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A Guide to Your Contemporary Remodel: The Den

Heidan Construction is here with our fourth installment of our contemporary remodel guide. Now that we’ve covered the specifics of the living room, it’s time to move on to the more personal communal space – the den. Check out how you can turn your den into a contemporary dream.

Entertainment Space

The living room is for more proper hosting. However, the den is meant for family entertainment or entertaining friends on movie night. Because this space is meant to be comfortable and fun for the whole family, it’s important to design with your everyday needs in mind.

To start, you’ll need some seating. For many families, one couch is sufficient, but for bigger families two may be necessary. However, because seating in a den is usually focused on the TV, there’s a better alternative to two couches. Placing one couch facing the TV and adding an armchair or recliner on either side of it, angled toward the TV is a great choice. 

Armchairs are a great way to make your den contemporary, even when it’s comfortable. They provide seating and they add a little class as an addition to your, undoubtedly, cozier couch. Use your armchairs as an opportunity for color. A throw placed at an angle over the back or a pillow placed on the seat looks great and is functional too.

Open Concept

In contemporary styles, open concept is important. It allows a kind of openness and flow into a room that, otherwise, would feel stifling. If your den is placed in the basement, this usually isn’t an issue. Basement dens tend to take up most of the floor, excepting, perhaps, a bathroom or bedroom. Whereas, if your den is on the same floor as your living room or is in the bottom half of a split-level, you might want some adjustments.

When having a home renovation done, it’s completely possible to remove dividing walls if they don’t contain necessary supports. Of course, if your den and living room are on the same floor, you won’t want to remove any dividing walls between them. However, allowing the den to open up to the kitchen is always a great move. Having a breakfast bar between your kitchen and den is both more functional and more spacious.

Entertainment

Aside from the bones of the den, the potential for entertainment is also important. A great choice for a contemporary remodel is having built-in shelving put in for your TV and accessories. If one, main wall is given 3 columns of built-in shelving, the TV can be centered and surrounded on both sides by entertainment. If you want an especially contemporary style choice, use glass shelf panes for your built-in shelving. Glass shelving is unmistakably contemporary and it looks fantastic.

Den shelving is best outfitted in books, games, movies, consoles, and TV accessories. Just remember, leave at least a small part of the space looking more open. Densely packed shelves go against the general aesthetic of contemporary interior design. Leaving one or two shelves open for small pieces of sparsely-placed decor will help break up the intensity of your movie collection.

Contemporary Remodel Time

When you’re ready to move your home from the 1960s to the 20-teens with a contemporary remodel, give us a call. Heidan Construction has almost 2 decades of experience in remodeling homes for Toronto. We look forward to doing the same for you.

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A Guide to Your Contemporary Remodel: The Living Room

Hello! Welcome to the third piece in Heidan Construction’s contemporary remodel guide. Contemporary interiors are a hot design choice in the past decade. Therefore, we’ve decided to explain the process of turning each room in the house more contemporary. Today, we’re going to cover the living room!

Color Palettes

For most areas of the home, contemporary looks best with a mixture of dark and light colors – often in greyscale. White, paired with dark grey, is a great look. Of course, this isn’t meant to look cold and minimalistic. That’s where splashes of color come in. With contemporary interiors, it’s important to break up the monotony of whites, greys, and blacks by adding in a touch of color here and there.

One of the most effective ways to do this is with art or appliances within the contemporary space. For instance, a large painting filled with vibrant colors is a great choice. Somewhere like the living room, a statue or some brightly glazed pottery on the mantel would look lovely. Throw pillows are also a fantastic way to disperse color throughout the room. Just don’t overdo the amount of color in the room, or it will quickly move away from contemporary and into other territory.

The Ideal Hosting Space

When aiming for contemporary living, the living room is not just a family room. This room is made to look stunning and cleaned up at all times, making hosting possible. Rather than filling this room with electronics and books, a contemporary living room is best filled with decor and hosting tools.

Starting with furniture, it’s best to have more than one place to sit in a living room. In a den, one couch is enough, as it’s there to provide seating for a TV, more often than not. In a living room, seating is meant for socializing. Having two couches that face each other or a couch and some armchairs is perfect. Placing a coffee table between the two keeps guest focus on the center of the room and allows ample space for setting drinks or dinner, if you’re having a more casual dinner guest.

When it comes to decor, sticking with things that don’t cramp the space is best. Bookshelves filled with books, mounted shelves with decorations on them, standing floor lamps, and coffee table center pieces are great choices. However, if you want to add something more personal, a simply-designed throw blanket, folded over the back of the couch, is a great idea.

Contemporary Remodel Time

When you’re ready to make your contemporary living room dreams come true, you’re going to need a reliable contracting team. That’s where Heidan Construction comes in. We have nearly 2 decades of experience in the field of construction and are happy to put that to good use on your home. Give us a call if you’re ready to start your contemporary remodel. We look forward to hearing from you!

