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If you’re looking to spend it on your home, the typical tax refund is no great windfall. It won’t cover a kitchen revamp or a solar system installation.

The average refund through early April was $2,851, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The California Franchise Board typically gave back about $850.

Almost any remodeling job requires more than a paltry $3,700. Even adding a deck can set you back more than $13,000, according to Remodeling’s online Cost Vs. Value report.

Still, that refund check could come in handy around the house.

It may not get you a makeover. But it can give you a marketing edge.

It can pay for modest home fixes to spruce up your property before you put it up for sale. Even if you’re staying put, it can turn a loathsome eyesore into eye candy. It can help you splurge on a trend.

Here are a few ways to improve – or indulge – on even a skimpy sum.

BRING THE BLING

The market is hot, home prices are up and interest rates are still low. Thinking of making a move?

“I would focus on increasing the ‘bling’ in the house to capture the attention of buyers,” said Ryan Lundquist, a Sacramento real estate appraiser.

He reeled off some smaller-ticket examples: New light fixtures, a few ceiling fans, an updated kitchen faucet, switch plates and some fresh paint in the living room. Even a new mailbox out front.

In all, you’ll be giving your home a more polished presentation, said Lundquist, who writes a lively blog to educate consumers about all things related to the housing market.

“In contrast, I could spend $3,700 on brand new insulation,” he said in an interview. “But focusing on what buyers can readily see instead is a better way to get higher offers.”

However, adding cosmetic improvements to make your home more appealing doesn’t mean it will eventually appraise for more, even if it may appear that way on reality TV.

“That’s not how the real world works,” Lundquist said.

TRENDING NOW

A stroll through HD Buttercup at the SoCo Collection in Costa Mesa revealed some items pronounced drool-worthy in House Beautiful’s 2017 home design forecast.

For one, you can embrace what the editors call hygge – pronounced hoo-ga – a trendy Danish concept that translates roughly to a cozy feeling, by purchasing one of the large, soft throws adorning sofas all over the sprawling store.

A white, furry-looking one for $125 would just take a nibble out of that tax refund.

That would leave plenty of money left over for furniture with nailhead accents, or something covered in what designers say is also popular these days: Benjamin Moore’s 2017 color of the year, Shadow. (Yeah, we had to ask, too. It’s a deep purple.)

Nearby at Pirch, a kitchen and bathroom showroom, we found a sleek, oversized kitchen faucet that would eat up the whole $3,700 refund – and then some.

But, as salesman Jon Brown (whose business card reads “Advisor, Lifestyle Experiences”) noted, “It’s a statement all by itself.”

The Gantry faucet, with an “articulated” spout (it moves a couple of different ways), goes for $3,895.

We also saw a Coyote grill priced at about $2,500 with exact spots designated for beef, chicken or vegetables.

In the bath section, shower heads in the shape of large water drops were grouped together. They cost $1,500 each, Brown said, and people typically like to buy them as a trio.

“It’s a piece of art,” he said. “Plus a functional fixture.”

SECURITY CHECK

You’ll probably never come anywhere near to affording the James Bond-like set-up at “The Fortress,” a seven bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills that recently wowed readers of The Wall Street Journal.

But do you really want to bother with a key fob for every room? And how often would you use a bulletproof plate that slides down from the ceiling?

You can put in a less intensive security system at your average castle for an affordable price.

PC Magazine’s Best Smart Home Security Systems of 2017 has an extensive round-up including a wide range of do-it-yourself products, professional services and reviews.

At home improvement stores like Home Depot, video doorbells, motion sensors and security cameras sell for just a few hundred dollars.

BOOST CURB APPEAL

Dean Zibas, like Lundquist, cites small fixes that can add up – especially outside your home.

“In general, it is typically best to just do an overall cosmetic improvement if one is looking for the best return,” said Zibas, a real estate appraiser based in San Clemente. “Put in some elbow grease. Buy some new plants at the local nursery or home improvement warehouse and spruce up the front landscaping.

“Most homes, I believe, can be repainted for less than $3,000, so perhaps get the house painted,” he said.

Install new window screens, and do minor repairs to the hardscape and planters yourself, Zibas added. And don’t stop at the curb.

“Carry that effort over to the side and rear yards,” he said.

If you think that’s too much DIY, or you won’t get enough of an ROI, there’s always another option.

You can do nothing.

Sock the money away. Add it to other savings to add a room someday or go full-on solar.

Over the years, tax refunds can add up. So can your home equity.

“The Fate of the Furious” sped into first place at the box office again, leaving the new thriller “Unforgettable” and the historical drama “The Promise” in the dust.

