Moving With Young Children

Moving is a highly stressful and chaotic period for any body. For children in their preschool-age years, however, moving can be quite confusing. There are steps you can take before, during, and after the move to help young kids make the transition.

Before the move

Parenting Magazine suggests in its July 2011 issue that chatting regularly about the move with your kids before it happens helps them get used to the idea. Psychologist and author of Moving With Children Tom Olkowski suggests showing the children photos of the new house, neighborhood, school, and yard ahead of time.

During the move

In this phase of the moving process, many kids are terrified of losing beloved items such as teddy bears or blankets. To help them feel more comfortable, give them a backpack for moving day filled with their favorite possessions and a snack or two.

After the move

While it is tempting to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of unpacking and decorating, it is important to remember and keep up with regular family routines. This will help your children during the transition.

“Preschoolers adjust fairly quickly with support from parents, meeting new playmates, getting settled in a new preschool, and learning their way around a new house,” said Dr. Olkowski.

How to Ready Your Walls for Paint or Paper

Brian Santos, The Wall Wizard, gives this advice:

1. Clean the surface. Buy a 90-percent pure solution of rubbing alcohol and a self-wringing sponge mop with a scrubbing strip. Put a half gallon into a bucket and scrub the walls with an up-and-down motion. Wring the mop into an empty bucket so the solution isn’t contaminated.

Rubbing alcohol will remove dirt, fingerprints, cooking grease, nicotine stains and crayon.

2. Smooth the surface. Darken the room and put a halogen work light ($15) on the floor next to the wall. Use a wall board sanding strip to remove anything that shows up.

To fill any depression, use a vinyl surfacing compound and a drywall knife to smooth it out.

Tap in nail heads and use the compound to fill the holes and depressions made by hammer strikes.

3. Apply the first coat. Use a sealer over any remaining stains, mold, mildew, and porous surfaces, such as unpainted plaster or drywall and large areas of joint compound or patching plaster. Use a primer on all other surfaces.

If the top coat will be paint, have the primer tinted to match the finish color so you don’t have to apply a second coat.

Homes With Vivid Color Schemes: New Trend?

Most homes are painted subdued colors such as white, grey, and beige. Some homeowners, however, have taken their love of color and infused their houses with it.

While the extreme color schemes are an acquired taste, listing prices certainly speak well for the homes, including a $1.95 million dollar price tag for the North Carolina home pictured here.

Other homes featured in this Yahoo News article have listing prices as high as $14.5 million.

Could you see yourself in a home this colorful?

Eccentric Homes Made From Zany Materials

While traditional homes are at the forefront of most homebuyers’ minds, some homeowners go to extremes by using unconventional material for their homes.

Seen in places all over the world, airplane fuselages have been repurposed into homes. The home on the left uses teak paneling from the cockpit to the tail of this vintage Boeing 727 plane.

Anything goes when it comes to unconventional homebuilding – one artist has created a “luxury” home out of a dumpster in Berkeley, California. Repurposed silos are also common for this type of creation.

To see more wacky homes, read the Yahoo article here.

Can Baby Boomers Boost the Market?

Baby Boomers – those between the ages of 47 to 65 – are in the best position to buy real estate that they’ve been in in years, according to a spokesperson for the National Association of Realtors, and could help revive the real estate market.

According to the Housing Affordability Index, affordability is at an all-time high, and many baby-boomers already have solid home equity to rely on.

The spokesperson said in an AOL Real Estate article that “the roadblock is really with first-time buyers… and many of them are being thwarted by credit issues.”

The article cites two major reasons that the baby boomer generation may boost the real estate market: that home equity, and a desire for ease of living factored into their real estate purchases.

A survey done by Met Life Mature Market Institute and National Association of Home Builders showed that 61% of those moving in to a 55+ community cited room layout as a decision-maker, as did 62% of those not moving into such a community, but in non-age-restricted communities. The vast majority of the generation falls in the second category, but the percentages are almost identical.

Room layout and the ease of living asks are not shared as a top priority with younger and first-time buyers.

For more information on how the baby boomer generation may impact the real estate market, read the full article here.