Category Archives: Yard & Outdoors

Gardening And Landscaping: Doing It Yourself Or Calling In A Professional

March 14, 2022   Matt

Gardening And Landscaping: Doing It Yourself Or Calling In A Professional

With the hustle and bustle associated with daily life in the 21st century, many people have become intensely interested in developing a living environment at home that is soothing, calming and peaceful. Towards this end, an ever growing number of people have come to recognize and appreciate the benefits of gardens. Indeed, the life enhancing benefits of plants and flowers is significant.

As a consequence of an increasing segment of the population who expresses an interest in developing that perfect home garden — complete with lush plants and colorful flowers — many people are faced with the question of whether they should plant and create their own garden spaces or whether they should call in a landscaping professional.

In considering whether to “do it yourself” (when it comes to creating a garden and undertaking landscaping) or whether to hire a professional, there are pros and cons to be found on both sides of the proverbial fence. Of course, as mentioned previously, the 21st century is a point in time when many, many people maintain very full schedules. In other words, they simply do not have the time to spend creating that prefect garden or landscape for their homes. Obviously, for such men and women, a professional landscape artist provides the perfect solution.

On the other hand, precisely because life is rushed for so many people, gardening can be a great release and relief. People can obtain a much needed break from the machinations of their daily schedules by spending quality time working the soil, planting flowers and tending to garden plots and patches generally.

You may be one of those people who would like to undertake the creation of your own flower and plant gardens on your own. However, you may feel that you lack the necessary “green thumb” to develop an eye-catching and visually appealing landscape. If that is the case, if you are a person who would like to take up the creation of flower gardens and landscaping on your own but feel you need some guidance, help and assistance is available.

There are now a group of gardening and landscaping professionals available to consult with you in the development and creation of attractive outdoor scenes. These consultants work hand in hand with you; they provide definitive expertise and assistance in aiding you in the design and implementation of an attractive landscape complete with stunning flower gardens and vibrant greenery.

In the final analysis, there are benefits to be had both by understaking your own gardening and landscaping course or by calling in the aid of a gardening consultant or a full-service landscaping operator. When all is said and done, you will end up with gardens and landscaping that you will make you proud and that will make your home all the more appealing.

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Choose The Best Plumber For The Job

March 09, 2022   Matt

Choose The Best Plumber For The Job

Anytime you have a plumbing problem, you do not need to get stressed out. This article will give you some tips to learn how to handle plumbing problems. Remember to take your time when fixing anything yourself so that you do not cause any further damage from happening to your pipes.

Your water heater works more during the fall and winter so make sure that you eliminate all sediment buildup around this piece of equipment. Flushing this device can lead to increased longevity so that you do not face plumbing problems during the winter. This precaution will save time, money and effort.

You need to winter-proof your house. You have to make sure you switch of the master circuit breaker or the shut-off valve before you leave your house. Since one small hole or congested water can quickly freeze and cause pipes to break and expand, you need to drain and open all outdoor and household water lines.

In any DIY plumbing project, make sure that you always test the drains and the supply lines before you close up the walls. It is a lot easier to find and solve problems if you look for them while you are still in the process of actively doing the job.

When you are working on any kind of plumbing project, you always need a backup person. This is because, when working with water, you never know when an emergency can happen and that second pair of hands can come in very useful! This can even be an unskilled person who can follow directions.

There are many ways to unclog a drain. You can try plunging it at first. If that doesn’t work try using a chemical agent from the store. Before you go and spend money at the store though, if you have baking soda and some vinegar handy, you can mix those together and pour them in the drain and try to plunge that but if all else fails they have stronger remedies at your local hardware store.

Do not use the liquid cleaning supplies that are designed to clear clogs. These cleaners are harmful and can damage your pipes as they clear the clog. Instead of using damaging liquids, use a plunger or a plumbing snake. These are much more effective and will not harm pipes.

Check for calcium and mineral deposits by turning on both the kitchen sink and the bathtub. If the volume of water is low, it may be time for you to replace pipes due to deposits of calcium and other minerals. Check the water pressure and consider calling a professional to handle the entire job.