Universal Pictures’ eighth installment in “The Fast and the Furious” franchise earned $38.7 million in North American theaters over the weekend, down 61 percent from its debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The newcomers could not compete with the high-octane film, which had the biggest worldwide opening of all time last weekend. It has earned $908.4 million globally so far and is expected to cross $1 billion this week.

Holdovers dominated the charts on this quiet weekend in theaters. “The Boss Baby” took second place with $12.8 million, and “Beauty and the Beast” landed in third with $10 million.

Disney’s animal documentary “Born in China” opened in fourth place, with $5.1 million from 1,508 locations. The two other new movies fared worse.

Warner Bros. thriller “Unforgettable,” starring Katherine Heigl as a jealous ex-wife and Rosario Dawson as the new fiancee, opened at No. 7 with just $4.8 million. Critics were tough on the film, and audiences gave it a deathly C CinemaScore rating.

The directorial debut of longtime producer Denise Di Novi cost only $12 million to make, but the meager result still disappointed.

“Unfortunately, the movie just missed the intended audience,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros.’ president of domestic distribution. “We had higher expectations, and we’re disappointed we didn’t achieve them.”

There is a silver lining for the studio. The buddy comedy “Going in Style,” starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin, is chugging along after three weeks in theaters, taking fifth place with $5 million.

Meanwhile, the historical epic “The Promise,” starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, bombed with a mere $4.1 million from 2,251 theaters.

The movie delves into the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey that many countries and most historians call genocide. Turkey still denies genocide, saying the deaths stemmed from civil unrest and war.

It’s not a surprise that the film, estimated to have cost around $100 million to make, failed to gain traction, comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said.

“It didn’t really jump out as anything that would be a surprising box-office hit,” Dergarabedian said. “But it wasn’t really about the box office.”

Made outside the studio system and distributed by Open Road Films, the point of “The Promise” was to raise awareness around a global event that many know nothing about, he said.

Celebrities from Kim Kardashian West to Cher promoted the film on social media. Its makers said they will donate all proceeds to nonprofits and intend to use the PG-13-rated film as an education tool in schools.

“It was a tough weekend in general for the newcomers,” Dergarabedian said, noting that many moviegoers are likely saving up for “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” which hits theaters May 5.

“It’s a quiet period,” he added. “This is the interlude between the spring movie season and what promises to be the biggest summer movie season ever.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1.  “The Fate of the Furious,” $38.7 million ($163.4 million international).

2. “The Boss Baby,” $12.8 million ($30 million international).

3. “Beauty and the Beast,” $10 million ($22.9 million international).

4. “Born in China,” $5.1 million ($100,000 international).

5. “Going in Style,” $5 million ($4.6 million international).

6. “Smurfs: The Lost Village,” $4.9 million ($21.4 million international).

7. “Unforgettable,” $4.8 million ($1.7 million international).

8. “Gifted,” $4.5 million.

9. “The Promise,” $4.1 million.

10. “The Lost City of Z,” $2.1 million.

Amsale appeals to the fashion-forward bride looking for understatedly bold design, this season incorporating minimal flourishes with back and shoulder bows, beading and sheer accents. Standouts included a sleek silk magnolia bias with sculptural back bow, a two-piece set with a hand-beaded neckline, and an English knit ball gown with the airy effect of tulle.

Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.Read More…

Jenny Packham’s playfully kitsch circus-themed bridal collection was inspired by “The Falling,” a tale of captivating, otherworldly romance. The designer played with the idea of taking risks in love and applied gowns with bold red colors, oversized satin bows, embellished bodices and ostrich feathers for a more daring bride.

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You can count on Monique Lhuillier to deliver soft, ethereal fantasy gowns that also play to a traditional mind-set. After the show, the designer recounted, “I put myself back into that girl 21 years ago when I was shopping for my own wedding dress: I was looking for something that I didn’t have in my closet, and I wanted that dress that was a statement that would make me treasure the moment forever. It’s about going bigger, really focusing on the waist, and making sure it’s timeless.”

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“It should be very romantic and dreamy — it’s the most important day of the life of a woman, so there should be no trend — it should be timeless, totally timeless,” said Carolina Herrera at her spring show.

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ROYAL RACE: The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William joined Prince Harry to rally the runners participating at the London Marathon on Sunday.
All 40,000 runners taking part in the annual race were given Heads Together headbands to raise awareness about mental health, and many of them are raising money for the campaign.
Kate Middleton wore a black Heads Together jacket with black skinny jeans and sneakers.

