New website for do-it-yourselfers

By Holly Hayes

RISMEDIA,--Bryan Powell turned to the Internet two years ago in search of ideas for a built-in barbecue, bar and a slate tile patio he wanted to construct in his back yard in Castro Valley, Calif.

Instead of finding ideas to inspire his project, he found frustration.

“There was not one single place on the Internet where I could go to view pictures of people’s yards and projects,” Powell says.

So he created one.


The site, www.yardshare.com, launched in February and has some 130 user-submitted yard and garden projects featuring more than 3,000 photos. Powell says the site attracts 75 to 100 visitors a day.

Powell, 29, works by day as a client relationship manager at a finance company in San Francisco. Before creating YardShare, he had no experience building a website.

So he taught himself.

“I bought a book and some software,” Powell says. It took him seven months of working 18-hour days-combined with his “real” job-to get the site to the point where it was ready to be launched to the public.

Powell designed the site to be a place where homeowners can share pictures, stories, advice and information in an interactive way. Most of the projects posted online are from homeowners who have done the work themselves, but some have had professional help for part or the entire job.

Powell also invites landscape professionals to post photos of their work; San Anselmo’s Avant Garden has put up several.

Projects on the site are clustered by type: large and small yards, front and back gardens, hardscape, lighting, pools, patios, water features, etc. Call up the outdoor kitchen section, for example, and you can see 87 photos that chronicle the step-by-step progress of Mike and Leslie’s kitchen-it’s not done yet-that includes a cooler, sink, four-burner propane grill, stainless steel open-air wood grill and bar seating for six.

Visitors to the site may view the projects as slide shows or look at individual photos as thumbnails. They also can ask questions and post comments. Those wishing to add photos of their own projects must go through a simple registration process.

“Some people just go in and post a few pictures of a completed project, but others treat it as an ongoing portfolio so they can show family and friends how their project is coming along,” Powell says. Weekend warriors, he says, post a rush of new photos each Monday.

What about his own backyard project? It’s chronicled on the website.

© 2008, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Upgrade your investment

Make your home a more pleasant place to live, and then you can profit from it when it’s time to sell. How much to spend on renovating depends on the value of your home.

“You’ll always get your money back if you spend it in the right places,” says real estate maven Barbara Corcoran, who now dispenses advice on “The Today Show” after selling for $70 million the company she started with a $1,000 loan. Her newest book, “Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life” (Springboard Press, $24.99), is due out in April.

Home value: $250,000
Amount to lay out: $10,000 to $20,000


Cosmetic: Make minor improvements. Paint the front door and trim to make a great first impression. Do a total interior paint job in a light, pale color, but not white (too stark). Pale colors enlarge the space, and you want your place to look as spacious as possible.
Structural: Replace the door if warped, and the bell if it doesn’t work. If the roof has any flaws, fix them. Make sure there are no water marks on ceilings. People see those and assume the worst.

Landscaping: What’s closest to the house is most important. People buy light-colored houses and will pay more for them. Trim down bushes near windows and fill in any bald spots.

Home value: $500,000
Amount to lay out: $20,000 to $50,000

Cosmetic:Repaint everything. Repaint and or refurbish doors and/or hardware on the front kitchen cabinets. Resurface floors, re-carpet where necessary, and make it look like a fresh new home.

Structural: Go to a new development with homes more expensive than yours and see what the latest and greatest appliances are. Buy the least pricey one, like an oversized stainless-steel refrigerator. Do more if you have the budget.

Landscaping: Splurge a little more on the landscaping; keep things low but lush near windows.

Home value: $1 million+
Amount to lay out: $30,000 to $100,000

Cosmetic: Do a quality paint job, upgrade kitchen cabinet improvements (replace hardware, doors), refinish wood floors, re-carpet what’s worn or too fashion-forward.

Structural: Splurge on luxuries that flatter egos; improve kitchen, baths. Put in new countertops and replace appliances, even if only 3 or 4 years old. In baths, use sleek ceramic tile that looks expensive (but doesn’t have to be), free-standing tubs with water features, multi-head showers with frame-less glass enclosures and a flat-screen TV if there’s wall space.

Landscaping: Spend the rest of your budget on healthy foliage and the best landscaping you can get.

For every budget:

-Get rid of at least a third of your stuff, from knickknacks to furnishings, especially expensive objects and art. Pay to have it packed up and stored if you have to.
- Scrub your house from top to bottom. Also clean all the windows. For the best results, hire a service.

- Increase the wattage of every lamp in your home. Replace dark lampshades with light ones that let light shine through.

- Remove heavy drapes, replace all the shower curtains and buy new towels.

- Make sure all changes or improvements you make are decoratively neutral.

Home Library: Pages to Turn to For Guidance

To make sure a project will give you the returns you want, check out Remodeling Magazine’s annual Cost vs. Value Report, which features information on the 29 most popular projects (download it for free at http://www.costvsvalue.com/). And check out these tomes, which are full of ideas that will help you figure out what to do, whom to hire and how much to spend.

“Remodeling on the Money; 15 Innovative Projects Designed to Add Value to Your Home” by Alan J. Heavens (Kaplan Publishing, $19.95) Most people don’t want to take on a renovation themselves, but if you do, you should know your options, the pitfalls and what to expect. This guidebook takes an extensive look at the 15 most common home-improvement projects–from bathrooms to basements, to replacing windows and adding decks and patios. You can learn how to do everything here.

“What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home” by Alan J. Heavens (Dearborn Trade Publishing, $18.95) Consider the following:

- Contractors should not be inflexible to your requests, but often are. Why?

- Things can still go wrong with the easiest renovation-painting.

- Low-flow toilets can take two or three flushes to rid of the same waste an older, 3.5-gallon model handles in one flush. … If you’re a novice, the secrets and tricks of the trade are here on every aspect of the process, from hiring contractors to controlling your budget and schedule. If you’re a pro, this book will remind you of all the things you forgot.

“Architectural Inspiration” by Richard Skinulis & Peter Christopher (The Boston Mills Press, $79.95) What should you use on your floors, walls, ceilings and countertops? What about lighting, hardware, cabinets and plumbing fixtures? You can learn about all of them in great detail in this hefty, comprehensive, gorgeously illustrated tome that delivers what its tagline promises: “styles, details & sources.” Save yourself the time of running from store to store or surfing the Web blind; this is one of the most thorough and well-researched source books on products and materials on the market.

© 2008, Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.