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5 Handyman Tips Every Homeowner Should Know

23 Jan

Owning a home or investment property means being responsible for basic care and maintenance. Proactively addressing these issues will not only lead to savings on your utility bill, but limit the damage from wear and tear to the various systems in your home. Such maintenance will help mitigate the potential for expensive repair costs and make your home more attractive should you decide to sell. While these measures are not particularly difficult, they do require you to make regular checks. Here are 5 handyman tips every homeowner should know and make on a routine basis:

1. The Invisible Hazards

Every modern home has a HVAC system in place to provide seasonal comfort. When the summer heat becomes untenable, the air conditioner provides much needed cooling. During the winter chills, the furnace offers cozy, sustained warmth. Both of these systems rely on unobstructed air flow to deliver hot or cold air, and filters to prevent debris from clogging up the systems. However, if these filters collect too much dust and dirt, additional stress will be placed on the system. It will require more energy to reach the desired temperatures. Without proper air flow, the air conditioner can freeze and the furnace may overheat, leading to costly damages and repairs. Replace the filter every month to prevent these invisible hazards.

2. Leaky Faucets

When you add time to the equation, even the smallest of issues can compound into a large problem. Over long periods of time, cliffs get eaten away by rivers. Interest turns small loans into mountains of debt. A leaky faucet can be easy to overlook, but over time what begins as a tiny inconvenience can amount to a tremendous amount of waste. One drop per second becomes over 6000 gallons in a single year. Spilled water can rot away at the very foundation of your home. Lastly, damp environments are the perfect breeding ground for fungus and mold. A leaky faucet may not appear to be a big deal, but that is lacking the perspective to see the forest through the trees.

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Love DIY? Hate Mess? Follow These Top Tips for Disposing of DIY Waste

22 Jan

Embarking on DIY projects around the home can be great fun, make a house feel more like a home and may even add market value to the property. However, in everything that we do we should always be thinking about recycling and how we can do our bit to help the environment and save the planet. For this reason it is important to research how you can safely dispose of any DIY waste.

Many retailers these days fortunately are doing all that they can to help their customers recycle. This is because they understand the importance of recycling and want to help as many people to do so as they can.

Read the Label

For instance, many DIY products and tools from different hardware stores now feature on-pack recycling labels that clearly say what can be recycled and where. Some paint manufacturers will allow paint pots to be given back to the original store where they were bought from in order to ensure that empty paint pots are recycled and disposed of safely.

Choose Goods with Sustainable Packaging

Many other retailers have attempted to reduce packaging on many items and DIY tools or change the type of packaging that is used – for example changing plastic packaging to cardboard packaging. Some specialist stores may offer recycling schemes for old products when a brand new one is purchased such as vacuum cleaners, beds and washing machines.

Recycle

Although many retailers are now making a large effort in order to encourage their customers to recycle the onus is still with each and every individual to recycle as much as they can. For larger home projects it is wise to find local recycling centres that will take any large household items for recycling. For instance, one of the most popular DIY projects to undertake is a bathroom renovation. In this example it would be a wise course of action for the homeowner to find a local recycling centre that will take care of bathtubs, ceramic toilets and sinks and other bathroom accessories for safe recycling using the correct tools.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Wood Blinds

19 Jan

Blinds have been used over many years in the more affluent homes. They were not a thing forthe poor or ordinary persons and that is why you found most blinds in the rich neighborhoods. However with the growth in furniture and textile industry, including the ease with which themachines can churn out the products, it is becoming easier to furnish homes of middle incomepersons with blinds.

Wood blinds are still preferred despite the pricy nature compared to other materials chiefly due to the benefits that it has. There are several benefits of blinds made from wood. The benefits far out-weight the coststherefore making a purchase of wood blinds more worthy an investment compared to those madefrom other materials despite the higher price.

We illustrate the benefits wood blinds, let us describe some properties of wood and howthey contribute to a better blind material.

1. Wood is a poor conductor of heat. While we often associate the word poor with anegative thought, it is positive in this context. As a poor conductor of heat, wood can beable to keep heat on either side of the divide that it forms. This means that when wood isused as a blind, it is would retain most of the heat.

2. Wood has pores that allow solvents to diffuse through the surface. The chief buildingmaterial of wood is complex glucose molecules called cellulose. They are often arrangedin layers with micro-sized and visible to the eye, but big enough for moisture to passthrough. This therefore allows solvents such as those carrying paint or stains to be used toimprove the appearance of the final products that is made from the wood.

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Make Your Cosy Bathroom Seem Bigger

19 Jan

If you have a smaller bathroom, you may find that using it is not as pleasurable as it could be because you feel confined or the room itself seems small and dark. Because most bathrooms are limited in size, for many homeowners it becomes essential to optimize the space available. Besides finding ways to get the most out of a small bathroom, there are other tips for making an area feel bigger. For example, painting the walls a light color and installing additional or brighter light sources can give the impression of a wider space, making a confined bathroom feel more open.

Light sources.

In fact, lighting in a small room is a key element, perhaps even the best way to make a tight, cramped area feel more like a spacious room. Options to consider include spotlights along cabinets and the ceiling, which not only provide attractive lighting but also take up very little space. Curtains sometimes seem to eat up space while making the room darker. Using blinds instead will add natural light while still providing the same level of privacy. Be aware that natural light is usually preferable to artificial light and artifical light should be used in such a way as to make it less harsh and more difuse.

Add storage.

When it comes to saving space in more tangible terms, take advantage of wall space to hang objects, such as mirrored medicine cabinets, shelves, and towel racks. This frees up floor space while also provided additional storage. Also consider adding furniture sets that fit into the corners – an especially good idea if they can hide unsightly, exposed pipes as well.

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Are You Living in a House or a Home?

18 Jan

There is a very popular saying that ‘home is where the heart is’. This saying is very true – it is often the places and people that we love the most that make a place feel like home.

However, it is the sad reality that many people today live in a house and not a home. How is this possible? Many homeowners today are content to settle for inferior quality furnishings and do not take pride in their home. Moreover, with so many shops and stores now selling home decor, many homes look very similar and are all filled with the same mass-produced commercial prints, pictures and decorations. Here are a few ways in which to turn a house into a home instantly and leave any house feeling warm and cosy enough that it will steal your heart.

  1. Do not keep investing in the same home decor items that everyone else does! There are many websites dedicated to learning how to make stylish and beautiful items for decorating the home without having to pay a fortune for them. For instance it is easy to make hanging door decorations in the shape of hearts, birds or other designs using simple cloth, a needle and thread and some stuffing. Try your hand at appliquéing – a stylish way to create unique and personal designs for around the home.
  2. Display photographs – photographs are perhaps one of the easiest ways in which to make a house feel like a home. It is not always possible to have all your loved ones in one place but with the use of photographs around the home it is possible to remember these loved ones on a frequent basis. Plus, photographs are interesting talking points for others to look at and admire. Filling a house with photographs of those we love is a sure way in which to make it a home.
  3. Take pride in your home. There is nothing more off-putting than a dirty house. A dirty or scruffy house can make the homeowner feel tired and worn down. Conversely, a tidy, clean and beautiful home can lift the spirits and can make a person feel positive and energised. Thus it is important to keep on top of regular housecleaning duties and also to keep up to date with any repairs around the home that need to be done.

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