Home means different things to different people, and how you approach your living space is as unique as the family you grew up with. Today, home remodeling goes much further than expanding spaces or updating kitchens and baths for functionality and style. Renovation projects can help customize a home to better fit a family's individual culture while helping to improve its resale value, too, according to the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI).

Loraine Masterton, director of marketing and community relations for Parrish Construction in Boulder, Colo. , says there are many ways homes can be remodeled to accommodate the special cultural, physical and aesthetic needs of a family. "We do very personal and customized projects that rely on us listening deeply to our clients needs," Masterton said. In fact, Parrish Construction recently won a 2008 CotY Award for a residential design project it completed for a Japanese-American family. The goal was to blend Japanese culture with the family's need for more space.

Despite having a large, three-bedroom home, the family felt cramped with three generations living under the same roof. The family had recently invited their grandmother, MammaSan, to move to the from , and she missed the traditional amenities of Japanese homes as well as her privacy,

The head of the household wanted to make his mother's immigration to as comfortable for her as possible, both physically and culturally. This meant renovating the family home to accommodate Japanese building and living traditions while incorporating aging-in-place design details that would enable his elderly mother to live comfortably. In addition, the family ran a music school in their basement and needed a way to separate studio foot traffic from their personal living spaces. To address all these concerns, Parrish Construction designed a plan that expanded the home, improved traffic flow and used Japanese design as a key inspiration.

First, Parrish added a 628-foot addition that fulfilled two requirements, both cultural: no doorways could face north (to enter from the North is bad luck in Japanese tradition), and rooms needed to let in as much natural light as possible.