The kitchen is the heart of the home and the second major selling point of any house. And it costs a pretty penny to update especially when it comes to replacing cabinets and appliances. If you need to update your cabinets in the kitchen or in the bathroom, but you’re not financially able to replace them, think paint! Paint works wonders. But if you want crave-worthy cabinets with professional-style results, it’s imperative that you follow each step carefully. No skipping or skrimping. Remember, “haste makes waste” when it comes to painting.

How to Update Your Cabinets Yourself

You can hire a professional to paint your cabinets, but if saving money is a priority, do it yourself. Need some ideas to help you update your cabinets? Here’s an awesome list from HGTV:

• DIY Painting Kitchen Cabinet Ideas
• Painting Kitchen Cabinet Doors
• Color Ideas for Painting Kitchen Cabinets
• Painting Kitchen Cabinets Antique White
• Ideas for Painting Kitchen Cabinets

1. Choose the Best Paint

If you’re going to save the cost of a professional and update your cabinets DIY, look for paint at your local paint supply store. The staff of a reputable paint supply store will help you pick the best products for your cabinets. Ask for paint that is non-blocking so it won’t stick when cabinets and drawers are closed. It needs to be able to stand up to a lot of wiping and cleaning. You don’t want the paint coming off whenever you’re scrubbing or wiping down your cabinets and drawers.

Choose your paint color and finish keeping in mind that oil paint is hard to work with. Choose a latex satin finish paint instead. It’s also important to know that dark colors tend to show imperfections in the paint and cabinetry and highlight dirt more than light colors do.

2. Prepare to Update Your Cabinets

First, decide if you want to paint your cabinets with a paintbrush and foam roller or spray paint them with a spray gun. Rolling the paint on won’t look as good as spraying the paint on, but it takes less skill. Spray painting will get the job done quicker than painting with a paintbrush and foam roller, but in order to get that professional-looking finish, you’ll need a good paint spray gun.

Now that you’ve decided the paint method to update your cabinets with, prepare for painting:

• Clear counters
• Empty cabinets
• Cover backsplash and appliances
• Remove hinges, hardware, doors, and drawers
• Put hinges and hardware in plastic bags
• Label each door with masking tape
• Set up a worktable or prop 2×4’s on buckets or boxes

Purchase your paint and primer along with any of the products you need to prepare your cabinets for primer. Don’t forget the angled brush and mini foam roller if you’re not spray painting the cabinets.

3. Prep Your Cabinets

Before you begin painting, look at the existing finish. Is it pealing, greasy, dirty, etc.? If the existing finish is pealing, strip it off. Think of it as rust on a car. You wouldn’t paint over the rust because the rust will just fall off taking the paint with it. If the existing finish is in good shape, skip the stripping step and begin cleaning. Prepping all doors and drawers properly makes sure the paint will stick.

• Furniture normally doesn’t have grease on it, but cabinets often do. Scrub them thoroughly using a clean, soft rag and mineral spirits or trisodium phosphate (TSP) to remove every drop of grease and grime, every drop. Don’t just wipe them down. It’s crucial that old oils, waxes, and grime are removed. Paint covers a multitude of sins, but it refuses to abide dirty, greasy surfaces. Daniel Jones of Wehrli Furniture Company in Naperville, Illinois, says, “We use a product called Wax Wash to clean furniture. But for greasy cabinets, we use something similar to 409 and then Wax Wash. You have to get all the grease off or the paint won’t stick.”
• Fill dents, grooves, or holes with a good wood filler.
• Lightly sand surfaces using 100-grit sandpaper to scuff every inch. This creates grooves so the paint has something to adhere to. This step isn’t anything you need to be crazy particular about. You just need to create a scratch pattern that paint will stick to.
• Wipe cabinets and drawers with a tack cloth to remove dust before drilling new holes for new hardware.
• Fill in gaps or seams with caulk

4. Apply Primer to Your Cabinets

If you want professional-looking results, don’t skip the primer. It’s imperative to prime every part of your cabinets – boxes, door fronts, drawers before you start applying paint. Use a stain-blocking primer designed for glossy surfaces.

5. Start Applying Your Paint

Once the primer that you applied to every part of your cabinets is completely dry, apply the latex satin paint. Work in sections using the angled brush and go over what you’ve painted with the brush with the mini foam roller. Applying the paint in this way provides that professional-looking finish you’re looking for.

If you chose to use a paint spray gun, the process is the same as it would be if working with a brush and roller. Just apply the spray paint to your cabinets outside where there is adequate ventilation.

