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Protecing Trees from Construction

Old Shade Tree In The Churchyard 

Image by A. Davey via Flickr

Buying that perfect plot of land for your dream house is just as important as the materials used to build the home. Chances are you’ve picked the location for its natural beauty, stunning shade trees, and convenient neighborhood, but if your recent purchase requires any amount of land clearing prior to building, remember to protect those trees.

Mature trees provide shade that can help lower a home’s energy costs and increase land value, so leveling the land is the last thing you want to do. Once you’ve determined where the house will go, inform your contractor which trees and other forms of plant life will be kept intact. Be committed to this conservation and ask your contractor what he or she will do to safeguard the environment surrounding your future home.

Trees can be seriously damaged by construction activities, and this damage often occurs at the roots. Mark the trees with an “Off Limits” sign construction workers can clearly see, and allow enough space for these signs or temporary fencing to incorporate the underlying root system. Monitor the construction site regularly. This alone will alert workers to your commitment to preserving the surrounding environment.

Avoid placing utility lines in critical root zones. If this proves impossible, opt for tunneling under root systems instead of trenching through. It may cost more money up front, but the shade trees will save on energy costs for years to come.

Save younger trees by transplanting them and chip any damaged or dead trees. Large trees almost never survive within five feet of the construction site, so keep this in mind when laying the home’s foundation.

 

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Construction Loans

You’ve purchased or inherited land and are now set to build your dream home. Should be pretty simple, right? You would certainly think so.

In reality, construction loans are harder to come by than traditional mortgages. Not all lenders offer construction loans and those that do want to know every detail of your planned construction. These loans are short-term, interest-only, and are designed to revert to a traditional mortgage upon construction completion. They come in two types: the construction-to-permanent loan and the construction-only loan.

The construction-to-permanent loan, or all-in-one loan, automatically changes to a standard mortgage once the home is built. The advantage to this type is that it only requires one application and one closing.

The construction-only loan must be paid off or replaced with a conventional mortgage at the end of construction. The advantage here is that a borrower can shop around and select from thousands of conventional lenders rather than being restricted to construction-only lenders.

Regardless of the type of construction loan, the interest rate is generally fixed for the construction period. They also don’t pay out all at once. Lenders will figure up a schedule of your construction stages and hand out the funds for each stage. Most lenders also insist that you hire a professional contractor.

The best way to stick to your budget is to make a plan and live by it. It’s easy to get carried away in splurging on fancy bathroom fixtures or surface upgrades, but you may run out of money before the construction is completed. Practice a little self-control and you’ll have the home of your dreams in no time!

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Choosing the Right Contractor

Since you’ve either saved or secured a loan for the purposes of home improvement, you probably have a project in mind. This project is likely to be either important to you or the value of your home, or both. Once you have the money, the best news has yet to come: you can now actually save even more money as you plan improvements to your home. Thus, implementing your home improvement projects can help you make the most of your dollar. There are many ways you can manage your project to your advantage. One of those ways is choosing the right contractor.

If you’re working with contractors, it’s always important to give yourself a flexible amount of options. Contractors often specialize in different types of work. It’s important to pick a contractor who does good work at a reasonable price. You want to avoid working with a contractor who may take extra hours to remember or get familiar with the kind of work at hand. This could cost you extra hours and it may run the risk of yielding less than satisfactory results. Interviewing multiple contractors allows you to the advantage of being selective. If a contractor is aware that you are considering alternatives, they may be more inclined to compete for your business by making you a better offer.

However, it’s important to not be fooled by unrealistically priced offers. Sometimes by offering less, contractors may be inclined to provide you with less in some form down the road. If, however, a contractor believes they are getting a fair deal in the arrangement, they will most likely provide you with the best of their services. Thus, when it comes to choosing contractors, there’s a balance between cost, competition, skill set, and fairness. Ideally, you would like to settle on a contractor who is honest, experienced, cost effective, and efficient.

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Working Closely With Contractors

At this stage of the home improvement project you may or may not have decided on a contractor who is right for the task. Sometimes better contractors may quote you for less hours of work, but at a higher cost and vice versa. In the end, both costs may essentially look the same. If this estimate appears to be stretching your budget, you may want to get creative. One option is to work closely with your contractor.

This can be done in various ways, and in many cases it can help you reduce your costs while still providing a good deal for the people involved in the contract work. The first step is to learn about the task for which you are hiring. You may quickly find that some tasks are easier than you first thought. As it turns out, many contractors are be perfectly willing to let you or a family member clock in for some of the simple work. If you’re working with one of those kind of contractors, you may be able to pitch in to reduce some of those labor hours. The same goes for materials, setup, and clean-up.

There are other benefits of working closely with contractors. If a contractor feels appreciated and respected, they may decide to be less aggressive about their demands price wise. Working closely with contractors creates an opportunity to be honest about your situation. Contractors need to be paid, but they also need satisfied customers. If you are up front about your budgetary reservations, many contractors may be able to offer some sort of solution in order to make the deal work for them on some level, this of course, unless they hate dealing with you. Thus, if you’re trying to make a deal work, don’t let this happen. In the end, the closer you work with your contractor the better it will be.

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Planning Your Renovation

There are usually several stages to general renovation projects. The more familiar you become with those stages, the more effective you can be at implementing your next renovation. Though every renovation project is different, the basic format for achieving a successful renovation usually remains the same. First you have to plan the type of renovation, you acquire funding, you engineer, you repair, rebuild, and then you retouch. Of these stages, the planning aspect is probably most important.

Planning your renovation involves the process of deciding the nature and scope of your project. You need to familiarize yourself with what’s most important to the property as whole as well as what your goals are with the building functionally, aesthetically, and financially. If you want the building to serve a specific purpose, you have to make sure that your renovation is successful in this respect. Additional aesthetic desires may also require additional resources or certain types of action. These factors should also be accounted for.

If you have long term financial goals for the building, it is important to consider all factors that pertain to the value of the property. You need to understand its current value, and establish a projected value that considers the surrounding area and other external factors over time. Then it is important to establish a realistic goal value that considers these factors in addition to improvements attributed to your renovation project. If the market in the area of your property is in decline this should be accounted for but by no means should it be discouraging. If your renovation is successful then your property may shine as an exceptionally desirable commodity in relation to the surrounding area.

In the end, proper planning of a renovation project is in some cases more important than the renovation itself. If you plan it properly, the chances are more likely that your renovation work will not need to be redone in order to achieve your desired results.

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