Maintaining Home Values in Today's Marketplace
The investment in a home means much more than making the monthly mortgage payment. Investing in your home is about protecting its value by performing routine maintenance and repairing or replacing parts and pieces of it periodically. Not only do trends and finishes change, but many of the standard items in your home will simply wear out and can potentially cause costly surprise repairs. For more information about how you can care for your home, please refer to the Shirey Handyman Service maintenance page and download our Owner Maintenance Manual.
If you or anyone you know has bought or sold a home in the last six months, I'm sure you have heard stories of homes selling below last summer's prices, that loans are more difficult to get, and that we are very much in a buyers market. I recently sold my Bellevue home and experienced first hand what a market adjustment looked like. Listing the home in June vs. November would have made about a 10% difference in the asking price, and I found out that the minor improvements I had done made a big difference when my home was compared to others in the area. Updated bathrooms, an inviting kitchen and new vinyl windows were paramount to successfully selling at top dollar in this market.
So, how do you decide what major improvement to spend your money on? Every year, Remodeling Magazine publishes a Cost vs. Value report. Realtors in 65 markets across the country are given construction specs and costs on 29 upscale and midrange projects and asked to estimate the percentage return at resale. Based on the type of updates our company performs routinely, I was not surprised to find that minor kitchen and bath remodels, deck additions and window replacements recouped over 100% of the homeowner's investment. We'd be happy to share the full report. To request a copy, simply call our office or e-mail us with Cost vs. Value in the subject line.
April Bettinger, General Manager
Dan Thielman
Shirey Handyman Service's very first employee, Dan Thielman, has a long history working with the Shirey family over the years. Still with the company, Dan is a knowledgeable man with outstanding creativity and skill which he enjoys sharing with each client. While a handyman by trade, he also has a creative side as demonstrated by the following poem he wrote.
Dan The Handyman's Poem
What do you do?....... I silence squeaks,
I dry up leaks,
I repair stairs, I clear clogged sinks.
Put in new kitchens, Take out the old,
I redo grout, and remove mold.
I caulk, I prime, texture and paint,
My widowed clients, Say I'm a saint.
I repair roofs and put in floors.
I install counters and hang new doors.
I add a circuit, change some lights,
I install windows, and kill termites.
Install a deadbolt, change a latch,
Holes in drywall, I will patch.
A hundred things or more you'll see,
Can be handled competently.
A cabinet maker's skill, the eye of a designer,
Work me in rain, I'm rarely a whiner.
I charge by the hour, I even shop,
And handle things you had to drop.
To tackle your list gives me a thrill,
To give me thanks, Please pay my bill.
Clients call us quite regularly to ask about changing out their old hollow core interior doors to new updated painted panel doors. Many of our clients want to purchase the doors and just schedule the technician to come install them.
For interior doors, gather the following information and either order the doors yourself (call us for a referral in your area), or give the information to your Shirey Handyman representative.
- First, measure the size of the actual door; width and height. A standard door will be about 78" tall and between 24" and 34" wide (actual door size). When ordered, for example a door 78" tall x 34" wide would be a standard 36" x 80" door (2" are added both directions to give us the rough opening of the door and frame)
- Next, measure the depth of the door jamb (this is the frame the door is hinged to). Standard construction is either 2x4 or 2x6 so you're jamb depth will be slightly larger than 4" or 6". Jamb sizes are either 4 9⁄16" or 6 9⁄16".
- Lastly, you will need to decide on door swing which will either be RH or LH. Believe it or not, this can be the most confusing part of the process as there are many thoughts on how to get this right. One method is to stand on the side of the door that opens away from you and note which side of the door is hinged. As most interior doors swing into the room, you can be fairly sure that this method will work for you. It is always helpful to actually draw out the door with the swing and the hinged side for a visual when placing the door order, just so you and your supplier are speaking the same language.
