This photo in the property of:
Joyce Rey of Coldwell Banker Previews International in Beverly Hills, Calif

Luxury Real Estate Is Selling-
Renovation in luxury homes will bring them to market with great value and sell faster for more money.

“Built by Paul Williams in 1941, this Hollywood estate was originally the home of Bert Lahr, also known as the Cowardly Lion from the 1939 hit movie musical “The Wizard of Oz.” The gated, private property, which consisted of 6,000 square feet and four bedrooms when Lahr moved in, now boasts 12,000 square feet, eight bedrooms and 10 baths.  The home is being listed by Joyce Rey of Coldwell Banker Previews International in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Recently remodeled, the home emulates a Connecticut- or Hampton-style residence, full of spacious rooms and rich ambience. The main house contains two master suites, two staff quarters, seven bathrooms and three powder rooms, a large living area with high-vaulted ceilings, a three-car garage, a media room with a wet bar and a wine cellar, all sitting on approximately 1.3 acres.

There’s also plenty of outdoor space to entertain guests. An outdoor kitchen can be found on one of the abundant, large terraces along with a pool, spa, tennis court, koi pond, sports court, putting green, game room and two-lane vintage style bowling alley. The separate guest home has its own entrance and offers two bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a two-car garage of its own.

Whoever buys this beautiful compound will love it for its utmost privacy and maybe even for its lineage of Hollywood legacy—the home was also previously owned by Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Paul McCartney, and Betty Grable, to name a few.

There really is no place like home!”

Contact Frank Guido:
Luxury Renovation and Remodeling Expert
FGC@GenevaOnline.com
800-944-1942

Article printed from RISMedia: http://rismedia.com

URL to article: http://rismedia.com/2013-04-16/great-spaces-home-fit-for-a-lion/

Well ok, just a little more…..

It’s ok if you’re a shower lover you can still be a bath lover to!

Check out these gorgeous bathtubs! Great ideas to get you started.
Frank Guido Construction can make your dream bath a reality!

[flagallery gid=2 w=400 h=300 name=Gallery]

Photos From: http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/query/Luxury-Saunas

Contact Frank Guido:
FGC@GenevaOnline.com
800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built and restored luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Being Seasonal with your pool decorations is critical when your home is up for sale!

“In the home-sale study, the best month to list depends on how hot or cold your local market is, Prof. Pope says. But generally speaking, early spring is best in order to snag those late summer buyers.

Jim Getzinger, a real-estate agent with Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty, says he sees an uptick in interest in homes with pools in the summer.

During winter months, sellers need to pay extra attention to make the pool look appealing, he says. He advises sellers to keep pools as clean as possible and set up cushions and décor “even if it’s 20 degrees.” He also recommends dressing up a pool area with Christmas lights and heaters to draw attention. “A pool can look just as attractive in the winter on a clear, cold day if you put the right elements out there to enhance it,” he says.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323628804578348764099184402.html

Read the WSJ article…great ideas and let me know how I can help!

Contact Frank Guido:
FGC@GenevaOnline.com
800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built and restored luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Watch the video below-

Contact Frank Guido:
FGC@GenevaOnline.com
800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built and restored luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

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Frank Guido Construction
Luxury Home Builder

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Contact Frank Guido:
FGC@GenevaOnline.com
800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built and restored luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

www.FrankGuidoConstruction.com

Even before dawn breaks, workers at the lumberyard in Lynwood, Calif., were bustling around, getting a move on the day. Men in yellow safety vests drove flatbed trucks stacked to the brim with planks of wood.

Others were buzzing around in forklifts, ferrying more boards.

It’s a scene that had John Cencak smiling in satisfaction and relief. After years of anxiously waiting for the economy to rebound, the vice president of Jones Wholesale Lumber Cos. is seeing an upswing.

“You see this new truck?” Cencak said as he pointed to a glossy Freightliner truck, its white and green paint gleaming even in the dark. “We just bought three of them. That’s a half-million-dollar investment. It’s all part of the economic recovery.”

Thanks to a housing rebound in which new homes and apartments are being built, California’s timber industry is slowly on the mend after being devastated during the economic downturn.

Sawmills that cut timber into boards are reopening and hiring again. Truck companies that haul that wood out of state are revving up. Lumber prices have soared more than 40 percent over last year.

“The last few years have been a slow recovery from the recession for wood products,” said Phil Tedder, a forestry consultant at Resource Economics. “The main consumer was new housing, and that obviously wasn’t very good. But now things are picking up.”

Sierra Pacific Industries, one of the biggest timber companies in the country, has hired 140 lumberjacks, machinists and electricians for its reopened sawmill in Sonora, Calif., after closing it in 2009 when the housing market crashed. An additional 26 jobs were added at a mill in Chinese Camp, Calif.

“It’s a combination of new housing and repairs and remodels,” said Mark Pawlicki, spokesman for the Anderson, Calif., company, which operates 11 mills in the state. “The low interest rates for housing are helping. We are seeing an uptick in demand for windows, a lot of which go into remodels of homes.”

Jones Wholesale’s sales plummeted 50 percent in 2009 compared with three years earlier. It laid off nearly 20 workers — the first layoffs in its 89-year history. It also cut back on contractors that provided cleaning and security work.

“During the recession, we said we had to work twice as hard and make half as much,” Cencak said.