The Duchess of Cambridge at the London Marathon. 
Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock

The Duchess of Cambridge at the London Marathon. 
MCKAY/EPA/REX/Shutterstock

The London Marathon begins at points in Greenwich Park, St. John’s Park and Shooter’s Hill. The route continues east then heads towards the City with Tower Bridge as the half-way mark. The runners will pass through Embankment then will complete the course at The Mall by Buckingham Palace.
The event is divided into categories with groups such as wheelchair participants, elite women and elite men, all with different start times. The mini-marathon, a three-mile race for young runners, begins first.
Heads Together is a mental health initiative spearheaded by the duchess, Prince William and Prince Harry. It aims to raise awareness around issues pertaining to mental illness.
The royal trio has been working hard to support the campaign. Last week the duke and duchess joined

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A new labor-backed study charges that California charter schools are opening schools where they aren’t needed, but parents — not special interests or governmental bodies — should be the final judges.

The report from In the Public Interest criticizes charters for opening in areas where there is existing classroom space in traditional public schools, criticizes them for using public funds for their facilities — as they are entitled to do under Proposition 39, passed by voters in 2000 — and alleges that they are misusing funds.

“Paying for more schools than are needed wastes taxpayer dollars,” the report states. “Furthermore, an oversupply of schools serves to undermine the viability of any individual school.”

The study claims that the growth of charter schools has led to an “overproduction of schools” by focusing on available desk space, but this exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic economic concepts of supply and demand. Demand is not determined by how many things you can produce; it is determined by how many things you produce that people are actually willing to consume.

And, increasingly, traditional public schools are becoming better at producing empty desk space than well-educated graduates, as more and more parents have come to the conclusion that these schools are not working, and thus have enrolled their children in charter schools to offer them better opportunities.

It is no wonder there has been such an explosion in the number of charter schools in California. There are now more than 1,250 charter schools in the state — four times the number that existed when Prop. 39 was passed just a little more than 16 years ago — and there are over 600,000 students enrolled in those charter schools, according to the California Charter Schools Association. Both totals are the largest of any state in the nation.

“The recent report by In the Public Interest, an organization closely tied to the California Teachers Association and labor groups, is the latest attempt by CTA to not only stop charters from growing, but to shut down even the most effective schools,” Richard Garcia, CCSA director of elections communications, said in a statement.

And therein lies the real conflict. Unionized, traditional public schools are upset that, now that they are forced to compete, they are oftentimes losing out to charter schools — most, but not all, of which are not unionized. They simply cannot compete with the charters when their union rules maintain ineffective teachers, tie the hands of management, stifle innovation and prevent them from offering the kinds of programs and instruction that students and their parents want.

To truly examine the “market” for K-12 education, one need only examine the tacit demand as revealed by parent and student behavior. The mere facts that so many are willing to go outside the traditional public school system, oftentimes at significantly greater inconvenience, and that so many charter school investors, managers and educators are willing to risk so much time and money to create and operate new schools, are evidence that there is not an oversupply of education, but rather an undersupply of quality education.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the saying goes, and parents and students are voting with their feet. Traditional public schools, and their teachers union champions, can either continue their heavy-handed resistance and try to use their government influence to simply shut down their competition, to the detriment of children’s education, particularly for those with the fewest opportunities, or they can adjust and try to outcompete their rivals. It is, regrettably, obvious which course they have decided to take so far.

Angus King Jr., senator from the great state of Maine, is a sensible fellow who walks around the nation’s capital with a perpetually perplexed look. One assumes he’s deciding which of America’s two major political parties is vexing him more on any given day. Usually, it’s Republicans, though not always.

King ran for Senate in 2012 as an independent. Once in office, he decided to “caucus” with the Democrats. In Capitol Hill parlance, this means he hob-nobs with Democrats, receives committee assignments from them, and votes for a Senate Democratic leader. This made sense at first: Democrats were in the majority. It became less pragmatic when Democrats lost Senate control to the Republicans in 2014. But that year, he and moderate West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin politely rebuffed GOP entreaties to join them.

King’s stated rationale was instructive. He noted that Sen. Susan Collins, his colleague in Maine’s delegation, is a Republican. “I think it is in Maine’s interest to have senators in each camp,” he said. “The reality of the Senate,” he added, “is that nothing can or will happen without bipartisan support.”

But as the Republican Party has steadily headed further and further to the right while Democrats lurch leftward, bipartisan cooperation has become exceedingly rare. The 115th Congress is the most polarized in American history. National Journal magazine, which analyzes congressional voting records, first discerned in 2009 that no Senate Democrat was more conservative than any Senate Republican — and vice versa. It’s been the same every year since.