Apply at least two coats of paint. Let the paint dry thoroughly and lightly sand between coats.

Once everything is painted and the paint is completely dry, use very fine grit sandpaper to give everything a final sanding. Use tack cloth to remove sanding dust and apply a couple coats of satin polycrylic for added durability.

6. Reinstall Doors and Drawers

Once all the paint is dry, put your cabinets back together. And now you get to install your new hardware or the old hardware you stored systematically in plastic bags.

If you’re stumped about how to upgrade your cabinets in your home, whether selling or buying, call Charles D’Alessandro. His 30+ years of real estate experience in the Brooklyn area has given him an eye for what is truly needed. He also knows the best people to contact for help. Contact Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn real estate agent with Fillmore Real Estate, at (718) 253-9700 ext. 206 today or click here now.

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Charles D’Alessandro

Your Brooklyn Real Estate Agent with Fillmore Real Estate

718-253-9600 ext. 206

[email protected]

Once you list your home for sale, keeping it clean, bright and clutter-free is a given. But did you know that staging your home increases the value in the buyers’ eyes? It also helps you get a higher price for your home. It’s a proven fact. Sell your home faster and for more money with home staging.

What is Home Staging?

Home staging is more than thoroughly cleaning, hauling out clutter, fixing aesthetic issues and making your home bright with lots of light. Staging a home:

• helps prospective buyers visualize themselves in the home
• has an effect on the buyer’s view of the home
• makes an impact in several ways for the buyer
• helps buyers visualize the property as a future home
• makes prospective buyers more willing to walk through a home they saw online

How Much Does It Cost?

Home staging costs an average of $675. Some real estate agents include home staging as part of their services.

If you choose not to have the whole home staged, stage the living room. It’s the number one room to stage. Second is the kitchen. Ranking third, fourth and fifth are the master bedroom, dining room, and bathroom.

Is it Worth the Effort and Investment?

Buyers typically offer a 6 to 10 percent increase in the value of a staged home. The impact and the value home staging bring to both home buyers and sellers make it worth the effort and investment most definitely!

Home Staging is About Your Home, not You

A professional home stager is hired to bring out the best in your home. Don’t take her recommendations personally. Commit to marketing your home for sale and be prepared to detach emotionally from your home and belongings. How we live is not how we sell a home, and therein lies a great challenge! Following staging recommendations to a tee and keeping your home in show-ready condition will sell your home faster and for more money. Trust your agent, your home stager, and the process!

Working with Charles D’Alessandro gives buyers, sellers, and investors the advantage they need to succeed in today’s challenging market. Charles knows what buyers want and how to best market and stage a home for sale.

Home staging is an excellent tool to give your home a little extra push to sell faster and for more money. Contact Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn real estate agent with Fillmore Real Estate at (718) 253-9700 ext. 206 or email [email protected] today.

Did you sell your home in 2016? 2016 was the best year for existing-home sales since 2006. Existing-home sales were 3.3 percent higher in 2016 than they were in 2015. If you didn’t, should this be the year you sell your home?

The National Association of Realtors predicts positive growth in the market this year in the following ways:

1. Existing-home sales are predicted to grow modestly by 2 percent this year in spite of mortgage rate increases.
2. The median price of homes being sold has been forecasted to increase by 4 percent.

These reasons are reason enough to make this year the year to sell your home. I encourage you to consider it.

The Brooklyn real estate market is unique as is your own financial situation. So find out how the 2017 Brooklyn housing market looks. I have over 30 years of real estate experience. With that experience I will help you decide whether or not the sale of your home makes financial sense. Contact me, Charles D’Alessandro, today at (718) 253-9700 ext. 206.

If you decide to sell your home, do these 3 things right now

If after a consultation with me you decide to put your home on the market, there are a few things you should do right now. Getting these to-do’s completed will give you a head start on selling your home this spring.

1. Hire Charles D’Alessandro as your real estate agent.

Hiring a real estate with experience and great customer service is essential to a successful home sale. With me as your real estate agent, you can:

• Rely on my expertise to make the decision to sell
• Believe I’ll choose the right price for your home
• Have confidence in how I market your home
• Trust my skill to negotiate offers from buyers

2. Get a home inspection scheduled before you list.

An early home inspection is a good idea. You want to find and fix any issues there may be with your home before the buyer does. If a buyer finds unseen issues when they conduct their own inspection, it could derail the sale. An early home inspection will give you extra time to address any problems uncovered.  I can advise you on whether it’s better to make the repairs or adjust your asking price instead.