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A Guide to Your Contemporary Remodel: The Dining Room

If you want your home to look luxurious and current, a contemporary remodel might be exactly what you need. Whether you’re gearing up to put your house on the market or just giving yourself the upgrade you deserve, Heidan can help. Heidan Construction is Toronto’s #1 remodeling team. Here’s the next page in our contemporary remodel guide. Let’s talk about the dining room!

After the Kitchen

In our last guide, we discussed remodeling the kitchen. However, after the kitchen, we have to discuss the dining room. After all, once you’ve prepped all of your delicious food in your freshly remodeled kitchen, you need somewhere to bring it! That brings us to the importance of the dining room. This is one of the two primary hosting areas in the house. For many, having people over for meals is the only way they host. So, let’s get your dining room into shape.

Open Concept

Remember what we said in the first guide? Open concept is a must-have look for a contemporary home. If your dining room and your kitchen have a wall between them, it’s time to take them down. During a remodel, moving and adjusting walls can be easy work. Take advantage of that and make your home more open concept. If your dining room is in really close quarters with your kitchen, you can replace regular walls with something less restrictive, like glass dividers, shutters, or many other things.

Quality Bones

If your dining room is being remodeled, you may as well let us dig our claws into the bones of the room. Whatever window you have facing your dining room, it’s almost certainly not as nice as it could be. A great look for a contemporary home is a large bay window facing the yard. Don’t settle on a small window that won’t let in any light. Give yourself the gift of great curb appeal and a well-lit dinner.

Hosting in Class

While you’re upgrading your dining room, there’s more to consider than just the bones of the room. There’s also the paint color on the walls, the light fixtures, and the molding, if you have molding at all. Contemporary homes do best with either a warm accent palette or a cold one. If you’re going with warm, a nice brown coffee color on your walls would be lovely. Brown paint adds a kind of rich, earthy feeling to any room. If you want a cooler palette, you can’t go wrong with a dull blue color. Don’t choose something so saturated that it will overwhelm one’s attention upon entering the room. The gentle touch of blue is meant to compliment the decor and furniture in the room.

Hire Heidan

When it comes time to do your contemporary remodel, you know who to call. Give us a call and we’ll be more than happy to discuss your plans for your future home remodel.

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A Guide to Your Contemporary Remodel: The Kitchen

If you want to bring your home into this decade, it might be time to consider a home remodel. However, what do you do when picking an interior design? One of the most popular choices for an interior design style is contemporary. This style isn’t so fresh that it’s stepping into unfamiliar territory but it’s not out of date and won’t be for years. That makes a contemporary remodel a safe and beautiful choice. 

When you think ‘modern,’ the image in your head is most likely of a contemporary home. Blacks and whites? Contemporary. Sleek glass and seemingly luxurious decor? Contemporary. Hardwood floor and a dark sectional? Contemporary! So, Heidan Construction has put together a page by page guide on how to direct the remodel of each room in your home. 

The Most Important Room

Naturally, we’re going to start with the most important room. If we look at this from a real estate perspective, that’s definitely the kitchen. The kitchen is the most important room in the house for many reasons.

  1. It’s visible to guests, in most cases.
  2. It’s home to many appliances, which can become out of date.
  3. Of all the rooms in the house, it’s one of the two most functional. It would be hard to live without.

Open Concept

One of the first things to consider when remodeling your kitchen is how you want it to be laid out. You aren’t stuck with the original layout. Our team of construction professionals can move walls, take down dividing walls, add walls, alter windows and entryways, and so much more.

With a contemporary home, open concept is a must have. Closing off the home is very outdated. The last fifteen years have brought with them the value of openness. Being able to see those in the living room while you cook is a must-have. It allows open dialogue and creates a social atmosphere. So, when you renovate your contemporary kitchen, open things up a bit.

Luxurious Interior

When you choose the guts of your new kitchen, you’re aiming for something that looks luxurious. Contemporary design is meant to look expensive, even if it’s really not. For this effect, dark and light colors in combination with each other are great. This is especially true of deep browns, blacks, and whites.

Consider some dark brown cabinetry – a color edging on black or deep gray – and a marble countertop. This combination of dark and light will look enticing and luxurious.

Appliances

While you’re at it, choose black appliances. White appliances are too cozy. If you’re not aiming for a country interior, or something similar, this isn’t what you need. Stainless steel is too cold for this design style. It’s best paired with other metallic design elements.

The Best in Toronto

When it’s time for your contemporary remodel, contact us at Heidan Construction. We’ve been in the business for enough years to deliver consistently quality results. If you’re still thinking about your contemporary remodel, take a look at our next guide. We’ll take a look at remodeling the dining room.

