Al Heavens is a Haddonfield, N.J.- based, nationally syndicated, home-improvement writer and author whose newspaper columns, magazine articles and books have been the first word on remodeling for 50 million readers for more than three decades. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home and Remodeling on The Money: Fifteen Innovative Projects Designed to Add Value to Your Home and was “The Gadgeteer” on Discovery Channel’s Home Matters program.
I think I spend too much time trying to keep up with trends.
The other day, for example, there was an email in my real estate agent account from the CE Shop (CE means continuing education, which, even at 14 hours required for license renewal every two years, is the bane to a Realtor’s existence), titled “2021 Home Trends to Keep the Ghosts Out.”
At first, I was intrigued.
“There’s nothing ghosts love more than dank, dark houses full of nooks and crannies,” the email said. “But haunted attics and spooky cellars are so 1821, and ghosts in 2021 are unfortunately facing a new series of home trends that feel, well, unhauntable.”
What they mean is that there are modern improvements that homeowners should consider to keep out “ghosts.” Assuming that older houses (and spaces) accommodate ghosts, we’ll discuss new improvements you incorporate in your home to chase these ghosts away.
One trend was “open concept anything,” especially kitchens. As I recall, the open-concept idea has been around for years, but older houses tend to be heavily “nooked” and crannied, making them look small, even if they have the same or more square footage than newer ones.
Thinking about having the kitchen flow into the dining room without needing a doorway? Call your contractor before you start removing that load-bearing wall.
If you think I am joking, the previous owner of one of my former houses fancied himself an artist and tried to create a giant studio on the third floor. He stopped when he noticed that the ceiling was beginning to sag. I reframed the wall and reinforced the ceiling after I bought it.
Ghosts, according to the CE Shop, are not fond of yellow and gray, Pantone’s colors of the year for 2021…well, actually “ultimate gray” and “illuminating” … considering those colors “tacky.”
Pantone says that the two colors “support one another,” that they are “practical and rock solid,” “warming and optimistic,” and their union is one of “strength and positivity.”
It does get worse… It is called “cottagecore,” and it is a trend in home renovation designed to turn the modern home into the 19th century, windswept English seaside cottage from which the peasantry’s children fled to the big cities to escape.
Kate Reggev, who writes for a website called Clever, explains that cottagecore is “a movement hearkening back to agricultural life, skills, and crafts.”
Noemie Sérieux, the founder of the Instagram account CottagecoreBlackFolk, said the first inklings of the trend appeared on TikTok in 2017, but with the pandemic, “suddenly, with so much time at home, it seemed like everyone was baking focaccia laced with herbs and colorful vegetables, planning summer gardens in their backyard, and engaging in grandma-inspired craft projects like knitting and embroidery.”
With everyone at home, the crafts needed spaces of their own, and so contractors began getting calls that started with “what are your pandemic work protocols?” followed quickly by “could you add on enough square footage to our kitchen to accommodate a butter churn?”
My wife makes quilts and masks, knits baby sweaters and blankets, and has recently acquired a computerized machine that cuts patterns – all of which done on a worktable I built from recycled furniture.
Benches instead of seats at the dining-room table is another trend that CE Shop contends that ghosts abhor, but I once thought of buying used church pews as seating for a marble-topped, pickled-pine table for which the appropriate chairs were wildly expensive.
I opted against the pews because we had eaten in restaurants that used benches at tables set into nooks and getting past the other seated diners could be painful to all involved, so I settled on the chair of the every-other-month club, eventually acquiring eight of them, each costing $250, from a shop in Paoli, Pa., that obtained them from a workshop in North Carolina.
We eventually acquired a Mission-style dining-room table, chairs and sideboard from an estate that was more in keeping with our present Arts and Crafts bungalow, and gave the marble-topped table and chairs to a family down the street.
It took seven guys to carry the tabletop to its new home.
Another trend is, of course, the home office, and, frankly, why it was included in this mishmash is beyond me. The home office has been one of the major products of the pandemic if you are lucky enough to have enough room to accommodate one.
My wife’s home office, which is part of the master bedroom suite, has a desk overlooking the back garden, a sofa, a bed for the dog, who serves as her unpaid assistant (actually, he sleeps most of the day until it is time to eat), and all that “cottagecore” stuff – two trends covered at once is real efficiency.
Mine is a virtual palace (in the basement, but the pool table is right outside), with a desk I made myself and the necessary sofa for thinking deep thoughts. Actually, I think deeply before and after the afternoon nap.
I have said this before, but I cannot emphasize enough the role the home office is playing and will play in our society as we move out of the pandemic and into some semblance of normality.
Every survey I have read in the last three months has shown that both employers and employees do not see a complete return to the corporate office. A report on one of those surveys I read in The Washington Post recently said that only 13 percent of workers wanted to return to the office full-time when it was safe to do so, while the rest said they would be willing to go either part-time or not at all.
You would think employers would be pushing for a return, but there has been a sea change among corporate management over the last 15 months after having discovered that workers are generally more productive at home, especially eliminating commuting time and not having to rush home to pick up the kids.
Zoom has become the conference room of choice, as tiring as that can be after the fourth two-hour meeting of the day.
Finally, I do not know if the ghosts of the CE Shop have their icy fingers on the pulse of the real estate market, but the pandemic coupled with the lack of inventory for sale has increased the amount of time people are living in the same house – some for 20 years or more.
As home prices continue to climb, moving is becoming increasingly burdensome for Americans and their wallets. Prices surged 15 percent last year,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “Consequently, a lot of families are opting to refinance their mortgages, so they can benefit from record-low interest rates without putting their houses up for sale.”
That is good news for the remodeling industry. People are not moving, so they need to expand, change, and improve, and refinancing will give them the money to pay for it.
The pandemic also has delayed senior citizens moving into retirement communities, since COVID-19 outbreaks and resulting deaths appeared to be extremely high in these places early on. This means seniors will need to make changes in their current homes to help them “age in place.”
Those who will be moving leave behind houses that need considerable updating, which is another plus for the remodeling industry (and bad news for all ghost inhabitants.)