3. Declutter and stage your home.

Decluttering and packing while making home improvements is an efficient way to prepare your home for sale. Then, once your house is free of clutter, you can stage your home to impress.

• Clean out your closets
• Pack photos and knick-knacks
• Put all that you can in storage
• Make rooms look spacious. Live as minimally as you possibly can. Store extra furniture pieces, like the quilt rack, hope chest, tall dresser.
• Clear kitchen countertops and keep them clear
• Paint the entry way and keep it tidy
• Invest in new throw pillows, towels, bedding and other accessories

Finally …

I will advise you on the best ways to attract buyers to sell your home. I know how to accentuate the special and unique features of your home and stay within your budget.

Sell your home fast and for top dollar. Contact Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn real estate agent with Fillmore Real Estate at (718) 253-9700 ext. 206 or email [email protected] today. Take my advice and avoid the stress of getting your home ready to sell on a tight deadline. You’ll be way ahead of the competition, too.

Summer’s come and almost gone. Fall has arrived, although not officially. That will happen September 22, 2016. The days are getting shorter and the mornings are turning crisp. Winter is on its way! Prepare for winter now and enjoy those long winter’s naps in comfort.

Prepare for winter outside your Brooklyn home

It’s time to wrap up summer’s outdoor lifestyle and prepare hearth and home for the beginning of the long cold spell.

• Clean, cover and store patio furniture, umbrellas, decorations and toys.
• Paint the trim, railings and decks or touch them up if that’s all they need. Remove flaking paint with a wire brush and prime bare wood before you paint.
• Check around windows and doors. Re-caulk if needed.
• Install weather-stripping and thresholds if external doors and garage doors need it in order to close tightly.
• Wash windows, inside and out.
• Drain and store garden hoses. Frost-proof spigots with a faucet insulator and blow the sprinkler system lines free of water.
• Power wash gutters and downspouts. Consider installing heating cable to prevent ice dams.
• Inspect and clean chimneys and flues.
• Repair your roof. Check your roof for curling, loose or missing shingles.
• Prepare your deck for winter. Sand splinters, repair damaged boards and reseal to protect it from rain and/or snowfall.
• Switch out your screen doors for a storm door. Clean and repair screens prior to storing.

Prepare for winter inside your Brooklyn home

Fall means it is time for the “second spring cleaning.” It makes good sense to clean and store all things summer before you retreat to the warmth inside your Brooklyn home. Besides, the holidays are coming (and you may decide it’s time to sell after the winter thaw).

• Start with the rooms where most of the household activity happens. Focus on one room and clean it from top to bottom. Vacuum or wash curtains and window treatments. Clean window sills and window wells. Vacuum and wipe down baseboards and corners.
• Vacuum upholstered furniture, or clean it professionally. Move each piece of furniture and vacuum underneath and behind each piece. Don’t forget to vacuum underneath the couch and chair cushions!
• If you haven’t already washed the windows inside and out as mentioned above, now’s the time for that chore.
• Turn mattresses front-to-back and end-to-end to even out their wear and tear.
• Wash or clean all bedding: mattress pads, pillows, duvets, blankets, comforters.
• Make an appointment to have your carpets cleaned professionally. Do this early in September so that the remaining warm afternoons can help the carpet dry speedily. Carpet cleaners tend to get busy by the end of October.
• Clean and organize kitchen cabinets.
• Clear kitchen counters of all appliances. Store heavy appliances down low.
• Vacuum refrigerator condenser coils of dust and debris. While the refrigerator is pulled out from the wall, clean the sides of the refrigerator, the sides of the cupboards on each side of it, the wall behind it and of course, the floor and baseboards.
• Wash light fixture bowls from light fixtures and fans. Clean ceiling fans. Change the direction of your ceiling fans. In the spring and summer, your blades work best turning counter-clockwise. In the fall and winter, the blades work best turning clockwise.
• Clean and store floor fans and box fans.
• Stock up on water softener salt.
• Do you have a central vacuum? Empty the collection area.
• Clean electronic air cleaner elements. This should be done monthly for cost-effective efficiency.
• Inspect your humidifier. Clean or replace elements before it is needed.
• Inspect washer hoses for bulges, cracks, splits and a collection of “crud.” They should be replaced every other year.
• Check dryer exhaust tube and vent for lint build-up and debris to eliminate a fire hazard in your home. Does the exterior vent door close tightly when the dryer isn’t being used?
• Schedule furnace inspections now. Schedule an annual checkup for your furnace in the fall, September 22 – December 21. Don’t wait for frigid temperatures to arrive!
• Buy six furnace filters and change them monthly for maximum efficiency, savings and comfort.
• Drain the sediment from your hot water heater.

