All Entries in the "Home Guru" Category
Home Guru: Old Houses and Antiques are Rebounding, But Not Old Kitchens
When my historic house was on the market almost two years ago, there were buyer prospects who fell in love with it. But in each case, the feedback from their agents was similar: Clients love it but don’t want to spend the time or money to update the kitchen. What? Here I am, writing as [...]
Home Guru
It was so embarrassing, but not my fault. My new client had given me the address of a home he renovated and wanted to sell on a mountaintop in Putnam County. Before our meeting, I decided to do a drive-by and take a photograph of the exterior for my listing presentation. When I arrived I [...]
Home Guru: Ins and Outs, Ups and Downs, and Over Driveways
It was so embarrassing, but not my fault. My new client had given me the address of a home he renovated and wanted to sell on a mountaintop in Putnam County. Before our meeting, I decided to do a drive-by and take a photograph of the exterior for my listing presentation. When I arrived I discovered [...]
Home Guru
What if I told you that there is one simple household chore that helps you get things organized, improves the quality of your life and generally makes you a happier person? You may already be doing it without knowing its importance and benefits, and if you’re not doing it, you might be alarmed by what [...]
Home Guru
We’ve all grown up with abbreviations and acronyms. There are those that probably originated at sea, such as SOS (originally for save our ship) to POSH (for portside out, starboard in). Many others developed on land: VIP (very important person), RSVP (respondez s’l vous plait), ASAP, (as soon as possible) and the important one I [...]
Home Guru- The Housing Market: ‘Something’s Coming, Something Good’
At least two or three lifetimes ago when I was in the chorus of “West Side Story” in summer stock, I was envious as I listened in the wings each night when the actor playing Tony got to sing “Something’s Coming,” the quintessential song of optimistic premonition. I don’t know if I’m especially prescient or [...]
Home Guru: The Ubiquitous Doorbell, From Buzz to Beethoven’s Fifth
It’s funny how a certain smell or sound can evoke memories of something totally unrelated to an experience at hand. With me, whenever I hear a doorbell, I think of the Fuller Brush man who years ago would go door to door selling his wares. My wife and I as newlyweds had just moved into [...]
Home Guru: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise, Thanks to My Garbage Hauler
At the beginning of the year, my town switched garbage haulers, a move that saved each resident $70 annually in taxes. A good thing, right? Yes, except that this move changed my life, at least two days a week. When I founded my own business some years ago, with one wing of my historic home [...]
Home Guru: No Matter What You Do in Bed, There’s a Mattress to Support it
A recent television commercial for Sealy, the world’s largest mattress manufacturer, made mesmile each time it ran. Its slogan was “No Matter What You Do in Bed, Sealy Supports It.” It reminded me of the first story I heard about mattresses, that of the princess and the pea. Even as a naïve child, I thought, [...]
Home Guru: How to Wipe Clean the Slate of Your Life in One Easy Step
This week my buyer clients and now friends, Jennifer and Tim Nelson, invited me over for coffee and cake and to show me what they had done with their home since moving in. Other than a gorgeous new kitchen, slate flooring and new bathrooms, I was amazed at what Jennifer had done with color to [...]
Home Guru: Less Than Six Degrees of Separation From Frank Lloyd Wright
When I was a youngster, “The Secret” hadn’t been written yet, so I didn’t know anything about making my intentions known to the universe to attract what I wanted. But I guess the dynamic worked anyway, judging from several instances where unwittingly I called upon its power and it worked for me. As an adolescent, [...]
Totally Floored By What I Didn’t’ Know About Flooring
First, I was floored by what I didn’t know about flooring. Then I was floored by what I did. I was at a broker’s open house munching on the snacks provided, standing in the kitchen on what I thought was slate flooring. But the listing agent told me, no, it was one of the new [...]
Home Guru: Breaking a ‘No Argument’ Record Over a Kitchen Counter
My wife Margaret, Mrs. Home Guru, doesn’t much like it when I reveal anything too personal in this column, but I have a hard time with that. My writing style has always been much like journaling, so what choice do I have but to reveal myself? I suspect my wife won’t mind if I share [...]
The Mailbox, Fading in Function, Still Boosts Curb Appeal
When was the last time you actually wrote a letter to a friend with pen and paper, placed it in an envelope, sealed it, affixed a stamp, left it in your mailbox and raised the red metal flag to let the mailman know that you were making use of the U.S. Postal Service? For most [...]
Home Guru: ‘Wet Behind the Ears’ and ‘All Wet’ about Wet Basements
It was one of the first houses I ever showed as a realtor. From the listing, it seemed like an ideal choice for my clients, but when we entered the house, there was a smell of dampness. My nose led me to the basement door and there, the smell intensified to a disturbing level. My [...]