This is a radical departure from the historic norm. In 1982, when National Journal started doing these comparisons, 58 senators (and 344 House members) had voting records that put them somewhere in the middle of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. The upshot is that 40 percent of Americans now refuse to identify with either major political party. Yet, unless you count Bernie Sanders — and one shouldn’t — Angus King is the only independent in Congress. (Sanders calls himself a “Democratic Socialist,” but he ran for president as a Democrat only last year.)

If a small group of good-government advocates get their way, however, Sen. King will soon have company. Not a lot of company — a few fellow independents at the most — but that might be enough to run the country. In this scenario, neither Mitch McConnell nor Chuck Schumer will hold the gavel. The Senate leader would almost certainly be an independent or an independent-minded senator who relishes bipartisan cooperation.

If this sounds too good to be true, it probably is, but stay with me a moment.

The organization with this master plan is called the Centrist Project. Its subversive-sounding blueprint is the “Fulcrum Strategy.” Although evocative of a Robert Ludlum thriller, the stratagem is not all that complicated. The Centrist Project wants to field a slate of independents in the 2018 Senate midterm elections in states that might be receptive to its pitch. If even two or three of them win, this small cabal of independents would effectively control the U.S. Senate.

At that point, Democrats Joe Manchin and perhaps North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp would be presented with a more interesting alternative than the one offered Manchin in 2014, which was to leave a political party dominated by arch-liberals for one under the thumb of arch-conservatives. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, perhaps nonconformist Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina or Nebraska’s Ben Sasse would throw their lot in with the independents. Come to think of it, as I write these words, I’m reminded that John McCain’s first choice as a running mate wasn’t Sarah Palin. It was pro-choice, Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman. So maybe McCain, too?

OK, so that would be wild, exciting and almost certainly good for the country. But is it even possible? Overcoming the entrenched duopoly is daunting, and that’s putting it mildly. In 2014, Kansas independent Greg Orman took the plunge — and found out how deep these waters can be. Articulate, well-funded, and passionate, Orman had much going for him, even in deep-red Kansas. Running against Pat Roberts, a 78-year-old incumbent of no particular distinction, Orman managed to chase the Democratic Party nominee out of the race and run neck-and-neck with Roberts for a while. But the GOP pulled out all the stops to defeat Orman and when the votes were counted that November, Roberts won by 10 points.

Nick Troiano, the Centrist Project’s executive director, also ran for Congress that year — with much less success. A Millennial Generation idealist who believes both parties are selling out the nation’s future with irresponsible fiscal policies, Troiano was only 24 when he launched a “citizen-funded independent campaign” in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District. Although he finished a distant third, the experience did not diminish his commitment. Quite the opposite. As young as he is, Troiano knows he and some of his cohorts can do better than their elders. Without irony, he compares Washington’s partisan squabbles that result in government shutdowns and legislative gridlock to two school kids fighting on the playground. “You can’t just tell them to stop and hope for the best,” he said. “They need adult intervention.”

The plan, as outlined by Centrist Project senior strategist Joel Searby, is to find viable independents to run in carefully selected states. The ones Searby mentioned were GOP strongholds Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah, along with New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The last three lean Democratic, but have a history of voting for independents or centrist Republicans. Two other possibilities Troiano and Searby mentioned were Texas and Washington state.

Can it be done? Troiano and Searby seem pleased that they’ve raised $600,000 in seed money to recruit candidates. Yet this is a paltry sum in American politics these days. Donald Trump could raise more in a single tweet, and it’s about what Bill Clinton charges to give a speech. But the man who gives them hope is as little known in Washington, D.C., as Trump and Clinton are notorious.

His name is Jason Grenn, and he’s a citizen politician from Alaska whose experience suggests that politics still is the art of the possible. A lifelong Republican, the 35-year-old Anchorage resident became discouraged by his party’s increasingly rightward tilt, and positively outraged when the state’s GOP-controlled legislature adjourned last year without seriously addressing the state’s historic fiscal crisis. He tried unsuccessfully to recruit someone to run in the Republican primary against his own state representative. No one would do it, so at 4 p.m. on June 1, 2016 — an hour before the filing deadline — he wrote his own name on a form.

Once in, Grenn was in it to win. He knocked on 5,000 doors in his district, mailed another 1,500 postcards and saw the local Democratic candidate drop out. Conservative Alaskans who’d rather hug a grizzly bear than vote for a Democrat found that they could vote for an independent. Long story short, Grenn won his election by 186 votes, partnered with another independent in the legislature and was appointed to the finance committee, which altered the equation in Juneau.

“If it happened there,” Nick Troiano says while we drive around the streets of Washington, “it can happen here.”

Carl M. Cannon is executive editor and Washington Bureau chief of RealClearPolitics.