Prepare for winter or the sale of your Brooklyn home now. Contact Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn real estate agent with Fillmore Real Estate at (718) 253-9700 ext. 206 or email [email protected] for a FREE consultation on how to get your home ready for what’s coming.

Congratulations to us! We’re retiring! We need to sell our home and downsize into a place that will cut our cost of living by about half each month, and we think we’ve found just the place. But there are a few things we must do before hiring a real estate agent.

Before hiring a real estate agent to sell our home, we need to do all we can to make their job easier. This will benefit us during the selling process. After all, we will be working very closely with this real estate agent on one of the biggest transactions of our whole lives. (Could You Be Losing Money On The Sale Of Your Brooklyn Home? discusses the importance of hiring a real estate agent who you can trust and who will represent you well).

Here are 7 things we need to do before hiring a real estate agent.

1. Research comparable sales (comps) in the neighborhood to find the real value of our home. We have an idea of what our home should list for, but we must check comparable home values.

The local market conditions have changed since we bought our home over 15 years ago. The local market may or may not be in our favor today. Regardless of what we discover as we research today’s local real estate market, all our research will help us and our real estate agent. We need to be on the same page with a realistic listing price and strategy for selling our home.

Sellers can find neighborhood comps online. We can compare our home with other homes that have about the same square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and amenities. Our home’s condition must be considered and compared as well.

2. Know what we have left to pay on our home loan. We need to gather all home loan documents and find out how much we have paid on our home and how much we still owe before hiring a real estate agent. Knowing the amount of what is left yet to pay on our home will help the agent determine a great strategy for selling it. If we are prepared with precise dollar amounts, our real estate agent will be able to get a better estimate of what we could make from the sale. Who knows? We may find that waiting things out might be better than listing at this time, but I doubt it. Look here to find the lowest mortgage rate available in your area.

3. Before hiring a real estate agent, we must be prepared to tell them of liens or issues, if any, that are tied to our house. An unencumbered property is property that is not subject to any claims by creditors. For example, securities bought with cash instead of on margin and homes with mortgages paid off. That’s not always possible, but the more we can tell our real estate agent up front about liens or other issues that could possibly hold up a sale, the better off we’ll all be. It helps an agent to know about liens and property disputes so they can deal with them all before the house lists. For example:

• Tax issues
• Disputes you have had with contractors
• Problems that could have allowed a creditor to put a lien on the house
• Disputes with neighbors regarding property lines
• If you’re selling a property that belonged to a deceased relative. (Make sure the title to the house is clean before contacting an agent).

4. Clean our home thoroughly inside and out before hiring a real estate agent. We want to make a great first impression on our real estate agent to persuade them to market it for a higher value. We don’t want the agent we hire to make us feel they are giving away a dump. We want to clean it up as if we’re having someone of great importance over for dinner. And cleaning it up goes for the outside, too! Curb appeal is important, too. Our goal is to give the agent a mental picture of our home as a prize to be won. Whatever it takes to give the agent the impression that they have a prize to sell instead of a dump, we’ll do it.

5. Wait to make home improvements. It’s best to wait to make home improvements until after a real estate agent has been hired. They know what is trending in the market and what buyers in our area are looking to pay top dollar for. If we tell the real estate agent how much money we have to work with, they’ll let us know which improvements will appeal to buyers and which ones will give the best ROI.

6. Gather and disclose details of home improvements made during ownership. If a seller makes any upgrades during the course of ownership, details on those upgrades should be ready to give to the agent. Knowing about home additions, new carpet or flooring and so forth, will help the agent price our home effectively to market it well. And we don’t need to tell the agent what was spent on each home improvement. Just knowing of the improvement made, will help the agent know what value to add to our home.

7. Print up a daily schedule of availability. Printing out our daily schedule will help the real estate agent recommend ideal times that our home can be shown to potential buyers. The key is to be ready at all times to accommodate showings. Yes, this is a bit inconvenient, but it will help our home sell more quickly.

Will you be hiring a real estate agent to sell your Brooklyn home? Get prepared and then contact Charles D’Alessandro at (718) 253-9600 ext. 206 or email [email protected]. With over 30 years of experience marketing Brooklyn homes, Charles D’Alessandro, your Brooklyn real estate agent with Fillmore Real Estate knows what it takes to get your home sold quickly.