The arrival of autumn and its cooler temperatures, wetter climate, and shorter days may be known for sending animals into a flurry of activity before hibernating for the winter, but it also inspires us humans to do pretty much the same thing as we transition our homes from warm to cooler seasons and prepare for the holidays.

Indeed, what comes as a surprise to many is that “spring cleaning” is not the only season homeowners suddenly feel the urge to revitalize parts of their home and get organized. As autumn winds scatter leaves across streets and lawns outside, inside many homeowners are busily:

• Renovating kitchens
• De-cluttering and organizing living spaces
• Preparing for holiday visitors and family celebrations

Below we offer suggestions for making the most of these activities without overwhelming yourselves or your bank accounts.

The Autumn Kitchen

Months of prolonged summer heat deflate appetites and understandably keep us away from hot ovens and stoves. But the arrival of cooler weather sees appetites reemerge along with an instinctive urge to return to the kitchen to prepare comfort foods like stew, chili, and pies. Where summer activities had family members scattered here and there, the start of school and shorter days sees children doing homework at kitchen tables or islands while mom and dad prepare meals. For many of us, however, the idea of congregating in an outdated or drab kitchen – or entertaining holiday guests there – can be a letdown.

A relatively simple and effective means of transforming your kitchen back into the heart of the home is cabinet refinishing in conjunction with a complimentary coat of paint. Cabinet refinishing can be done quickly, inexpensively and with a minimum of disruption to your family’s schedule and as opposed to new cabinets (pricey) or refacing (not the best finished look), cabinet resurfacing is a conservative approach that delivers outstanding results. Quite simply, the cabinets have their existing veneer sanded away to rediscover the intrinsic beauty of the wood beneath. Then the wood is stained to really bring out the wood’s natural grains and a new veneer applied to give your kitchen a magnificent new glow.

Next, a fresh color of paint that works well with the new cabinets is applied to the kitchen walls, effectively transforming your kitchen into a vibrant new gathering place for family and friends.

Home Organization

As noted, our experience at Core Home Improvement is that most homes go through two significant cleaning and organizing cycles: spring, when the weather warms, flowers blossom, and the retreat of winter air at last allows us to open windows and breathe in the new life all around us; and autumn, when we put away all of our warm weather clothing, outdoor gear, and sporting paraphernalia and prepare for colder weather.

Fortunately, this is the perfect time to tackle home organization and cleaning in a way that will forever transform – and simplify – the process. With both warm and cool season household goods making the transition, now is the time to consider how your family organizes and stores its things, and in so doing make the “chore” of home cleaning a thing of the past.

To accomplish this goal, we recommend transforming a part of your home’s basement or some other room into a dedicated storage area complete with some combination of shelves, storage containers, sliding drawers and cabinets. Here’s how:

Step 1: Because all of these household items are making the transition either to or from storage, this is the ideal time to inventory all of it and determine what needs to be stored each season.

Step 2: Categorize these items in a manner that is easy for you and your family to understand (i.e. “Soccer gear,” “Outdoor barbecue,” and so on).

Step 3: Calculate the storage space you’ll need for each category, including any anticipated additions or subtractions (i.e. a child leaving for college or a baby on the way).

Step 4: Determine the best location for your storage center and design to fit this space and your lifestyle needs (i.e. if it’s tucked away in a hidden part of the basement or a bay of your garage, a basic storage arrangement is fine; if it’s part of a game room or den, however, a more stylized facade with doors, shelving, etc., is required. You can even create a “hidden” door that leads to the storage area.

The end result is a new organizing system that will make your lives immeasurably easier as one season transitions into another.

Preparing for the Holidays

The winter months are a time of considerable celebration, including that most American of traditions, Thanksgiving, as well as numerous religious festivities and, of course, holiday parties. This is the time when homeowners are especially keen on having their homes in the best possible shape for entertaining family, friends and co-workers. The focus is particularly on kitchens, dining rooms and living areas where most guests congregate.

Although we’ve already talked about kitchens, a fresh coat of paint on those other rooms also is a good idea, particularly if the kitchen has been redone. Another easy, fast and affordable approach to sprucing up these rooms before the holidays is the addition of trim work including crown molding, chair molding and/or wainscoting. All of these trim styles give rooms a distinctively classy look and, in the case of chair molding and wainscoting, can serve as demarcation points between two paint colors that truly make the room pop. Wainscoting is also ideal for high traffic areas and families with children, since they are virtually impervious to impacts and their semigloss finish make little hand prints easy to clean.

We hope this has been of benefit to you and your planning for the holiday. Please feel free to contact with us with any questions or ideas and suggestions of your own.