Use strainers in all drains to catch hair and other objects. This will prevent all the material from going down the drain and causing a clog, which can cause a bigger problem down the line. Clean out the strainers daily so that you don’t start getting backup of water in your sink or tub.

You have learned many ways to handle a wide variety of plumbing problems. Take the advice in this article to use as a guide. If you have any further questions, make sure to take the time to find the answers using the internet or a professional so that you know exactly what you are doing before you start.

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Getting the Best Price for Your Home Includes Landscaping for Curb Appeal

March 04, 2022   Matt

Getting the Best Price for Your Home Includes Landscaping for Curb Appeal

If you own a home, then sooner or later you are going to be ready to sell that home. Maybe you’ve already sold a home or two. People tend to move more often than our parents did.

There are a lot of things that go into getting the best possible price for your home, but the very first thing your home needs is curb appeal. When a prospective buyer, or a realtor for that matter, pulls up in front of your home, they immediately form an opinion about your house. Fair or not, that’s what people do. You can have the most beautiful home in the city, but if prospective buyers don’t get a super positive feeling about your house the minute they lay eyes on it, they are going to enter and view the rest of your house with a negative impression.

Fixing that problem is easy enough to do.

When people pull up in front of your house there are two things they see. A house, and the landscaping in front of that house. If the landscaping is unattractive, the house will appear to be unattractive. Landscaping for curb appeal does not cost a lot of money, it’s simply a matter of making sure the landscaping is neat, with well defined edges, and colorful. But when landscaping for curb appeal, the most important thing you need to do is to raise the beds with topsoil. Of course you have to do this before you plant.

Plants do much better in raised beds, and the plants in the beds really stand out. In order to raise the beds around your house you do not have to buy expensive stones and build retaining walls. Just establish the outline of the planting beds, cut an edge into the soil with a spade, and fill the planting beds with approximately ten inches of good rich topsoil. You’d be amazed at how much you can raise a planting bed without any type of retention.

Here are two more things you don’t need:

Plastic edging. It’s expensive, a lot of work to install, and it never stays in place. You can cut an edge with a spade and your landscape will actually look better. Then you can make the bed a little larger any time you need to.

The other thing you definitely do not need is weed control fabric. The stuff just doesn’t work. The weeds grow right on top of the fabric, then root through the fabric making it even harder to keep your beds weed free. You’ll find a really good article on weed control on my website.

When landscaping for curb appeal, plant placement and selection is very important. In a corner bed you need a centerpiece. I like Canadian Hemlock because they are evergreen and provide an excellent background for more colorful plants. In front of the Hemlock you can use a bright colored evergreen like Gold Thread Cypress, but don’t use too many. Usually three is all you want. Around the backside of the same bed you can use a darker evergreen like Taxus or even a flowering shrub that you keep trimmed down low like Weigela. Lots of colors are fine, but don’t stagger the colored plants in your landscape, use them in groupings, and be careful not to use too many in any one grouping. When you use more than three of any colored plant they lose their effectiveness. You are adding them for contrast, and when used sparingly they look much better.

There are lots of landscaping photos on my website that will give you a lot of good ideas.

In front of a house I like to use an arc of medium height plants like Blue Girl Holly, then put a couple of taller plants behind the arc. When landscaping for curb appeal you want the landscape to stair step toward the house. In other words, the lawn is the bottom step, the raised bed is step two, low growing plants step three and so on.

If you are re-landscaping an older home you probably should start with a sledge hammer before you do anything else and bust out the sidewalk to the front door. Builders put in the ugliest sidewalks in the world, and they usually are hard to maneuver as you walk toward the front door. Once you have the old sidewalk removed, let your imagination run wild. Remember, you are landscaping for curb appeal, and there is no better way to establish ultimate curb appeal than with a beautiful curved walk that gently winds its way to the front door. Once again, there are photos of such sidewalks on my website, and you’ll see what wonderful landscaping opportunities they present.

The last step in landscaping for curb appeal is to create an interesting shaped raised bed in the front yard. Fill this bed with spring flowering bulbs, and annual flowers for the summer. If your house is going to be on the market in the fall, add some chrysanthemums for a burst of fall color.

