Thoughts From Kaufman Homes

Rooms Remodeled: Kitchen and Nook

Major Improvements: Brought in more light with additional windows, re-designed kitchen layout and replaced all surfaces throughout kitchen.

Timeline: 10 Weeks (Including major renovations to exterior walls)

Being a good listener is hard work.  There is no way around it.  It takes more concentration and discipline than most things in life.  When it comes time to hire an interior decorator/designer, one of the most important things you should be looking for is someone who can listen well.  This hard to implement trait, combined with a good eye for design, will almost always get you what you are looking for.

The benefits of hiring a good listener are tremendous.  First of all, you will get the opportunity to express your true desires.  Whether you would like a traditional, conservative style all the way to a modern, contemporary style, or anything in between, you will most likely get the look you want when your designer/decorator knows how to listen.  In addition, good questioning and probing from a professional will prompt the creativity needed to come up with the look you want in your home.  Another positive thing that can happen is you actually enjoy the process. Anyone who feels respected in their ideas and desires will be more willing to share and explore the individual and often very personal decorating and design ideas they have. It can give you confidence and courage as you discover that you have an opinion and style all your own.

You are definitely a part of the process.  No one wants to live in a home, nothing like they pictured, influenced by a designer’s own style, even if it’s done well.  In the end, you have to dwell there….you have to like it…you have to live with it.  If it’s not what you like or where you can feel at home, you will never be satisfied.  So when it comes time to find the right designer/decorator to help you with your project, big or small, take the time to figure out if that person knows how to listen well.  It will make an amazing difference from beginning to end.

This is a question many people ask when it comes time to build their dream home, remodel an existing or simply add-on.  The answer is more straight-forward than one might think.

First of all, experience and knowledge, coupled with creativity, gives an interior decorator/designer the ability to help the client in the seemingly endless, often overwhelming process of decision making.  To tell the truth, the selection process can be an enjoyable experience that thoughtfully meets your desires and needs as well as creatively solves design and decorating dilemmas as they surface.

In addition, if price is an issue, oftentimes a good decorator/designer can help you save money while coming up with creative solutions.  On the other hand, if you have an endless budget (I’ve never really met anyone who does ;o), it can be incredibly difficult to make selections with so many products available.

Dean and Duane Kaufman, owners of Kaufman Homes, are excited to announce we have developed and will be operating a new company called Kaufman’s Home Maintenance. We have for many years observed people struggling with maintaining their homes as they don’t always know what to do, how to do it and who to call when they need things done.  Good news! This new company was developed to relieve the stress of your past struggles!

Kaufman's Home Maintenance, is a professional, full service company dedicated to maintaining your home from top-to-bottom, inside-and-out. Our trained professional technicians use skills to service and maintain and observation skills to spot problems or potential problems and finally documenting, suggesting and providing solutions.

Kaufman Home’s success in remodeling has been greatly enhanced with five highly skilled technicians who each have fully equipped trucks allowing them to do all phases of construction at the highest skill level.

In remodeling and repairs, one of the most difficult things to do is to repair cracks and patches on drywall due to settling issues, leaks or matching in an old section into new construction.  Textures need to match, new and old must be feathered in to blend and when the painting is finished the patch must disappear into the original wall or ceiling.

Drywall patching and texturing is an art form best done by a trained and skilled drywall technician.  At Kaufman Homes, all of our remodel and repair technicians are well trained in patching and matching drywall and making the paint blend. They have available the best equipment, including a revolutionary power sander with a dust collection system and they all utilize the same time tested drywall products along with proven techniques.

Kaufman Homes is in the final stages of this extensive remodel in Laurel Springs.  Our schedule indicates we will be done close to the middle of March which means we will have done phases two, three and four in two and one half months (read about phase one here).  I am pleased with the time frame, considering this remodel was an extensive project including all of the main living floor area ;  kitchen, dining, living, utility and down ½ bath as well as a completely new master bath cabinet, counter, sinks and new faucets.  The ability to move the family’s entire kitchen function to the basement mechanical room as well as have available a large family room off of the temporary kitchen providing  reasonable accommodations.  This family was a joy to work with as they allowed us the privilege of coming into their home, disrupting their normal lifestyle and being appreciative of the work my company and our workers were doing.

Moving right along in the process

In the proper and deliberate progression of any remodel or construction project, proper and logical order makes the job go smoother, faster as well as provides for better interaction for the family still living in the home.  Our full time, highly skilled job manager has done a great job of coordinating the different trade contractors as well as doing much of the work himself.  His goal is to always work with the customer to keep them informed of all stages of the project and to be considerate of the family’s daily function.

We have finally installed the last of the kitchen and family room cabinets and put the finishing wood touches to the cabinets and ceiling areas in each room with 3 ½” crown molding with all cherry crown in the kitchen and painted crown in all the non-cabinet ceiling areas in the family room.

Dripping faucets, chipping paint, overflowing gutters, clogged vents, cracked seals and a sagging roof … ah, the joys of owning your own home!

Regular home maintenance solves these problems and protects the value, condition and safety of your home, but keeping your home properly maintained can be a major pain. Even the most-well intentioned homeowner lets preventative maintenance projects slide only to face bigger and costlier problems down the line.

The torrential downpour in January of 2012 caused a lot of headaches for homeowners and businesses in Salem.  I am sure there could be many stories written of instances where the extreme wet weather caused varying degrees of problems.

I was personally aware of a happening where a friend of mine had a good part of their back yard slide down and into the yard of the home below.  This was a steep lot with a lot of fill dirt pushed up to the home in a steep angle. The cause of the slide was a leaky and partially broken water pipe that was out of sight out of mind and no one saw the leak.  As it sprayed out over a portion of the backyard it soaked the ground and combined with the huge rain, gravity and the extreme weight caused the ground to give away.

In the progression of things we now were ready to remove the old support beam for the original small opening and put in a larger and longer beam to carry the larger opening and its roof load. To remove the old beam we had to support the ceiling/floor joist carrying the upper floor and the main roof load by building temporary support walls on each side of the beam. To get the old beam out we had to jack up both temporary walls to take off the roof load pressure so we could remove the old beam and then install the longer new beam.  It was unbelievable how much more open the home felt with this larger opening from the kitchen to the family room.