I also recommend Borax – especially if you have pets because its safer than pesticides – sprinkle borax in trouble areas and let it sit for a day then you can vaccuum it up – this seems to work really well for controlling a lot of insects – I’ve been able to deter Ants, Fleas, and Stink bugs using borax. You can find it in the laundry aisle – most common brand is 20 Mule Team – I first learned about this when we had a really bad infestation of fleas – took about a week, and 3 treatments because of how bad they were, but I haven’t seen any fleas since. I now make this part of my regular cleaning every couple of months.

It will probably take a little longer than a Sunday afternoon to knock up.

But these flat-packed homes from Ikea could be just the answer if a place of your own is proving too costly.

The Swedish furniture company, famous for its cheap but quirky products and its army of fans, has launched its first line of prefabricated houses in the U.S., named the Aktiv.

Priced around $86,500, this is the first in a new line of houses designed by Ideabox and appointed by Ikea

Ikea collaborated with Oregon architectural firm Ideabox to design the homes which will cost around $86,500 each.

The Swedish-themed dwelling is a one-bedroom home centered around space-saving furniture and products.

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• More tornadoes forecast as thousands begin to clean up and dig out after devastating Midwest storms killed 12 people

The hip and modern house was outfitted taking into consideration the demands from Pacific-Northwest homeowners, and is designed to be eco-friendly

It is equipped with facilities such as a dual-flush toilet and energy-star electronics.

Swedish inspired: Designers say the flat-pack home promotes wide open living with no wasted space

The kitchen: Ikea says it offers a lot of flexibility in kitchen cabinets, design and layout

HOW BIG IS AN IKEA PREFAB HOME?

The design for Ikea’s new Aktiv home includes a bedroom, and en suite bathroom, and an open living room, kitchen and dining room area.

It measures 53ft by 14ft and comes with two  large walk-in storage cupboards.

A combination of fiber-cement siding, corrugated metal, and a standing-seam metal roof make up the exterior of this all-in-one home.

According to Jim Russell, president of Ideabox, the complete home ‘brings all the fun and design of Ideabox houses together with all the function, design, and personality of Ikea’.

The home will be furnished with a complete Ikea package that includes Tundra maple flooring, Pax wardrobes, and Abstrakt cabinets.

The blueprint: Plans show the house is 53ft by 14ft and has a bath bedroom, living room and kitchen/dining room

Swedish firm Ikea has got an army of fans both in the U.S. and in Europe because of its cheap, modern designs

Ideabox and Ikea displayed the model house this week at the Portland Home & Garden Show at the Portland Expo Center in Oregon.

The Aktiv, Swedish for active, is being marketed as ‘your own personal Euro designer flat… only where you want it!’

Prefab homes have already taken off in Europe. In the UK, Ikea opened a village made up of cheap prefab houses near Gateshead, in the north east, using a different design called BoKlok

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

Facebook Lets You Enlarge Photos: Facebook has redesigned the Photos section of the personal profile. You can now highlight your photos to make them appear much larger. Plus, you’ll find your photos separated into different sections: albums, your photos and photos you were tagged in.

“With your Facebook photos all in one section, it’s simple to show friends your favorites. Click the star button to make important photos stand out.”

Facebook Rolling Out Additional Page Post Targeting Options: Facebook page admins will soon be able to target posts by age, gender, interested in, relationship status, education information and workplace. This is in addition to the previous options available: language and location. Find out what this means to marketers here.

This is the current target selection available on our Facebook page.

Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

• How much of your social media content is promotional?
• What is your favorite source for images for your blog posts?
• How do you deal with negative comments on your Facebook page?

Google+ Hangouts Comes to Gmail: Gmail has upgraded its chat feature to the Google+ Hangouts technology. Hangouts in Gmail is rolling out gradually over the coming weeks.

Quora Adds Views: Quora Views allows you to see who reads your posts on Quora.  In addition, it’s “a way to discover what Quora is distributing to people you follow in their feeds and digest emails. You can now find new content that’s trending around Quora that you might not have otherwise seen.”

“Views offers unique insights about who is seeing your content and the reach you have on Quora through your followers and the topics you write on.”

Bit.ly Announces Realtime: “Realtime is an attention ranking engine, offering the power to navigate through the stories that the world is paying attention to right now. Realtime allows you to filter attention by location, network, language and topic.”

Search Realtime for trending topics.

Digg Relaunches: The new owners of this once-popular social bookmarking platform have relaunched Digg. The old voting features have gone and at the moment users need to log in with Facebook to vote. This new version of Digg is different from the former version and has Twitter and Facebook integration.

