A New Color For Our Home Sweet Home

I remembered to have posted here few months ago that I have chosen orange color for our home interior and this made our home really warm and inviting. The paint lasted for almost 5 years I guess before it finally shows some signs of chipping.  Since we are a family who loves to maintain the house and because we have finally decided to introduce a new color for the new year, we have decided to choose earth color for our home this time.  This is both on the exterior and interior of the house.  This is actually a total make over. We have chosen a lighter shade for the house interior though for a change.  The cappuccino color seems to be clean and neat and looks really decent. It matches perfectly with the Maple accent.

Earth color is our theme for the coming year and I love that we were able to get the perfect shade that we want. It's really different when you're comfortable with your home, it gives you a sense of happiness and satisfaction.  You will feel like it's okay to be at home most of the time as you can feel relaxed and  comfortable.  A perfect feeling for a homebody like me. :)

Costs To Factor In When You Wish To Buy Your Own Home

Buying and owning a home is everyone's dream. We get that special kind of fulfillment when we know that we are assured of a comfortable place to stay until our old age.  Most families work very hard just to fulfill their dreams of buying or building their dream homes.  However, going into the first step is very crucial.  The value of real estate properties now is getting higher and higher that sometimes, we think that owning homes is more to a luxury than a necessity.  Those who had normal jobs earning a little more than what they need is having difficulty saving even for the down payment for a decent house.  Not only that, there are a lot of costs to factor in when you wish to buy your own home.

First is the property taxes that we have to pay annually.  Depending on the appraised value of your homes, the amount you need to save to pay for the taxes should be taken into consideration when preparing your monthly budget.  Not only that, purchasing a lot means you have to bring out some huge amount of cash to pay for the capital gain tax, this of course depends on the agreement between you and the seller not to mention the other incidental expenses such as the transfer taxes and other required fees for the transfer of the certificate of title.

Second, you have to think of whether you would consider getting an insurance which of course in most cases is required if you apply for a home loan.

Third, what about the home maintenance?  It's very costly, I tell you.  Our obligations do not end right after we bought the house.  Keeping the property in tip top shape is a must if you want to keep your home as a valuable asset.  A lot of things should be factored in like paint works, sewage clean up, mold remediation and removal, pests control, water damage restoration as well as fire damage restoration  in some cases.  Good thing that there are companies providing their expertise when it comes to this thing such as water damage restoration Cincinnati Ohio.  However, you should be ready with the budget required for these maintenance costs.

Lastly, health and safety considerations.  You have to invest on some reliable fire fighting equipment. You might consider installing water sprinklers, smoke detectors and the likes if you think that there is really a need, however these are only optional and would always depend on your budget.  Now a days, installing a CCTV system has been a major consideration as well most especially that house breakthrough has been a common item in the daily news.  

All of the above things mentioned required budget, so if you are planning to buy a home, these are some of the costs that you need to factor in.

Owning a home remains to be a top priority for most people and this dream is not impossible to achieve given the right mind set.  You just have to plan, save and prepare very carefully before you go into that great leap of owning your dream homes.

Refresh Your House With Paint

Like what we usually do every time hubby comes back home for a vacation, we have allotted specific budget for house paint.  Hubby usually make some touching up in the house like spot painting of dirty walls or putting a remedy to steel fence beginning to acquire rusts. However this time, it's a little bit different, as we are going to paint the whole house.  We are both convinced that the house needs to be freshen up and there's no better way than to do it with paint.  After all paint is the cheapest way to liven up a house and make it looking fresh and new.

So our first task was to choose a color.  Well, we had series of arguments here, my daughter likes cappuccino and maple and I prefer something darker in shade like mocha.  Well, we've tried my daughter's suggestion first, hubby bought a pail of cappuccino and about two gallons of maple and tried it at the back of the house, in our dirty kitchen. The result is okay except that I am not really super satisfied with the look that I want.  So we have decided to keep the remaining paint for the entire fence of the yard.  

 mocha and maple combination

 cappuccino and maple for the fence

So far, we have achieved the new color that I really want for our house and it gives us great satisfaction knowing that we have given our home sweet home the much needed make over.