So what’s the best benefit of landscaping for curb appeal? You’ll gain great experience so you can make sure your new home is landscaped just the way you want it!

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Landscaping Companies That You can Hire

February 22, 2022   Matt

Landscaping Companies That You can Hire

You hire an interior designer to work on the internal aspects of your home. But for the exterior, you will need to call someone else and that is where landscaping companies come in.

Landscaping companies can do a better job than you because they are the experts in this field. But since there are so many out there and you don’t know who to choose, here are a few points that you should remember.

First, you have to know what you want in your garden. It is best to put this on paper so when you talk to a representative of a landscaping company, they have an idea what you want done and offer suggestions and comments.

When you go looking for landscaping companies, see what services they have to offer by calling them up or visiting their website. It will also be a good idea to get referrals from friends and family who have used similar services before so you know what to expect from them.

The only time that you should set up a meeting is if you feel that the landscaping company is able to undertake the project. The first meeting is free. Here you will discuss with them what you want. Don’t forget to ask them questions like what are their credentials and if their certificates and licenses are still valid.

The landscaping company should also have insurance so if anything happens, they will be the ones liable to pay for any damages incurred.

If they have been doing this for many years, you can ask them for a list of their previous clients so you can call them up and see the landscaping work they did before. You should talk to the owner of the property to see if there were any problems and get their opinion if they would hire them again.

Should everything check out, you can then invite them to your home to conduct an ocular inspection of the garden and give you a quote which will tell you how much they will be charging for the whole project.

For those who are still unsure, arrange a meeting with another landscaping company. Do a similar background check and then compare their rates. Naturally you want to get the best services that will give you good value for your money so don’t think that going for someone that is expensive or much cheaper is always the best way to go.

From here on end, it is now up to you do decide whether or not you will avail of their services or not. For your safety, the contract should state that the agreed upon price should be followed and that no additional charges will be added in the future. It should also contain the plants to be used, the design system, terms of payment, length of project, maintenance terms and a guarantee.

Those who follow what was agreed upon strictly to the letter won’t have any problems later should something go wrong since this is a binding contract that must be followed.

Landscaping companies who are able to do a good job are able to get repeat business and more clients in the long term. Those who fail to live up to their standards will fold.

If you don’t want to be a victim of negligent landscape companies, do a background check so you know that you are getting your money’s worth.

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London builders: bathroom microclimate and placement. Part two.

February 17, 2022   Matt

London builders: bathroom microclimate and placement. Part two.

A suspended ceiling is very functional in the new bathroom. Good looking, it can hide electric wiring, ventilation pipes, and etc. A suspended ceiling can be of different types: metal or moisture-resistant gypsum-plaster.

For the ceiling area increase, suspended ceiling boards should be mounted perpendicularly (a 90-grade angle) to the long wall or diagonally. For creation of the effect of a high ceiling, mirror boards or white mat boards with mirror fillets between them are used.

A moisture-resistant gypsum-plaster ceiling can be made multilevel one of any shape: semicircle, diamond-shaped, oval, circle, zigzag lines with decorative cornice, into which daylight lamps can be installed. Spotlights can also be installed in the gypsum-plaster ceiling.

Let’s turn to the lighting now. A new bathroom should be lit brightly. Bright light arises bright feelings, feelings of protectiveness and joy. A simple wall lamp creates a lot of unnecessary shadows, that is why it is better to replace it with spotlights, built into the suspended ceiling. There exist spotlights of various shapes and colors, with halogen bulbs and incandescent lamps. You should choose the type of light you need before making a renovation of your bathroom. Halogen bulbs produce sharp directed ray of light. If you need to highlight some place in your bathroom, it is reasonable to use a rotary lamp with halogen bulbs. You can get softer light out of halogen bulbs with the help of glass diffuser, preset in the shape of the lamp. Incandescent lamps produce more uniformly diffused, soft and bright light. For a bathroom lighting mirror with the built-in lamps will also fit.