The new Digg is image-friendly and ad-free.

Facebook Changes Process for User Restrictions on Like Button: If your business has regulated user restrictions and you use the Facebook Like button, be sure to read about these changes.

Google Buys Wildfire Interactive: Wildfire Interactive is a social media management company specializing in contests and promotions with a software platform that integrates directly with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Read more about possible future implications for businesses here.

Here’s a useful social media tool worth noting:

Over: An iPhone app to instantly and easily add words over your photos. (Android app coming soon.)

Left and right, I’m taking dining rooms out of new home designs and remodeling projects; Very few families dine formally anymore!

But a few folks still hang on to the dining room because:

• It’s never occurred to them not to have one.
• Their real estate agent has convinced them they’ll never sell the home without it.
• They already have a dining room set.
• They actually dine formally on a regular basis (really?).

If you’re willing to think outside the norm a bit — and you’re looking for ways to offset the constantly rising cost of construction — take a good hard look at what you really need and don’t need in your home.

Maybe you don’t really need a dining room.

Big cost, little use

The formal dining room is a leftover from the days when we lived far more formally and preparing dinner was an all-day affair. Today, we live and eat far more casually and rarely dine in a formal setting (with the possible exception of Bree Van De Kamp from “Desperate Housewives”).

Most of us only use our formal dining room two or three times a year, yet we devote many thousands of dollars to the construction and furnishing of this least-used space in the house.

One space, multiple uses

A better solution might be to create a slightly larger, less formal dining space that can be used more flexibly, taking the place of the formal dining room AND the casual breakfast room. Most of the time, this other dining space works great for breakfast, lunch, kid’s crafts, homework and rolling out the cookie dough.

But add a nice tablecloth, some candles and turn down the lighting and presto — it’s elegant dining. A well-designed dining space can accomplish this easily and convincingly. And save you a lot of green!

When evaluating the costs of building a new home, many homeowners use square-foot pricing as a basis for comparison.

Let’s talk about square-foot pricing for a minute – what it is, and what it isn’t.

Square-foot pricing is a method to roughly compare construction costs for two similar houses, houses in different parts of the country and houses with different characteristics.

But square-foot pricing is not a reliable method for determining how much a particular design is going to cost to build. The average floor typically gets slippery if something spills on it. As a result, not only does it leave you liable, it often needs more attention. But with garage flooring epoxy coatings, the floors won’t be slippery even if some water or fluid spills on it. It also strengthens your floors so that it can take a lot of beating. We’re talking machinery impact and high temperatures. It’ll comfortably handle all these. This is great for workplace and employee safety. Go through adhesiveslab.com/gorilla site for more detail about the gorilla epoxy.

Garage epoxy are hard-wearing and durable solutions for home-use, or for commercial and industrial flooring. These floor coatings can be applied over concrete floors to provide a high performance, attractive surface. Epoxy coatings can be used in your basement or garage, or for a wide variety of commercial and industrial buildings-including industrial manufacturing plants, commercial facilities, warehouses, pharmaceutical manufacturing buildings, food and beverage plants, laboratories, and more. Wherever you need an attractive, long-lasting, environmentally friendly flooring option, epoxy is a great choice. Concrete Flooring is ranked as a top floor coating company.

Show me a house design, and with a few specific questions, I can place it within a rough range of cost. That’s a start, but for a 2,500-square-foot custom home, even a range of $20 per square foot is a lot of money. You most definitely don’t want your cost estimate on a $250,000 house to be off by $50,000! Check out the concrete website for the large construction project.

With a little research, square-foot pricing can be a useful tool to get you “in the ballpark” — but that’s all. Find out what similar houses cost to build in your area (don’t forget to take out the cost of the land first) to place your ideas in a rough “square foot” price range. Vision Homes Australia is proudly your local Hunter Valley Builder. Building a variety of housing types from single to double storey, duplex to multiunit, we have the solution for you. Servicing the area from the northern-side of Lake Macquarie; to Cessnock; and up to Medowie and its’ surrounds.

House design size

Many things affect the cost of building a typical house, but there are three big ones: size, complexity and the level of finish. The effect of house size on construction cost is obvious; bigger houses cost more. But it’s not quite that simple.

Significantly more important than house size alone is the matter of where that size goes, as the “cost per square foot” of a house varies tremendously from room to room. It’s obvious that a kitchen, with appliances, cabinets, countertops, plumbing fixtures, tile flooring and other expensive finishes will cost more “per square foot” to build than a bedroom, which doesn’t have much more finish than carpeting and paint.

