers) you can take more risks. It’s only paint – if it’s too avant garde once it’s on the walls, it can be changed. Most good painters will even repaint immediately for a nominal fee.

So on the next post, we’ll dive into paint colors for 2011. We will explore my findings, and of course my opinions, room by room.

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Need to find a contractor for a remodeling construction project? Get a contractor list of recommendations from The Listing Look (Silicon Valley realtor professionals) by clicking “Find a Contractor” in the top navigation.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: construction, high end, kitchen, painting, pre-market, rehab, remodel, staging

A to Z Construction Contractors and Service Providers: O: Off Price Carpet, San Jose CA

December 9, 2010 By Kelsey Lane 3 Comments

For your next remodeling/construction project, Off Price Carpet in San Jose CA

The Off-Price Carpet Outlet in San Jose is a relatively new find for us. About a year ago I was doing remodeling construction on one of my own personal properties. A contractor we were working with, Jason Saul, recommended Off-Price Carpet Outlet and strongly recommended talking to the owner Stan for some carpeting that we needed in a detached bonus room. While I was contemplating that project, I was concurrently working on helping one of our clients who was buying a townhome for sale in San Jose (a fixer) with their pre move-in remodel. The carpet there was in atrocious condition, but our client was going to be unable to afford new carpet. So Stan at Off Price Carpet recommended to us a contractor for carpet cleaning & repair, Sam Ford, who worked wonders on that carpet. By the time I went into the showroom on San Carlos in San Jose CA I had already been talking to Stan and one of the salespeople, Josh. The showroom is not fancy, but what I like about this place is the opportunity to buy very inexpensive carpet for even large spaces — they have remnants but in big quantities. The selection varies & changes but always includes many neutral options. They carry higher end product, too, but it’s a fantastic gem for getting jobs done inexpensively.

We were selling a house in Palo Alto CA and it needed a new bathroom floor put in. Off Price Carpet came out, measured, and installed inexpensive neutral lineoleum very, very cheaply and without a hitch. Having the neutral carpet installed in the bonus room also went off smoothly, and for a song. Try them out and see what you think for your next remodeling construction project.

1020 W San Carlos St
San Jose CA 95126

408-288-7678

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Need to find a contractor for a remodeling construction project? Get a contractor list of recommendations from The Look Team (Silicon Valley realtor professionals) by clicking “Find a Contractor” in the top navigation.

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Filed Under: Blog, Buyers, Sellers Tagged With: bathroom, budget, carpet, construction, contractors, fixer upper, listing prep, rehab, remodel

Home Selling? Getting Your House Ready to Sell Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive: 6 Tricks & Tips

October 7, 2010 By Kelsey Lane 4 Comments

6 Home Selling Tips & Tricks — for Getting Your House Ready to Sell

Home selling? Ideally, every house would look like a model home when you’re getting your house ready to sell. But so often, there’s just not a budget big enough for it. Everyone who is home selling feels the squeeze, especially when considering they are often paying for inspections, reports, commissions, and more. Of course, good money spent on the right things when getting your house ready to sell yields a hefty return on investment. But what do you do if you simply don’t have the funds for the home selling process that you’d like?

Getting advice from a realtor and a contractor

However you can find a way to do repairs (that show cosmetically) and basic remodeling construction to update your property while home selling, plus staging – you definitely should, and you will be nicely rewarded (either by garnering a high sales price, or simply by being able to sell the home). If you are on a tight budget when you’re getting your house ready to sell, make sure to let your Realtor know and ask them which elements of your property are the most glaring and need attention. Once you have that list, you can prioritize your home selling budget and dialogue with your Realtor on which items you can afford to do & whether you can afford a contractor to help with getting your house ready to sell.

Some of the fixes are so inexpensive, you may be shocked. Here are some examples of recent repairs and remodeling construction efforts our home selling team has employed:

One house in Sunnyvale CA had 4” off-white tiles for the kitchen countertop—this would not have been a horrible problem, but the grout lines were black. We didn’t have money in the home selling budget to add granite to the kitchen. So we bought a bottle of off white “grout paint” at Home Depot and painted the grout lines. The product was $11 and the work was done by a contractor, costing a couple hundred bucks, but this work could easily be done by willing homeowners. The result was a kitchen with very neutral-looking tile instead of the previous outdated effect. Getting your house ready to sell isn’t about spending big bucks — it’s about small changes that make a big impact on the sales price.
That same house had a Florida room addition. None of the rest of the house had wallpaper, but this room did, and it looked very tired. Because the room did not look perfect to begin with, we decided not to spend labor cost on removing the wallpaper. Instead, we took some of the same paint color we were using in the rest of the house and painted over the wallpaper (after using an appropriate primer first). Before painting over wallpaper, it’s good to glue down any unsightly seams. This solution worked wonders & for home selling was a great solution (Those buying a house would want to customize it more to their taste).
And it need not only be those who are home selling who want to get “The Look.” Buyers have the opportunity to get a bargain with properties that need a bit of work (like a fixer, short sale or reo (bank owned property). One of our clients buying a house in San Jose CA had us coordinate his pre move-in remodel – he bought an reo (bank owned property) but wanted it to be turnkey before he moved in. The budget for the project was $9000 but needed to include granite in the kitchen & bathroom, plus complete interior painting, all new lighting, all new hardware, plus a new tile floor in the bathroom. The carpet was badly stained, but we had run out of wiggle room in the budget. We decided to consult two carpet cleaners on whether the stains would come out or not. They both gave their vote of confidence that it would be about 90% good, and our client opted to give it a try. However, there were a few very bad stains (red marker, for example) in a couple spots. The carpet cleaner, who has his master certification in cleaning & patching, used a small round cutter to remove the spots and replace it with pieces from a remnant we gained from removing carpet from the bathroom (to put in the tile floor). What a contractor! You could barely tell the patches had been done. The entire condo looked pristine and the carpet issue ended up costing less than $300, much cheaper than replacing all the flooring. Tips from this buyer remodel would also work great for those who are home selling.

To see the other 3 tips & home selling tricks for getting your house ready to sell, see full article.

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Filed Under: Buyers, Sellers Tagged With: budget, buyers, buying, construction, contractors, fixer upper, foreclosure, granite, kitchen, kitchen cabinets, lighting, listing prep, real estate, rehab, remodel, short sale

Remodeling Construction Techniques: Ideas from a Friend’s Listing, a Sunnyvale house

October 5, 2010 By Kelsey Lane 4 Comments

We loved the doors in this Sunnyvale house!

Sunnyvale house features remodeling construction idea for getting your house ready to sell

I was really impressed by what they did with this Sunnyvale house. I loved these interior doors! One of my Realtor friends has this listing and I loved how they had prepared the home to go on the market. I found these doors to be particularly exciting from a remodeling construction standpoint –typically what you will find are either flat interior doors or the 6-panel type. The style of these is 2-panel, with beadboard insets. I am such a huge fan of beadboard that they actually elevated my heart rate a bit! Thinking outside the box and choosing some unique materials when you are doing remodeling construction or getting your house ready to sell is definitely the way to go. Check these out. They can be purchased at Lowe’s, found online by doing a search for “2-panel interior door”–or ask a contractor (we have a list of recommended remodeling construction contractors).