The best location for the mirror is above the bathroom sink. The distance between the bottom of a mirror and the top of a sink should be about 15cm; this will help to avoid splashing. In addition, mirror is the best and indispensable material for expansion of bathroom space. Today there exist a variety of mirror types, however, the most optimal and functional of them is the mirror with lamps and shelves for various toilet articles.

It is possible to add variety to the new bathroom with the help of differently shaped niches, as well as decorative glass blocks. It is also advisable to decorate the bathroom walls and floor with flowers in the pots, taking into account, that for some species of plants such microclimate is perfect for constant growth and blossoming.

While making bathroom renovation one should pay attention to the following main stages.

The bathroom floor. The most important and difficult subject of the bathroom renovation is the floor damp proofing. Tiny cracks can lead to a damp proofing malfunction, which will result in leakage and fights with neighbors.

Pipe run. It is important to carry out pipe and new bathroom equipment assembly in a quality manner, in order to avoid leakage.

Making a plan of bathroom renovation, don’t forget about ventilation. If the bathroom has poor ventilation, condensate will appear on the walls and ceiling, mould will appear as a result of it, and the whole bathroom renovation will come to nothing.

Bathroom renovation and decoration give place to unbounded flow of fantasy. You can achieve any effect, necessary exactly for you!

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Outdoor Security Cameras Home Surveillance Systems

February 12, 2022   Matt

Outdoor Security Cameras Home Surveillance Systems

Advancing technology has made outdoor security cameras home surveillance systems products affordable for more homeowners and easier to use. Homeowners have plenty of options when it comes to surveillance system products. They can also utilize DIY installation or pay professionals.

Camera types include self contained, wireless and wired. Self-contained cameras are ready to use. Once plugged in, they begin recording. They record to themselves so no other connection is required. This type of camera is a simple outdoor security home surveillance systems setup.

Most security cameras require connection to a TV, VCR or DVR in order for images to be recorded. All security cameras require a power supply. Wireless cameras must still be plugged in to an outlet. Wireless cameras connect to a wireless receiver that must be plugged into a power source and plugged into a TV, VCR, DVR or other recorder.

Cameras often feature LUX ratings. LUX is a form of measurement. The LUX number tells the user how much light a camera needs to capture images and operate correctly. The lower the LUX measurement; the less light is required by the camera. The LUX required by an outdoor security home surveillance system will depend upon conditions and setting.

Cell phones and other wireless products can interfere with the performance of wireless cameras if operating on the same frequency. Wireless computer networks, 2.4GHz cordless phones and most satellite dishes can cause the most interference. Some cameras allow the frequency channel to be changed, helping homeowners avoid the issue.

Typical outdoor security cameras home surveillance systems products feature weatherproof cameras. Weatherproof wired color video cameras with sound can be purchased for around . The small camera mounts almost anywhere and provides live feed to TV or VCR.

Outdoor security cameras can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Homeowners preparing to purchase an outdoor security cameras home surveillance system will need to gather information before going shopping.

Where will the camera be placed? How much area will need to be covered? Diagrams of the area will help. Take the information to a professional who can assist in making the correct choices.

Outdoor Security Cameras Home Surveillance Systems Providers

Outdoor security cameras can be purchased locally at security installation and monitoring companies such as ADT, Brink’s and ADS. Electronic equipment stores, some discount and department stores and online suppliers sell cameras. When dealing with an online supplier, it is important to deal with reputable companies. Verify that complete contact information is included. Check with business bureaus or go to ripoffreport.com to see if complaints have been filed.

Using a credit card when purchasing outdoor security home surveillance systems can help protect buyers if cameras arrive damaged or in any condition other than what was advertised.

Homeowners who do not wish to tackle an outdoor security home surveillance systems DIY installation can leave everything up to professionals. Brinks, ADT and other reputable installers will usually provide a free assessment.

Completing the assessment helps define the cameras and equipment needed to offer the best protection at the lowest necessary price. If changes are planned to the outdoor area to be secured with cameras, consider installing a system that can be upgraded or changed as necessary.

Outdoor security cameras home surveillance systems give homeowners a means of affordably protecting and monitoring property.

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