Expert advice on how to repair hardwood floor water damage, repairing hardwood floors finish, fixing wood flooring scratches, hardwood floor gouge repair, and more. Even the best wood floors are subject to damage. Hardwood flooring, by its name, sounds like it should be really hard. But, compared to other materials like tile, stone, and laminate, it is relatively soft and prone to damage such as scratches, gouges, and discoloration.

Refinishing a wood floor is a big job that involves moving furniture, bringing in a drum sander or other floor sanders, protecting the rest of your house from dust, dealing with odors from polyurethane or other finishing products, and more.

If you squeeze the size of a house down by taking space from low cost-per-square-foot rooms like bedrooms, you’ll find that you haven’t affected the overall cost of the house much at all. In fact, you’ll likely not do much more than simply raise the cost per square foot of the entire (now smaller) house — and maybe not change the overall cost at all.

So a smaller house — if the size difference is in inexpensive rooms — may not be a less expensive house.

House design complexity

 

A simple shape keeps construction costs down.

The effect of the complexity of a house on the construction cost is frequently misunderstood, and it’s one of the sources of many an unpleasant surprise for house plan buyers.

Simply put, a complex house is more expensive to build than a simple house. But what makes a house complex? Mostly it’s a function of the shape of the house and the relationship of the amount of roof and the amount of foundation to the area of the house.

Consider two typical house designs: A rectangular two-story colonial house and a French country home with a first-floor master bedroom suite. Both houses are 3,000 square feet, and both have the same level of finish.

The colonial home is the picture of simplicity; both floors are exactly the same size and are stacked directly over one another. So while the entire house is 3,000 square feet, the foundation and the roof are each only 1,500 square feet (I’m ignoring the garage for this example). It’s efficient and easy to build.

 

A complex shape is more expensive to build.

The French county design is the same size but less efficient; with the master bedroom suite moved from the upper floor to the lower, the roof area and foundation area increase by about 500 square feet – but the overall size of the house stays the same at 3,000 square feet. More roof and foundation containing the same area, plus more lumber and concrete equals more cost.

Colonial homes have simple gabled roofs. In the simplest examples the roof is made entirely with just one truss configuration. That’s a huge sigh of relief for the truss fabricator and the framing crew — every truss is the same! And without any intersecting roofs or dormers, there’s no overlay framing and no flashing or valley metal to install.

But French country design is distinguished by its more “rambling” nature; an attractive home of this style spreads itself out a bit. French county roofs are typically hipped rather than gabled (hips are more expensive) and are often steeply pitched — more lumber is required, and the roofing labor is more expensive.

Every angle, intersecting roof, bay window, porch or level change adds complexity to a house. If you’re evaluating several house design ideas, look for complexities in the layout that may make one significantly more expensive to build than the other.

Finishes and fixtures

 

Bathroom: High cost per square foot

Let’s compare two houses again, only this time they’re both 3,000-square-foot colonials. One has a fiberglass tub in the master bath (about $500), and one has a $5,000 whirlpool tub. That one change adds $4,500 to the cost of the house, but more importantly, it changes the “square foot” cost of the house by almost $1.50 per square foot.

Careful — here’s where homeowners get “nickeled and dimed” to death. Perhaps you were quoted a base cost of $120 per square foot for your house. Add the tub, and it’s gone to $121.50. Add hardwood, granite, under-mounted sinks, brass hardware and other upgrades, and suddenly you’re at $140 per square foot and way out of your budget.

Finishes and fixtures (flooring, cabinets, countertops, trim, etc.) represent about 30 to 40 percent of the cost of a house. You may only increase the cost of each item a little, but because so many items fall into this category it’s very easy to lose control of the total cost.

If you want nicer finishes, but your budget is tight, do what my clients do: Put the nice stuff in the kitchen and master bath and the cheaper stuff everywhere else. More importantly, assemble a list of the finishes and fixtures you want at the beginning of the project and stick to it.

Budget creep

Budget creep is the gradual, sometimes unnoticeable increase in the cost of your project as new items are added or unusual site conditions are revealed. Budget creep happens slowly, one decision at a time, creeping up and devouring your building budget before you know it. It can afflict you during the planning of a house project, but more often it’s a disease of the construction phase.

A little planning, patience and foresight can help avoid it.

On any project, start with a clear idea of the level of finish and quality you expect. Don’t assume that your architect is in tune with your ideas about finishes; discuss your expectations in detail and whenever possible, see the actual finishes and fixtures. If you’re not the detail-oriented type, hire a professional interior designer.

