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News and Events
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Make statement with your House
Thinking about making some home improvements or doing renovations? Looking for solid advice and unique, innovative ideas? Then you’ve come to the right place. Curbside Appeal’s series of how-to articles will focus on creating a fresh, new look for your home - inside and out - and on making a statement about your individual taste
While your home is your castle, it is also, most likely, your biggest investment – a place you love and want others to appreciate. With that in mind, home improvements are about choice and are usually made for one of three reasons: to expand and improve the living environment, when space is too tight; to make a personal statement about style and taste; or to resell and realize a profit. Curbside Appeal is all about helping you make the right choices: better designs; the right style, colour and material combinations; the proper composition for your home’s façade; creating exciting flows to your home’s internal space.
Living in the Beaches, we are much more conscious about the individuality of our homes. Our homes are uniquely different from our friends, many of whom live in subdivision developments, where buyers have little say over the façades of their homes. Unless you, the buyer, choose a different builder, whose designs aren’t preconceived notions of what society likes, you’re left with minimal choices, like deciding on the colour of your home’s brick or garage door.
Fortunately, there’s a new sector developing in our society - homeowners who are more educated about design and the location of their new, cherished homes. This new generation of homeowner embraces a more-for-less, cost-conscious attitude regarding taste and personal style. They’re educated through the mass media, where TV shows, such as Trading Spaces and HGTV, innovatively reinvent and recreate homes.
Curbside Appeal will examine a number of renovation projects, ranging from small do-it-yourself jobs to redoing the entire façade of a home. Other articles will focus on exterior landscaping, retaining wall treatments, porch redesign and renovations. We will look at how an existing bungalow can be transformed into a grand two-storey Victorian-style house with stunning street presence. Look for future stories on the dos and don’ts of home renovations, featuring some common design flaws and absolute no-nos in architectural design; street façade improvement contests, as well as profiles of some spectacular, newly built or newly renovated homes.
And don’t miss the next article, coming in March, which features the start of a personal renovation journey for me and my wife, Christine, as we seek to create “curbside appeal” for our 60-year-old, semi-detached home in the Beaches. I’ll show you how, with simple and inexpensive techniques, you can effectively change the composition and style of your home - both the interior and the exterior. Our project began from the ground up, where an existing concrete-block retaining wall at the side of our home was crumbling. Repairs to the wall were made, with the help of a new product called Cultured Stone. You’ll be amazed at the dramatic transformation this product made to the outside appearance of our home.
From façades to minor interventions, it’s all about appropriateness. Curbside Appeal will show you how to take pride in helping create harmony with your neighbours, while still finding a way to set your home distinctively apart. Well-designed neighbourhood homes make for beautiful and inspiring communities, like those in the Beaches, where I prefer to make my home.
George Bobrovskis is founder and president of Intrigued by Design.
You can reach him at 416-638-3777.
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“We Create Curbside Appeal”
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George Bobrovskis is an intern architect with the Ontario Architect's Association.
He's also founder of the YMCA's "Breakfast of Champions," an annual fundraiser to help those in need.
Intrigued by Design has been in business more than 10 years. Recently, Intrigued By Design Inc. has become a Design/Build Company completing numberous projects in the past three years.
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