Superman can’t see through it. The Roman Empire may have collapsed because of it. It is especially dangerous to children and pregnant women. And if your home was built before 1978, chances are good you are surrounded by it.

We’re talking about lead, of course, the 82nd element in the periodic table and throughout most of this country’s history a key ingredient in the paints used on home interiors, exteriors, window trim, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, lead is toxic to the human body, which is why having it spread throughout your home is generally considered a bad idea.

Peeling paint chips, scratched paint surfaces, and paint dust all can and have been ingested by children. Over time the lead, which settles into body tissues, can lead to a variety of illnesses including, but not limited, to:

• Learning Disabilities
• Loss of Appetite, Nausea, Vomiting
• Stomach Ache, Constipation, Diarrhea
• Muscle Weakness
• Irritability, Mood Swings, Sleep Disorders
• Memory Loss
• Poor Coordination
• Renal Failure
• Seizures, Paralysis, Coma

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), there are more than 38 million homes containing lead-based paints. But again, virtually all of those were built before 1978.

The good news: As more and more homeowners become aware of these dangers, they are having the lead-based materials removed and replaced by modern latex water-based paints. The bad news: Removal and replacement of these materials can, ironically, exacerbate the very problem a homeowner is trying to avoid.

For that reason the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year established a new law requiring home contractors to be trained and certified in the safe and effective removal of lead-based materials. Contractors must practice safe work-site practices; ensure that any lead dust, chips, and other byproducts of the remediation effort be quarantined from the rest of the home; properly clean up after all work has been completed; and keep accurate records.

So before you hire a contractor for any work (remember, any home remodeling can spread paint-based dust), ensure that they are registered as an EPA-certified contractor. At Core Home Improvement, our crews have been fully trained in lead-based paint renovation, repair and painting (RRP) and we encourage you to read the EPA’s Renovate Right Brochure (we can bring you a print copy as well).

It is one of those ironies of our business that otherwise fiscally responsible home owners who take great pains to, say, maintain their automobiles with regular oil changes and tire rotations, each year throw away thousands of dollars of their own money by failing to take even modest steps to preserve their outdoor living spaces. So today we’re going to focus on one of the most comment – and easiest to avoid – pitfalls of home ownership: degradation and even loss of a wooden deck.

By their nature, wooden decks take a beating from the elements. Winter brings deep freezes, snow and wind; spring brings thawing temperatures and punishing rains; summer has its unrelenting heat; and finally fall arrives to cool things down and start the process over again. Meanwhile you and your family are pounding away at the deck with your feet, leaning on its rails, and occasionally staining it with an endless array of outdoor activities (tumbling glasses of red wine spring to mind).

The good news is that a few relatively easy steps can be taken to protect this key investment and deliver many added years to your family’s enjoyment of your outdoor living spaces (not to mention saving big bucks on deck replacement).

Cleaning

Stains, mildew, mold and simple dirt can quickly foul a deck’s appearance. Use a simple solution of one cup bleach per gallon of water and a scrub brush to give your deck a quick cleaning. For especially dirty decks, you also might consider a power wash using a compressor, but be very careful to use the correct nozzle heads to avoid stripping the wood. We also recommend that if you go the power wash route you give the wood a few days to dry and then sand, stand and seal (see below).

Stain and Seal (with a touch of sanding)

This is one of the single most important and aesthetically rewarding steps you can take to protect and resurrect your deck. Assuming your deck is more than a few years old, your deck is probably starting to show some signs of weathering (bleaching, staining, nail pops, rough spots, etc.). The good news: All of these can be remedied for the cost of a night at the movies and a good dinner.

First, let’s fix any nail pops. Because of all that aforementioned weather change, contracting and expanding wood (along with the steady drumbeat of feet pressing down on the wood) tends to force the nails loose. Time to break out the hammer and either drive those suckers back into the wood or, if they’re rusted or bent, replace them.

Next, sand down any rough patches using a belt sander and 80 or 100 grit paper. In general we do not recommend that you attempt to sand down the entire deck. It is extremely difficult, time-consuming, and usually incomplete (picture yourself hand-sanding all of those rail posts one by one). And the good news, again, is that so long as you keep your deck clean, stained and sealed the need for too much sanding won’t arise.

Now onto the fun, highly visible stuff. First, remember that when it comes to staining and sealing, these are usually one and the same thing. All outdoor wood products seal for moisture and UV (e.g. the sun’s rays aka the Mother of All Deck Damaging Agents). Most add color or stain which adds to the effectiveness. Important: Avoid cheap products. Generally you get what you pay for, especially spray on brands. They don’t last and our experience is that the good ones require brush application.

