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Tips for Buying Your
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When buying your next home, it's good to remember that it will take time to redecorate the house to suit your needs and/or match your existing furniture.
Try to find a home that is livable and clean. If it needs lots of work, see if the existing home owner will fix the important home issues.
Examine the home's interior colors and visualize how they will work with your furniture. If you have a poor sense of interior decoration sense, it can be a good idea to consult with a professional interior decorator. Have them look at your furniture and look at the home you are buying. They'll advise you on color schemes or perhaps advise you to buy a couple furniture accessories to help mesh your existing furniture with the interior or inform you that a repainting / wallpapering needs to take place. A real estate agent can many times recommend a good interior decorator if you don't know who to go with.
Remember, it's cheaper to repaint, refinish floors, and wallpaper an empty house before you move in than it is to do such jobs once you're already residing in the home. Try to get your next home's interior ready before moving in. This will likely entail you making arrangements to stay in your existing home until your next home is done.
If you don't know how you want to decorate the interior, it's best to stick with neutral colors like off-white, very light gray, very light tints of other colors or beige. Personal experience also says to paint high traffic areas with a good semi-gloss paint. Flat paint is much harder to clean when it gets dirty. Semi-gloss cleans much easier and the paint won't rub off like flat paint and both have a similar look so don't worry about semi-gloss being too shiny. You may even want to consider painting much of your home with semi-gloss paints.
| CLEANING TIP FOR HOME SELLERS: |
| For bathroom walls with bright white paint that have a little mold residue, pure chlorine bleach onto a cloth and gently rub the affected areas. The bleach will kill the mold and clean it off the walls. Though not recommended for paints other than bright white, you may wish to use bleach on colored painted walls. Try it on a very small obscure spot to see how chlorine bleach affects the paint. Wait for a day. If no discoloration takes place it's probably safe to use. Keep bathroom well ventilated during cleaning. Use a fan if necessary. (Caution: Large amounts of mold can indicate a much more serious condition. In such circumstances, seek a professional's help.) |
You'll definitely want to use semi-gloss or a glossy paint in the bathrooms because it will help keep moisture from seeping into the walls during showers. Flat paints hold onto the steam generated and promote mold residue. If mold should form on semi-gloss or gloss painted surfaces, it will be a much easier clean-up than on a flat paint surface.
If you plan to make major home renovations on your next house, it has been recommended that you live in the home for a while to see how you use it before making final home upgrade decisions that cost a bundle. Once you're familiar with your home's usage, you'll be in a better position to make the right home customizations. That time period will also help you to save some or all of the money needed for remodeling or for the new addition to your house.
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Home Buying 101 |  |
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