Poor quality drawings cause additional unplanned work during construction, and always end up costing homeowners money and time. My firm’s been hired many times to correct drawings done elsewhere that contained glaring errors, omitted necessary structural steel or just plain didn’t work. Sloppy drawings are an open invitation to project creep.

Finally, always have realistic expectations about your project budget and communicate that budget to your architect. When everyone understands the project’s financial goals, the chances for success are greatly increased.

With low home prices still to be found around most of the country, $175,000 can get a buyer quite a lot in terms of real estate in some cities. From the West Coast through the Midwest and over to the East Coast, we’re showcasing a few of the properties you can get for just under $200,000.

Idaho Falls, ID

3386 Sandy Dr, Idaho Falls ID
For sale: $176,500

Recently reduced in price by $1,500, this Idaho Falls home for sale was built in 2003 and has been well-maintained. The 2,369-square-foot home has 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Idaho’s largest city after Boise, Idaho Falls serves as a hub for recreational outdoor activities and sports.

Missoula, MT

4450 Addington Dr, Missoula MT
For sale: $172,000

Just east of Idaho lies Missoula and this home for sale. The corner-lot home was built in 2007, has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and measures 1,440 square feet. Deemed move-in ready, the house is located in the planned Canyon Creek Village community.

Omaha, NE

5102 S 194th St, Omaha NE
For sale: $170,000

This ranch-style home for sale in Omaha features an open floor plan centered by a large eat-in kitchen with island and plenty of counter space. The 1,494-square-foot home was built in 2002 and has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

Naugatuck, CT

31 Carolyn Cir, Naugatuck CT
For sale: $175,000

A turn-key home with mature landscaping and surrounding stone wall, this 1955-built home has been completely updated with new finishes and appliances. Located south of Waterbury, Naugatuck is a smaller community situated on the Naugatuck River.

New Orleans, LA

2829 Dabadie St, New Orleans LA
For sale: $179,000

Dotted throughout The Big Easy are 19th-century shotgun style homes, characterized by their narrow shape and layout. This New Orleans home is a prime example of the architecture and, like many, has been completely renovated for today’s living. The 1,215-square-foot home has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and high ceilings.

People often ask me: “What’s the best way to get rich on real estate?”

The overall answer is pretty simple:

• Plan to own every property you buy for a  long time.

• Drop the get rich quick schemes. Go for the get rich slowly, over a couple of decades plan — complete with a few clogged toilets, some roof leaks and nebby neighbors, but plenty of time to let inflation increase the value of your asset.

You have to take a long-term view with property, and if you do, the chances of having significant wealth down the road are much higher.

Here are a few tips you might consider.

Strive for long-term ownership

Long-term ownership is the key to earning wealth on real estate. If you own for the long term, you pay down your mortgage, hopefully see some appreciation in value and skip paying the exorbitant buying and selling transaction fees that decrease your net wealth each time.

Buy properties that are assets, not liabilities

A personal residence is an asset if you can comfortably afford the payments, along with all the rest of your bills. If you can’t comfortably afford the payments, it’s a liability. Rental properties are assets, too, if the rents cover all expenses and leave some positive cash flows. They’re liabilities if they are negative cash flows — and many people buy these to their own detriment. So start buying assets!

Carry the proper insurance

We all know that sometimes things go wrong in life, especially with real estate. Fires, floods, tenant issues, dog bites, etc., can cause loses to an owner. If you have the proper type and amount of insurance in place, you will be covered if there is a loss. It’s not too hard to have the right insurance, but talk to your agent and do a review every year.

Skip fixers or communities where the HOA is in bad shape

Rarely do fixer-uppers sell at a big enough discount to compensate for all the work that you need to do to get them in shape. Additionally, you will add value to a property by doing renovations, but probably not as much value as it costs you to make those improvements. Skip the fixers! Also watch out for HOAs in bad financial, operational or legal shape and advice them the check the advises from https://realtytimes.com/advicefromtheexpert/item/1039555-hoa-s-tips-how-to-effectively-manage-your-properties to have a better manege of the HOA. Higher HOA fees and/or special assessments will be coming your way in these communities.

Long-term financing

Go long on your loan, especially with the outrageously low interest rates in the current marketplace. Lock that 3.5 to 4 percent loan, sleep well and look forward to 2042 — when you will actually own your property outright.

All of the above tips can help you reduce your risk and improve your wealth on the largest, most complicated and riskiest thing you will ever do — buy a home. The more you reduce your risk, the higher the chances you’ll earn real estate wealth. Good luck!