Carey Frankel's Blog: All Categories

If clutter is taking over your Ponte Vedra Beach Home, don’t despair. There are many, great ways to tame clutter through reorganization and storage. Best of all, most storage and reorganization solutions are inexpensive and easy to do.

Most Ponte Vedra Beach homeowners are bombarded with clutter in the most lived-in rooms of the home, including the living room, the kitchen and the family room.

Kitchens

Your kitchen is best served when it is free of clutter. Therefore, if your kitchen cupboards are crammed full, and your countertops are hidden under mounds of appliances, mail and dishes, then it’s time to think reorganization.

First, purge your countertops and cupboards and examine which items you can throw away or donate. If storage is an issue in…

The exterior of your home is your home’s first impression, so if you plan on selling your St. Augustine property, it may be time to spruce up your home’s stucco exterior.

Stucco is a popular choice for exteriors in Florida, as well as other parts of the country, because it is durable, easy to apply and cost-effective. And luckily, there are a variety of things you can do to make your stucco exterior look brand new.

• Repair it – Brush on an elastomeric sealant to fill in large cracks (anything larger than the width of a credit card). Larger cracks may need to be repaired by a professional. Keep the patched area shaded, if possible, during the drying phase, as sealants that dry too quickly do not bond as well. In addition, do…

Conveniently located near historic, downtown St. Augustine, and off of SR 16 and Masters Drive, Ravenswood Forest is a small community of single-family homes, all of which boast high-end amenities and quiet, natural surroundings.

The 134 homes of Ravenswood Court enjoy a beautiful location along a lake and conservation area, and are located beside a large, community park. A great array of restaurants and shopping centers are all merely minutes away, as are the beautiful, powder-white beaches of St. Augustine.

The homes of Ravenswood Forest are built to maximize space and decrease building costs, which means that homeowners receive a great value. Each home has been designed for maximum energy efficiency, convenience and comfort.

The single-family homes…

The excitement about your new Jacksonville Beach home may be cut short when you receive your first energy bill. With energy costs soaring, and worries about the environment on many people’s minds, lowering our energy bills is important not only for our pocketbook, but for the environment, as well.

Luckily, there are many things that we can do to help lower our energy costs, especially during the warmest summer months.

Moving into your new Ponte Vedra Beach property can be quite exciting and overwhelming, but it is important to remember that home safety should come first when prioritizing your “to do” list.

Use the following tips as your guide when implementing your home safety checklist for your new Ponte Vedra Beach home:

• Heating/Cooling Equipment – Contact a qualified HVAC technician to thoroughly check your heating and cooling equipment and to make sure they are safe and properly functioning. Among the safety checks the technician will perform include a carbon monoxide test for your furnace.


• Fire Extinguisher – Purchase a new fire extinguisher for, at the very minimum, every floor of your Ponte Vedra Beach home.…

The relationship with your real estate agent is an important one, as you will often need to confer about many different subjects, problems and situations along the way regarding your Jacksonville Beach home.

Your real estate agent’s job is to obviously sell your Jacksonville Beach home, but that doesn’t mean that your work is done. A strong relationship with your real estate agent will prove useful as you discuss strategies and ideas regarding the sale of your home.

What you can do:

• Keep the lines of communication open between you and your real estate agent. Ask him or her to provide you with weekly updates, and plan to frequently reassess your strategy. Your real estate agent will likely provide you with his or her “plan of…

If the thought of tackling the many home improvement projects in your Ponte Vedra Beach home are overwhelming you, then consider all of the DIY projects that you can do today to increase your home’s value and make it a more comfortable, attractive place in which to live.

Even if you don’t have a considerable amount of home improvement experience, the following projects are ideal for beginners who want to get their hands dirty and their home in tip-top shape!

• Pressure washing – Pressure washing is a great way to clean off and brighten up a number of outdoor surfaces. Outdoor siding, gutters, shutters and trim can all benefit from a good washing, and a pressure washer is the easiest tool to accomplish this task. A pressure…

If you’ve ever heard someone say that a home is a great tax break, they’re not kidding! As a homeowner, there are many tax breaks you can get from your Ponte Vedra home at tax time, so be prepared to take advantage of owning a home when filing your federal income taxes!

The following tax breaks should be considered when preparing your year-end tax return:

• Mortgage Loan Interest – All those payments you’ve made on your Ponte Vedra home over the last year are now paying off in the form of a sweet tax-deduction, considering that the majority of your mortgage payment in a loan’s early years goes toward the loan’s interest.

Your paid mortgage loan interest is tax deductible, both on your first and second home. Don’t forget that…