If you’re like most Boston area homeowners, your house is your largest personal investment. With home values across the region consistently increasing, this has never been more true than right now. Ensuring your investment maintains its value is one of the most important challenges that Boston area homeowners face.

One of the best ways to maintain and increase home value is through home remodels and additions. This is particularly true if you’ve invested in one of the Boston area’s many historic properties. These houses typically require a bit more creativity and care to create an updated, valuable space.

In this post, we’ll take a look at some ways to improve and maintain the value of your family’s largest investment.

A remodel with a focus on architectural design

Everyone wants a beautiful home that’s attuned to their own personal tastes and style. A comfortable living space can be inspiring and uplift spirits. But what sets apart a standard home remodel with some basic new finishes, from one that tangibly improves your quality of life and adds value to your investment? The answer is a strong emphasis on architectural design.

When you work with an architectural design-build firm, your vision is the heart of the project. You’ll consult with architects to decide what you need and want out of your new space, to ensure the changes that you make work for you. Here are some high level touchpoints that you can expect to review:

• • Your long-term needs
• • Your budget
• • Your lifestyle
• • Likes and dislikes about your current home

Once the scope of work and project goals are established, the architects can begin generating various project designs. A great benefit to working with an Architectural Design-Build firm is that the architects and designers work hand in hand with project managers from the very start. This allows them to better understand the needs of the construction team, and design spaces that are feasible in terms of both cost and timeline.

Opening up the design

One of the most common requests we get at New England Design & Construction is that homeowners want to “open up” a particular space within their home.

Quite often, this means creating an open floor plan kitchen, which modernizes your kitchen and transforms it into a hub for your family. While old-fashioned kitchens are designed simply for preparing meals, open floor plan kitchens are designed for everything from homework sessions, to meal preparations, to a holiday party. These spaces are beloved once completed and transform a home into a more inviting and comfortable living environment.

But why stop there? Opening up spaces around the rest of your home can liven up your space. Generally open floor plan kitchens involve combining a dining room and kitchen into a larger space, but why not add to your living room, too? These more open spaces are something homeowners come to cherish because they are so functional.

Adding natural light

One of the key benefits to an open design is that it generally brings even more natural light. Simply by removing walls and obstructions, more light will fill your home. Given that natural light is good for your health and improves the aesthetics of your home, this is a serious win-win for your new space.

Even if you don’t open up the design, you can still improve natural light. Strategies such as adding skylights or SolaTubes, French doors, or large windows will also add light and an inspiring positivity to your home.

Modernizing kitchen appliances and features

Modern technology has made day-to-day life easier. While many people think about iPhones, cars, and televisions when they think about technology, maybe the most common thing we interact with daily is something that’s gone through the biggest transformation: your kitchen appliances.

Modern kitchen appliances create beautiful spaces that simply work better. Appliances such as refrigerators and ovens now come in materials such as stainless steel and are able to perform better, all the while using less energy for the increased performance.

Kitchen islands are now extremely popular given the versatility they bring as part of a kitchen remodel. Not only do they add storage and space for more specialty appliances (wine fridge, anyone?), they also provide additional seating options and allow for more counter space.

Luxury bathroom features

People love waking up in a place that makes them comfortable. That’s why the trend of spa-like bathrooms has become a huge selling point. They are also an extremely nice feature for yourself and adds to the livability of your home.

Some of our favorite spa-like features include:

• • Open space: Even if it means borrowing space from another room, more square feet in a bathroom will immediately give it a more luxurious feel.
• • Oversized bathtubs: If you love taking baths, just imagine a larger luxury tub where you could truly unwind at the end of the day.
• • Two-person shower: These showers are large enough for two and are incredibly comfortable whether sharing or not. They also generally include a fully body spray shower head, which creates a bath-like experience while showering.

Home additions

Home additions are an extremely common project in the Boston area given the size of many homes. We’ve worked with a number of homeowners who’ve actually purchased homes knowing they’d complete an addition when they bought the house. The reason? They simply couldn’t find a home in the size they needed in a neighborhood they loved.

Not only is this a smart, proactive move, but it transforms it into a uniquely large home in a neighborhood without a supply of them. This adds value and creates for you the ideal home to fit your family’s needs.

Master suite addition

One of the more common additions we complete are master suite additions. These additions are common for the same reason open floor plan remodels are: Old homes simply didn’t have them.

Generally, this makes your home more appealing to a huge range of people: Those looking to age in place, those with large families with large bedroom needs, and those who simply want a space away from the rest of the family.

Improve the value of your home — and improve your life — with NEDC

At New England Design & Construction, we focus our home remodels on bringing value to homeowners lives. Whether it’s because your home sells more or you enjoy your space more than you ever thought possible, we want you to be satisfied you decided to partner with us.

Contact us today to learn how we can help add value to your space.