Five Simple Upgrades for your Rancher
Email To Friend | share this article | Posted on March 18th in General Remodel by Renee.
With your Ranch style home, you enjoy a casual living style and a simple, open floor plan. Your home has more than livability, though. It’s flexible, too. Some may argue that Ranch style is too utilitarian, even soulless. However, each homeowner brings a special touch to make their home unique, and while the Rancher lacks ornamentation, its rambling spaces make for many possibilities! Here are five to get you started.
Rediscover your floor
How are Ranchers designed? With wall-to-wall carpet. Carpeting is comfortable and versatile, but can also host stains and make your home appear outdated. Here’s a tip: the carpet in your Rancher was likely installed over hardwood. Remove the carpet in key living areas or in every room, and refinish your wood floors. You’ll find a brand new interior waiting for you.
Make it flow
Ranch style homeowners enjoy the advantage of multiple family areas, separate sleeping quarters for a quiet nap, and easy access to the outdoors. Emphasize your home’s layout all the more by increasing spaces. Most Ranch style homes have no interior load-bearing walls, so you can remove borders for even greater flow from one room to the next. Remove a wall between the kitchen and dining room to expand the heart of your home, or remove the barrier between den and family room for an expansive home theater.
Upgrade your thresholds
When it comes to the flow between rooms, or between your outdoor patio and den, doors make it happen. A classic fixture in the Ranch style home: a boring, traditional sliding door leading to the backyard. The yard is one of your home’s best features. Try replacing the sliding door with French doors to make a more dramatic entrance or exit. Or, install a new front door with carved wood trim, smoky glass panels, or decorative hardware.
Emphasize natural wood highlights
Ranchers come with some unexpected detail: vaulted, beamed ceilings, rustic trim, crown molding. Enhance what you’ve got by stripping and refinishing wood paneling, or try painting your molding in a lighter shade.
Add on
Just as you can extend your living area by removing walls, you can easily add on to the elongated shape of the Ranch style home. Additions are one of the most popular remodeling requests on the menu, and this home accommodates sizing adjustments well. Perhaps you want to convert the garage into an indoor gym, or minimize your landscaping work by converting yard space into an attached sunroom. Maybe you’re looking for something simpler, like a walk-in closet in your master bath. The choices are limitless.
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April 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
[…] for this location. Other popular additions consist of extra bedrooms. While some home types, like Ranchers, are particularly conducive to the addition, Dahl says no home type should be excluded from the […]