The Last Frontier in Gender Specific Jobs: Construction
When I arrived at the construction site, the “workman” I expected to find turned around and was a woman. Susan Phillips works for Gateway Development Group, a company that is building a commercial and residential site along one of the busiest corridors in Yorktown Heights. At first I was surprised, but then I wasn’t. I, [...]
Home Guru: Lore and Lure of Kitchen Gadgets, From Past to Future
When I was seven years old, I bought my first gift with my own money for my mother’s birthday. I had saved 50 cents from nickels and dimes given to me by relatives. In those days, that seemed like enough to buy a fairly decent gift, at least to a child. To make sure that [...]
The Home Guru’s Predictions for Housing in the New Year
How upset I was in early 2007 to witness the real estate bubble deflating at great speed and to be told by the experts that the bust would be deep and long lasting. “It may be 2014 before real estate is back on track,” one industry observer predicted at a conference I attended at that [...]
Handmade Holiday Memories to Last a Lifetime or Two
Before I married, I had a roommate named Tom who was an excellent artist and craftsman, a fellow who added more taste and style to our place than one normally would expect to find in an apartment with two bachelors. We shared living space for little more than a year but when Christmas approached, he [...]
Home Guru: Was It Adam Who First Said ‘Take a Load Off Your Feet?’
As I sat at my kitchen table the other morning in an old Hitchcock chair that has been hitting me at the wrong place in my back for more than 25 years, I grumbled to my wife, “Why do I subject myself to this agony every day? My wife responded, “You’ve never complained about it [...]
Home Guru: The Devil’s in the Details, But I’m Not There With Him
It’s been a long time since I first heard and understood the meaning of the phrase “the devil is in the details,” which I really didn’t start to use until I became a homeowner. Since that time, I’m reminded of it practically every day. Essentially its meaning is that it is often the small details [...]
Home Guru: Will the Kitchen of the Future Shrink and Disappear?
Having attempted to project lifestyles trends throughout most of my marketing and real estate careers, it can be a pretty dicey business. When it all plays out with the march of time, you can look either brilliant or foolish. More than 30 years ago, after having served as the first director of public relations at [...]
Home Guru: Musings about Homes, from Toilets to Death and Taxes
In this week’s Home Guru column, the 200th written for The Examiner, I share some musings based on both practical and absurd observations made along the way. For an index of previously published articles, visit www.PrimaveraRealEstate.com and click on The Home Guru icon. Are Trees the New Enemy? Most of our communities have rigid standards [...]
Home Guru: Memories of Smooth Plaster Walls and a Dad’s Hands
My father died when I was a teenager, before I understood that he was more than a skilled tradesman but, rather, a true artist. A cement finisher by trade, he could do any maintenance or improvement project around the house from tiling our bathroom floor and stenciling our living room walls to plastering an entire [...]
Home Guru: The Fantasies and Realities of the American Dream Home
If you were asked to visualize your dream home, would you create an entire list of features you might want, as most people would, or would you focus on one particular thing which to you defines dreamlike home luxury? What if I told you that my dream home would have just one main focus for [...]
Home Guru: The Home Giveth and Taketh Away–and Giveth Yet Again
Nothing like a hurricane to get you thinking about things that normally are pushed to the back of the mind by the distractions of television, cell phones, Facebook and Twitter. Every home has a story, through good times and bad, and this is my story of home life in bad times. Or are they? Previously, [...]
Home Guru: Outside Holiday Decoration for the Kid in All of Us
The memory I remember most vividly is Christmas when I was seven years old, living in a row home in Philadelphia. That was the year my parents suggested that I might have a holiday party and invite the neighborhood kids to see our gigantic tree, decorated with hundreds of ornaments and with lead tinsel so [...]
Home Guru: Tell Me, Do You Have a Starbucks, and is Costco Nearby?
Life is full of coincidences and synchronicity that never cease to amaze me. Sometimes I laugh to myself when I find that something I learned or questioned a lifetime ago returns to serve me when I need it. For instance, when I first started to dabble in real estate, first as an investor and eventually [...]
The Home Guru Comes Clean About His Dirty Little Secret
“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” I am coming clean to reveal that I am in the latter category. Flatteringly enough, it has been suggested that I write a book as The Home Guru, but the prospect has me in a quandary. I had always hoped to write a book someday, but never [...]
Home Guru: Parents, Quick, Talk to Your Kids About Real Estate
Chad Perkins knew he wanted to be a realtor from the time he was 13, even without a family connection to the industry. He would ask his parents to take him to public open houses on weekends. By the time he could legally get a real estate license at 18, he jumped into the business [...]
