3 Tips for Choosing Your Flooring
In this part of our series on selecting finishes for your new home, we’re going to talk about flooring and a 3 basic things to consider. RJM offers a number of custom flooring options including hundreds of styles of floor tile, carpet and carpet padding, laminate flooring and more. As an RJM customer, you have a good amount of flexibility in selecting different types of flooring in different rooms within your new home. Here are 3 quick tips:
Kids and Pets = Avoid Carpeting
This one seems pretty obvious but we thought we’d mention it. Let’s face it, kids and pets are messy no matter ‘perfect’ their parents think they are! Cleaning-up spills and pet accidents is much easier when your flooring is not carpeting. All carpeting (and the padding which sits beneath it) absorbs just about everything. And all the steam-cleaning in the world won’t get rid of the typical pet smells that even small dogs and cats leave behind. We recommend going with tile or laminate flooring throughout your house if kids or pets are in the picture.
Keep Laminate Flooring out of Wet Areas
Laminate flooring is one of our favorite upgrades but we almost never recommend it in ‘wet’ areas of your home. For example, while laminate looks nice in most bathrooms, here’s the downside. When laminate gets saturated (say, the first time your toilet gets clogged causing an overflow), it tends to respond poorly. One small flood or big spill may cause enough damage that you’ll want to replace it. For these ‘wet’ areas, tile is recommend for it’s durable characteristics.
Seal Floor Tile
This last tip is another that is rarely-followed but almost always creeps up later. Over many years of foot traffic and kitchen spills, your floor tile and grout will become stained to some level. Since this happens over a long period of time, it’s usually not noticeable until it gets bad (see image on left). Take the preventative step of sealing tile and grout will keep your tile looking cleaner, longer and will help you avoid expensive cleaning services later on down the road.
We hope these quick tips are helpful. Contact us with any questions and thanks for reading!
3 Tips for Choosing Finishes in Your New Kitchen
During your new home build with RJM, your designated representative will meet with you on one or more occasion to help you choose interior and exterior finishes and colors. We typically call this process, The Color-our Process. For many customers, this is one of the most enjoyable parts of the build as choosing custom finished for their new home is a great time to add their ‘personal touch’. This blog post is the first of many which offers tips for making the most of the color-out process. Let’s begin with one of the most important areas of your new home, the Kitchen.
For many families, the kitchen is the focal point of their home. Aside from cooking and eating meals, the kitchen is a place where families and their friends tend to gather. It makes sense then that we spend a lot of time in our kitchens. For this reason, choosing the perfect kitchen finishes for your new home is pretty important. For this post, we asked Kim Bunner at RJM to share a few tips.
Tip 1: Choose Neutral Kitchen Colors
While many of the popular home improvement magazines tout the newest fads and styles, we recommend that customers take a more conservative approach to choosing kitchen cabinet, tile, counter-top, etc. colors. The reason is simple- What’s hot now may not be hot in 10 years when you try to sell your home. By choosing neutral colors for the main kitchen components, you’ll avoid aging your home or ending with a kitchen you don’t like 10 years from now.
Tip 2: Choose Single-hole Kitchen Cabinet Knobs
Simply stated, “Choose single holed knobs over double-holed, holes can be added but never taken away.” Kim encourages customers to avoid double-holed cabinet knobs as updating the knobs later may be a challenge if you’ve got two holes drilled in each cabinet door.
Tip 3: If Your Going to Upgrade, Do it in the Kitchen!
Kim tells us that most customer upgrade kitchen features for 2 reasons. First, kitchen upgrades get the most return on resales if you do decide to sell your home years down the road. Second, most customers spend a lot of time socializing in their kitchen and upgrades make the atmosphere more enjoyable.
Some common kitchen upgrades include:
- Granite counter-tops
- Sink, faucet and plumbing options
- Cabinet styles and materials
- Flooring including tile options, laminate/wood flooring, etc
- Tile and granite backsplashes
- Under cabinet lighting features
- Much more…
We hope these brief tips were helpful. We’ve include a few customized kitchen photos below. Click any one to enlarge. As always, feel free to contact us for more information.
Pouring a Slab / Foundation
An early and one of the most critical stages of building your new home is the foundation. A home’s foundation is responsible for supporting the entire structure so a strong and properly built foundation will prevent a number of problems from occuring 1,5,15 and 50 years down the road.
This week, we snapped a couple of photos of a customized Wildflower model which we’re building for one of our favorite customers!
Building the Pad
Here’s a snapshot of a formed house pad, the first big step in building your dream home! For this stage, dirt is typically trucked in from other locations. In some cases, customers prefer to build a pond in their yard and will utilize the local fill for their house pad. At this stage, it’s important that the pad is placed properly (location and elevation per engineering drawings) and compressed so that it can support the house foundation, walls and total structure weight.
Forming the Foundation
Next, the home foundation us formed using wood and other materials. Around the outer edge of the foundation, a footer is dug as the slab strength will benefit from extra thickness at the edges. Later on, the form boards will contain the wet concrete after it is poured (until it dries). After form boards are in place, steel rebar is placed and tied together (continuously) per engineering requirements to add additional strengthen the slab. A plastic barrier is also added.
Underground Plumbing and Electrical
Once the foundation form boards are in place, RJM’s electrical and plumbing contractors come in and run conduit (pipes) for any needed plumbing and electrical lines. It’s critical at this time to correctly position the conduit to avoid problems later in the build. RJM’s project managers will carefully inspect the positioning of underground utilities to ensure correct placement. To right, we’ve provide a picture of plumbing manifold and electrical conduit that will protrude from the slab after it is poured. This will mostly likely provide water and electric for the kitchen area. Also note the plastic vapor barrier that will sit between the poured slab and the termite-treated soil below.
Pouring the Slab
After all the necessary inspections are complete, RJM will pour the slab at one time to ensure a flat, strong slab which will support the weight of your new home. During the pour, several concrete trucks will be schedule to the job site and our experienced team will spread and finish the slab. We wait for ideal (warm and sunny) weather conditions for all foundation pours!
Finally, the finished product- A strong, monolithic slab engineered to support your new home for life! (Note: as the slab dries, water appears at the surface)
Stay turn for more homebuilding 101 posts!
Welcome to the RJM Blog
Thanks for checking out our new blog! A couple times per month, we plan to blog about a variety of topics which our customers may find interesting and helpful in the home building process. We hope you enjoy it and won’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like any additional information.
Thanks again,
The RJM Team