But things appeared to be turning around as the company’s 17-acre lot hummed with activity.

Workers hustled through the yard and swarmed around tall stacks of wood, which are unloaded, cut, stored and then reloaded onto trucks. The brightening outlook prompted the company to hire 10 workers last year. Now two or three times a week, trucks carry lumber all the way to Las Vegas, up from once a month in 2009. Workers have received promotions and long-overdue pay raises.

Cencak said sales in 2013 are projected to be 15 percent to 18 percent above last year’s, thanks in part to banks’ greater willingness to extend loans to businesses and home buyers.

“Everyone is gearing up,” he said. “The banks didn’t want to touch the industry for a while. Now they are picking up our calls.”

That’s welcome news for workers like Edgar Herrera, 33, who expects to be hired soon as an assistant dispatcher after working there four months through a temporary agency. After more than a year of unemployment during the recession, the Bellflower, Calif., resident said he’s glad just to be getting a job, much more one that comes with health insurance.

“It’s really a big stress off your back to finally land something solid,” Herrera said. “After I had to extend unemployment the first time, I was really worried.”

But not everyone is betting on a cheery future.

Logging companies complain of environmental regulations that they say strangle the industry in California and contributed to a decades-long decline. Some gripe that new legislation signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown last year — which was designed to protect the state’s timber companies by restricting legal damages for wildfires — won’t stop the slow decline of an old Golden State industry.

In the past decade, Berry’s Sawmill and Lumberyard in Cazadero, Calif., has laid off nearly 75 percent of its workforce, said general manager Bruce Berry. A recent uptick in sales has yet to prove sustainable.

“There is some positive stuff happening,” Berry said. “We’ll see if it continues.”

Article printed from RISMedia: http://rismedia.com

URL to article: http://rismedia.com/2013-03-20/lumberyards-bustling-as-housing-market-improves/

Frank Guido

FGC@GenevaOnline.com

800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built and restored luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Victorian Mansion

What’s in a name when it comes to the homes built by famous architects? Answer:  Extraordinary Quality.  People are willing to pay for superior quality. Extraordinary architectural quality does stand the test of time. Today, we are bringing mansions and luxury homes forward and restoring their inherit richness and integrity… what was intended to be both ‘The Belle of The Ball’ and ‘Home Sweet Home’.  If there is ever anyone who knows about extraordinary quality restoration, it is Frank Guido.

Read The Article From Wall Street Journal:  ‘Dead Architects Society’

Nancy Keats called her article, The Dead Architects Society and was indeed correct. The resurgence of restoring famous architectural and otherwise luxury homes is on the rise, “Now, newly minted billionaires are buying the originals: In 2010, software billionaire Larry Ellison paid $10.5 million for the Beechwood Mansion, which was restored in 1881 by architect Richard Morris Hunt, in Newport, R.I.; that same year, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim bought the Duke Mansion, designed in 1901 by Alexander Welch, on Fifth Avenue in New York for $44 million.” NANCY KEATES, Read The WSJ Article Here

Frank Guido

FGC@GenevaOnline.com

800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built and restored luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

“Residential architects are reporting that home sizes are beginning to turn around, particularly for custom and luxury homes.”
The American Institute of Architects

This is a very informative read:

Residential architects report the most improvement in business conditions since the beginning of the housing downturn

By Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA

The long and steep housing downturn appears to be coming to an end. Residential architects are reporting that home sizes are beginning to turn around, particularly for custom and luxury homes, as well as in the market for additions to existing homes. Making homes more accessible for an aging population and using the space more flexibly are key home design considerations. Lot sizes remain under considerable pressure, although this may be easing. Outdoor living remains popular, and with that has come more interest in property enhancements such as low-irrigation landscaping.

- See more at: http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB095115#sthash.yqeixW4x.dpuf

Frank Guido

FGC@GenevaOnline.com

800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

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Kitchens and Bathrooms are still a very strong area for remodeling considerations. “According to Remodeling magazine, a kitchen renovation remains a fairly good bet when it comes to recouping the cost of the investment. The latest data show that a minor kitchen renovation recoups 75 percent of the cost, while a major one recaptures 70 percent.

Other projects have higher return on investments, like the replacement vinyl siding and the addition of a deck. Overall, remodeling projects are netting a higher return on investment, the magazine found.

The 2013 national average return on investment for all projects is expected to be 60 percent. That’s 3 percent higher than for 2011-12, and ends a six-year decline.”*1

Remodeling Magazine also reported that “seven of the top 10 high value projects in this year’s report are siding-, window-, and entry door- or garage door-replacement projects that collectively generate an above-average cost-value ratio of 74.6%.”*2 This is a very  worthy article to read from Remodeling Magazine ‘2013 Cost vs. Value Report Lower costs and stabilizing house prices bump the cost-value ratio up a notch’

Frank Guido

FGC@GenevaOnline.com

800-944-1942

Frank Guido Construction has built luxury custom homes in Chicago’s most prestigious North Shore communities along with highly sought after areas of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

*1 Jennifer Huges: The Report, http://www.northjersey.com/realestate/191574541_Renovation__remodeling_to_see_banner_year_in_2013.html
*2 Sal Alfano: Remodeling Magazine, http://www.remodeling.hw.net/remodeling-market-data/2013-cost-vs-value-report.aspx

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