Father's Day is a great time for simple, homemade gifts that mean a lot to Dad. The Necktie pillow is my favorite! (Except we don’t wear a lot of neck times on Cape Cod!).
Here's a great article outlining what baby Boomers are looking for in their retirement home. Fortunately, you can find all these amenities in REEF-Built homes!
Here’s one Realtor’s report of actual sales in Eastham. Bob does a great job of analyzing his neck-of-the-woods, and helping us all understand how the Cape is fairing.
Please let us know when you’re ready to fix up or build your Cape Cod “sand castle”. We’d be happy to help.
Whether you seek a seasonal escape big enough to accommodate family and friends, or have dreaming of a comfortable retirement home on Cape Cod, we can turn your tired cottage into a wonderfully inviting place to enjoy life.
Homes we build for our Customers are great sources of pride. Substantial planning, financial commitment, and lots of anticipation make for long term celebrations by our Customers when they move in to their new Cape Cod home.
Same old, same old is no fun. Although REEF homes contain the spaces required and desired for comfortable living, we are always looking for new and different ideas to add some fun, and make spaces unique.
Often we are asked to maximize the space available on a parcel of land. It always seems that friends visit when you have a place on Cape Cod, so people need to accommodate extended family and friends. Space is usually at a premium, so we find ourselves designing to fit as much fun as possible into new homes.
The Cape Cod look: hydrangeas, privet hedges, shingles and clapboard…and gravel driveways. Many of our Customers are not interested in a paved driveway. This is Cape Cod after all, where lifestyle is important, and people come to relax. So a nice bluestone driveway is very popular.
Old houses on Cape Cod hark back to “the days of yore.” These antiques are nice to see on a casual walk or drive, and we work diligently with some Customers to modify and renovate the buildings so they can accommodate today’s lifestyles. Frequently the changes and modifications that Customers request cannot be accommodated in the existing structure. Houses that were built 40, 50, 60 years ago usually can’t support the additional loads, or meet today’s building codes. Replacing the old home with a new Cape Cod style home is often more cost effective.
We all love outdoor spaces during a Cape Cod summer. Often when we replace dilapidated cottages with new homes on small lots, outdoor entertaining space can shrink a bit. Making the most of limited space for casual dining and relaxing is very important to many of our Customers.
“and I’d like to have two living rooms”. Increasingly our Customers are trying to accommodate an extended family, or frequent visitors, at their new Cape Cod home. Multiple living spaces are important.
One of the great benefits of building homes for people is the people. When you spend as much time as the REEF team does with each one of our Customers, you get to know folks very well.
Some say there is no Spring on Cape Cod. “You wake up one day, and it’s summer.” That said, Spring is happening on the Cape, and the real estate market is happening too.
This year, we here at REEF have had several requests for homes designed with two master bedrooms. This is a growing trend for Cape Cod Homes as one generation moves towards retirement, and looks to design a home that can accommodate either an aging parent or visiting children and their families.
Kitchens are the hub of the home, but everyone uses them differently and has a style all their own. Every day we work with Customers to design their kitchens around their lifestyle. We developed some surprisingly simple solutions to storage and access challenges.
Now that your Cape Cod Cottage is complete, and you're looking forward to settling in for the summer (and beyond!), it’s time for the really fun stuff. Creating and planting the landscape around your home is truly enjoyable for many, and it brings value to your home for years to come.
A picture tells a thousand words. So a video must tell…a million! One of the prides of the team here at REEF Builders, is the relationships we have with our Customers. When we build a house for someone, we live the project together. For about a year we are in constant communication. Our Customers rely on us, and we take that trust very seriously.
Cape Cod is a collection of 15 Towns, each with its own Boards, Commissions, Assessors, Zoning Ordinances and Bylaws. Navigating the various entities that control or influence what can be built and where is expertise that REEF has developed over decades. It’s also a small peninsula. The amount of real estate is finite. “They’re not making any more of it,” so frequently we are asked to design a home to fit on a specific lot. In fact, that’s one of our real points of expertise.
Sometimes landscaping really brings a home alive. We often suggest to our Customers to let us do the heavy stuff: moving earth, building walls, creating lawns. Then they can enjoy doing the fun stuff, like planting flower gardens, small shrubs, etc.
Many of our projects begin to come to life this time of year. Most of our Customers want to use their Cape Cod homes as sum retreats, so we have them built, ready and clean before the Memorial Day weekend.
Spring on Cape Cod is a very special time. The bulbs are peeking out, and people are gearing up for the summer. Our projects are in full swing, and many of the homes we are building will be finished and delivered before the summer begins.
Once you’re settled into your Cape Cod home, spending time on creating a beautiful backyard landscape can be very rewarding. There are myriad opportunities for color and texture, and discovering new plants and flowers to accent your space as the seasons change can be challenging.
We're always looking for ways to help our customers maximize the enjoyment of their Cape Cod Home. Many of the homes we build enjoy water views, and even waterfront. Water is always an enjoyable feature around a home.
Recently we have had several customers ensure that their new Cape Cod home design has good space for a home office. As the kids grow up and move away, often that extra bedroom becomes a space for working out of the home.
Every day we talk with people who are interested in creating a more modern, comfortable, usable and enjoyable space on their Cape Cod home site. Invariably money and finances enter the discussion. Affording and financing the new home is an important part of the equation. With the cost of financing at record lows, combined with ever-increasing construction costs…”There’s no time like the present” to get your Cape Cod project underway. Additionally, new building codes are expected to go into effect this summer, with new energy efficiency requirements pushing costs up further.
We've got some beautiful kitchens under construction right now. Imagine enjoying a relaxing time with friends and family in your dream kitchen...we make that dream come true for our Customers!
So St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner, and this year REEF entered its first float in the Cape Cod St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dennis and Yarmouth. We had a lot of fun, and enjoyed seeing a lot of our customers at the parade.
Whether you’re building your dream kitchen from the ground up, or re-facing existing cabinets, the choice of cabinet pulls and knobs is important. These small parts play a vital role in the function of your cabinetry, and can really help set the tone for the heart of your home.
So, every year, some new products are invented for the Building, Remodeling and Renovation business. This year, at the International Builder's Show in Las Vegas, Kohler introduced a shower head that doubles a as a remote bluetooth speaker for your smartphone.
What a great story: Husband promises a Cape Cod summer to his Wife as birthday gift…then they buy the home they’re renting…then they replace it with a beautiful new Cape Cod home!
Home Remodeling Magazine was so impressed with this REEF home, it became a feature article. We took a 400 square foot cottage built in 1942, and turned it into a wonderfully special summer home, right on the Barnstable Harbor beach.
Here's a bungalow near Mayflower Beach that we were asked to replace. Our design team created a 4 Bedroom home with 3 Full Baths and 1 Half Bath to fit on the small lot.
2012 was a turnaround year for the Cape Cod real estate market. Sotheby’s International Realty has several offices here on the Cape, and they do a great job with statistics and market analysis. Here is their recap of the 2012 market, illustrating a growing demand for real estate on Cape Cod.