Home Remodeling Blog

Chicago’s North Shore area is characterized by charming, historic streets lined with gorgeous homes. Bordering Lake Michigan, you can find the neighborhoods of Evanston, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, Lake Forest, and Lake Bluff. Just inland, you’ll find Glenview, Northbrook, Deerfield, Vernon Hills, and Northfield. Each of these neighborhoods has their own unique attractions. Today, we’ll highlight six of our favorites: Libertyville, Wilmette, Lake Forest, Winnetka, Highland Park, and Glenview.

Asking how long a home remodel will take is a little bit like asking how long it will take to drive from one side of Chicago to the other. The answer, of course, is that it depends on a number of factors, such as the time of day, the traffic, and, of course, the exact locations where you begin and finish. In the same way, knowing how long a remodel takes depends on which room you’re remodeling, the scope of your project, and your contractor’s process. As contractors who have “driven the route” multiple times, however, we can give general guidelines for popular renovations, as well as a window into our design build process to help you estimate the timeline of your Chicago North Shore Area remodel.

If 2018 was the year that saw a surge in technology in the home, 2019 is the year that stylistically balances that trend. In saying this, we’re certainly not saying there’ll be a decrease in home tech in the coming year; rather, we’re saying that 2019’s trending materials, styles, colors, patterns, etc. all reintroduce biophilic elements that balance our increasingly tech-centric lifestyles. After consulting some of today’s leading home remodeling and decorating authorities like Elle Decor, Decor Aid, House Beautiful, and Realtor.com, here’s our synthesis of what’s trending in 2019.

The holidays are a joyful time spent with family and friends cherishing our shared time and memories. But they can also be dangerous if you're not managing your home safety seasonally or annually. We want you to enjoy your holidays without having to think twice about your home's safety.

Winter is just around the corner! In fact, it's already begun snowing in some parts of the Midwest. In Chicago's North Shore, we tend not to get snow quite yet, but it's still critically important to make sure your home is ready for that first deep freeze. We've put together four tips that you can do today to make sure your home is ready for a Chicago winter.

One of the most common complaints during a home remodeling project is dust. It's easy for dust to spread throughout an entire home - no matter what room is being remodeled. At BDS, we actively take steps to prevent spreading dust throughout your whole home - and here are our top strategies for limiting dust.

As summer turns to fall, homeowners are returning from vacations, settling into work routines and school schedules, and quite likely considering the projects they wish they’d had time to tackle during the summer. But there’s good news--it isn’t too late. While many people assume that summer is the ideal season to address house improvements, the truth is that each season has its own advantage when it comes to remodeling in the Chicago North Shore area. Today, we’ll take a look at the unique remodeling opportunities for spring, summer, fall, and winter.

We recently wrote about products that benefit both your checkbook and the environment by saving energy, water, and money. But installing environmentally-friendly appliances, water fixtures, and materials is only the start to going green. The next step to going green relates to the aesthetic marriage of your home with its topographical environment. Let’s talk about some of the basic best practices for renovating your home to blend better with surrounding nature in the Chicago North Shore area. 

When some people think of the phrase “going green,” they think of a massive lifestyle change that mandates a shift toward complex routines and constant effort. In the world of green homes, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Installing these few products we talk about in this post will cost little effort up front and generate long-term monetary gains in the future without ongoing maintenance. Since renovating a home entails appliance replacement most of the time anyway, it’s the perfect time to invest in green products in your Chicago home. Here are the top ways we recommend saving energy, water, and money.

You may not be able to define the term “Internet of Things” for someone else, but you’ve certainly experienced and interacted with it in your daily life. To understand the concept of IoT and its effect on modern house improvements in the Chicago North Shore area, we’ll first give a bit of context to its evolution.