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Double Your Office Space with a Second-Floor Expansion

As a business finds success, it will inevitably begin to grow. For those businesses stationed in an office, sometimes growth can become crowded. If your office space is no longer giving you and your employees enough room to breathe, it’s time to double your office space with an expansion.

Adding a Floor

While expanding outward is an option for many people, for others, it’s not the best choice. That’s because expanding outward adds to the total footprint of the building. That can have all kinds of effects on taxes, insurance, and otherwise. Plus, it involves adding more foundation, which is really expensive.

Instead, we’re talking about doubling your space by adding a second floor. Adding an additional floor that’s as large as the first will give you tons of additional room. This will allow you to give your employees more space and to hire more of them in the case that space has been holding you back.

Quality of Life Changes

When adding a second floor, you also increase the quality of life of everyone working in your office. If you’re not planning to double you staff with the additional space, each employee will have more room to themselves. This is great for both morale, comfort, and work productivity.

Plus, with a second floor comes another set of bathrooms, the potential for an employee lounge, and likely an increase in business profits.

Business Growth and Higher Profits

Because more space will allow you to expand how many employees you hire as well as improve work productivity, your business will flourish. If it was already outgrowing the existing building, it will only continue on the path to success.

With higher profit, comes the potential for higher pay. Higher pay means a more prestigious job which leads to more employees, higher quality of work, and so on. As you can see, expanding your office space is not just an investment in space, but in your business as a whole.

Improve What’s There

If your existing office space is out of date, we can also improve it with a remodel. Having both floors in matching quality will make the office feel more cohesive. Plus, a remodel of the main floor will improve quality of life for those who remain working there, even as some of their coworkers move upward.

Plan Ahead

If your business is seeing a lot of success and you foresee its growth continuing at the same rate in the following years, you can even prepare ahead by adding two floors instead of one. This isn’t the right choice for every office space, but it may be right for yours. After all, if it seems like you’re going to run out of space again in the next 5 to 10 years, it might be more cost effective to do one big 2-floor expansion, rather than two separate single-floor expansions. Every time the building is expanded upwards, the roof will have to be rebuilt. This can be pretty pricey. Therefore, the less it has to be done, the better.

A lot of how you can determine what’s right for you may be in how big the existing space is. For example, to double your office space of 5000SqFt may be plenty. However, an office of 1000SqFt being doubled might not add enough space to last the decade.

Our team at Heidan Construction would love to discuss these variables with you in person. Give us a call with your questions or if you’re ready to schedule a consultation. We look forward to hearing from you!

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The Possibility and Potential in an Extensive Home Remodel

It’s actually fairly interesting how uncommon it is for people to do extensive home remodeling. For many people, the idea of spending a lot of money making changes to their home is unappealing. However, these same people may decide to move to a bigger and more expensive home. For a lot of people, it’s actually a cheaper and more functional choice to remodel. Let’s take a look at how an extensive home remodel may actually be the best choice for you.

Avoid Moving

Did you know that moving homes is one of the top ten most stressful events a human can go through? There’s something about moving – the packing, planning, switching services, cost, and so much more – that can bring people to their breaking point. The funny thing is, a lot of people move for reasons that can be completely matched with an extensive home remodel.

If you like the neighborhood you’re in and your complaints are mainly with the house, a remodel is likely a much better option for you. If for no other reason, it keeps you from having to move.

Improve Quality of Life

One of the top reasons why people move houses is because their current house isn’t offering them what they need. It might not have enough bedrooms, the layout may be a pain, or it’s simply outdated. No matter why you dislike your house, an extensive home remodel can fix it.

Rooms can be added. A second floor can be added. Walls can be moved to make a room bigger or smaller. You can also update flooring and make adjustments to the floor plan. Remodeling can cover a lot more changes than many people realize. Remodels aren’t just for changing out kitchen cabinets and putting in new carpet. You can do almost anything.

Add Space

That includes being able to add space. The main floor of your home can be expanded outward or even upward. Therefore, if you want the kitchen, living room, and bathroom on your main floor to be bigger, add a second floor for the bedrooms and use the space from the old ones to expand on the rooms you want bigger. Whether you’re feeling cramped or want to add to the family, there’s a solution in remodeling.

Add to Value

One of the biggest reasons why people are afraid of remodels is the price tag. The fact of the matter is, if you were planning to move somewhere bigger or better, you would have had to spend more than the value of your current house anyway. It may seem less important because the price difference will be on a mortgage. However, you can take out a loan for remodels as well.

When it comes down to it, there’s actually a huge chance that the money you put into remodeling will add more value to your home than what you spent on the remodel. This is why house flipping is such a high-profit business. If you know what you’re doing, like we do at Heidan Construction, a 50 grand remodel can add 100 grand in value to the property.

When you’re ready to improve your home and make it the place you’ve always wanted it to be, give us a call. We can answer any questions and set up a consultation with you to discuss your needs in an extensive home remodel.