By the way, if you’re not sure you need to do any of this? Take the sealant test. Pour some water on your deck. If the water beads up, your deck is properly sealed. If not, it’s probably time to reseal it.

Step Repair

The steps of your deck take the biggest beating of all, both because they often are the gateway to the deck and because their limited size means there is greater pound-per-square-inch pressure. Most steps at some point will require some buttressing and you can do this either by adding additional screws through the steps to the support beams or installing metal brackets.

Board Replacement

Over time even the best-tended decks may lose a board or two through severe cracking. Board replacement is relatively simple, the easiest path of all often being simply to flip the targeted board and reinstall upside-down. If a new board is necessary, simply measure the length, width and depth (don’t forget that one!) and note the the wood type (most decks are constructed of pine). The new board will of course look out of place compared to the others, but chances are that if you’re replacing a board the entire deck could use the sand, stain and seal treatment listed above.

For additional recommendations, guidance or expert advice, contact Core and we’ll be happy to have one of our Outdoor Living experts visit your home for a free consultation.

The kitchen may be the heart of the home but replacing it is comparable – at least in terms of cost – to swapping out the real thing. In fact, when you get the initial estimate, which averages $53,000, your heart may stop. So what happens to the family with a 4-digit budget in a 5-digit world? Let’s have a look at how Core Home Improvement did three different kitchen renovations, each for under $10k.

1. The $4,400 Kitchen Renovation Package

• Design Session
• Stain Cabinets
• New Hardware
• Fresh Paint

We start by having our kitchen designer visit your home to help you choose the right stain, hardware, and paint. Not only do these new elements need to fit together, but they must also flow with your existing appliances, flooring, fixtures, and adjoining rooms. We’ll bring plenty of samples for you to choose from, and we’ll order everything you need.

Before Restoration

Once the design is finalized, we’ll sand your cabinets. This process removes the layers of grease, dirt, and dust that naturally build-up over time. Sanding also prepares the wood to receive new stain. Then we stain your cabinets. Our technicians use a special process to apply the stain and ensure an even coat is applied. When the staining is completed, we’ll prop open the doors so the stain can dry quickly.

Once the stain is dry, we apply a finish coat of polyurethane. This important step protects the wood and gives your cabinets a new shine and vitality. Last but not least, we install the new hardware and paint your kitchen. You won’t believe the difference and neither will your family and friends.

2. The $7,300 Kitchen Renovation Package

• Design Session
• Stain Cabinets
• New Hardware
• Fresh Paint
• Granite Countertops

After Restoration

This package includes everything in Package 1 plus adds new granite countertops. Our designer will help you choose from over 300 kinds of granite to find the one that best fits your new kitchen design. We’ll seal your granite and provide you with a simple care guide so you can get many years of enjoyment out of your new granite countertops.

3. The $9,900 Kitchen Renovation

• Design Session
• Stain Cabinets
• New Hardware
• Fresh Paint
• Granite Countertops
• Tile Floor

This package includes everything in Package 1 and Package 2, plus adds a new tile floor. Our designer will help you choose a great tile and grout, as well as the right size and pattern for your kitchen. We’ll demolish your existing floor down to the plywood subfloor, and make minor repairs as needed. Then we’ll install a new subfloor, tile, and grout. Finally, we’ll seal the grout to protect it from stains.

These packages are priced to work in most Northern Virginia kitchens, and smaller kitchens may cost a little less and larger kitchens may cost a little more. To find out what we can do for your kitchen, give us a call for a free estimate.

This website has been a labor of love precisely because the formation of Core Home Improvement was a labor of love. As noted on other pages of this site, I launched Core in 2006 after spending more than 15 years in the telecommunications and software development industries. While I learned a lot during those years, I also felt that something was missing.

That “something” turned out to be the tangible result of a day’s hard work. To be sure in software development we still produce a product. But it then is disseminated to thousands or perhaps even millions of people and the results are never quite appreciated on the production side of things.

But in home improvement I’m there from inception to design, from production to walk-through inspection. I can run my finger along the tile and granite; can smell the wood and run the water. Most important, I can see the expressions of my delighted clients when their new kitchen or bathroom is completed. There is nothing quite so rewarding as knowing you have made a fundamental improvement in the lives of the people you serve.

Best of all, I have brought all those client services skills developed over years in the technology arena and put them to use in home improvement. The result is a client base stunned by all of the dedicated hand-holding; the attention to detail; the focus on organizational skills and corporate accountability. At Core we really do try to become a homeowner’s contractor for life.

I hope you enjoy the new site. We’ll keep making additions as time goes by and I encourage you to ping us with any feedback or recommendations.