Industry Insider: Basswood Construction

Instead of putting a “For Sale” sign in the lawn and phoning a moving company, many homeowners today are opting to make their current homes roomier and more comfortable for their families.

Homeowners are more frequently enlarging their family rooms or renovating their kitchens, or a combination of both.

“Many of our customers today live in a neighborhood that they love and hate to leave. But they want to update that house that was built in the 1950s or 1960s,” said Mark Livesay, owner of Basswood Construction of Arlington Heights.

“Others can’t bring themselves to sell their home in this depressed market, so they are choosing to improve it instead.”

While Basswood is experienced with kitchen and bath renovations, home additions and even building new homes, most of its work over the past several years has been kitchen renovations and family room additions.

“We did build two new houses for people in the last year, but that is rare right now. In fact, those were the first new homes we have built in three years,” Livesay said.

“Many of our customers have been requesting additions that expand the kitchen/family room area and make it a focal point because that is the main area where people today hang out,” he said.

In the kitchen renovations, Livesay has noticed homeowners are opting to spend less on high-end cabinetry and more on expensive Bosch, Viking and Sub-Zero appliances. They are also using ceramic tile for their kitchen floors instead of the hardwood that was popular for so long.

As for fancy trims, they are still incorporating it into their kitchens if they can.

In family room expansions, people are still going for the “wow” factor, he said. They are choosing to incorporate their existing space into a new family room that ranges from 400 to 500 square feet and has volume ceilings with bumped up coffers, all trimmed out with crown molding for emphasis.

And the floors in family rooms are almost exclusively hardwood.

“I can’t remember the last time we put carpet or tile into a family room,” Livesay said.

Ninety-five percent of these family room additions include fireplaces that are pretty evenly split between traditional masonry and prefab, he said.

“In three-quarters of the cases, the hearths are flush to the floor now and brick is no longer popular. Instead, people seem evenly split between wanting natural stone fireplaces and wanting wooden mantles with legs combined with marble surrounds and hearths,” Livesay said.

“But not matter the style of fireplace, everyone seems to want to have their plasma television mounted on the wall above it.”

When the economy was good, upgrades like solariums off the family room, and additions with full basements below and additional bedrooms above were fairly common. But that is no longer true.

“Very few projects today go forward on the initial bid,” Livesay said.

Those drawn with a full basement are often amended to only feature a crawl space — to save money. Masonry fireplaces are scrapped in favor of less expensive prefabricated fireplaces. Homeowners are choosing to buy heating and air-conditioning systems with fewer bells and whistles for their new addition, and many are opting for less lighting. Some are even choosing to do their own painting to economize.

But when it comes to exterior finishes, they are not scrimping, Livesay said. If their home is brick, they want the brick matched on the addition. And if the home has siding, they are often choosing this time to replace all of the home’s siding so that the addition is not apparent.

“Even though, when we look back, people will realize that, cost-wise, there has never been a better time to improve your home, people are reluctant to spend money right now,” Livesay said. “So, they are spending less money on their renovations and additions than they were several years ago and they are looking at things like second-floor enlargements as something they can skip or delay.

“Homeowners are being very careful not to overspend, based on the worth of their home,” he said.

The fact that it is difficult to get bank financing right now is also a factor.

“Even if the homeowner has had no decrease in income, their home value has dropped and that plays a part in whether the bank will loan the money,” Livesay said. “So we have one particular bank that we send people to because they work hard to get them the money.”

Basswood Construction, in business since 1996, primarily serves homeowners in Arlington Heights, Palatine, Elk Grove, Buffalo Grove, Mount Prospect and Des Plaines. It has a showroom at 1046 S. Arlington Heights Road in Arlington Heights.

For more information, visit www.basswoodconstruction.com or call (847) 577-0874.