Tag Archives: Home

Every Home Owner Should Know About Pipes

April 26, 2022   Matt

Every Home Owner Should Know About Pipes

Well, you’ve decided to perfect the plumbing of your house. Good for you! However, there is so much information that you may not know where to begin. Don’t worry, plumbing tips are here! Listed below are some tips that will help you get started and organized, so that you can become a plumbing expert.

Don’t shrug off that trickle coming from your toilet as a small problem. Even the tiniest leak can be quite expensive in the long run as you end up wasting potentially hundreds of gallons of water. See if you can find the root of the leak, or seek out professional advice, and keep your toilet running efficiently.

Garbage disposals are convenient kitchen accessories but you have to take care to use them properly. When rinsing food down the drain, always use cold water, as hot water can liquefy the grease, which can coagulate and build up over time. You can help to clean the disposal by grinding egg shells or fruit pits in it from time to time. In addition, avoid putting items such as bones, glass, paper, potato peels, cooking oil, coffee grounds and harsh chemicals in a disposal, as these can cause a variety of plumbing problems.

To compare the quality of your pipes or sewers over time, create a video for documentation purposes. Several months later, make the same video so that you can see if there are any new cracks or holes that require fixing. This can serve as a great way to analyze your infrastructure.

It is important to clean your faucet’s aerator from time to time. Not cleaning it can cause lime buildup, which in turn, could cause water leaks or low water pressure. To clean a aerator, you can unscrew it from the faucet, dip a brush into vinegar, and use the brush to clean it.

Many people complain of low water pressure. While there are several things that can cause this, one must not be overlooked when starting your investigation. What kind of pipes do you have? If your piping is galvanized, you are better off just replacing your piping which will eliminate the issue.

If you have plumbing that runs into your refrigerator, you should be sure to shut it off if you are leaving on vacation. You do not want a leak to develop while you are away and leak all over your home. It will only take a minute to avoid what can be a disastrous situation.

Find a better way to discard of cooking oil instead of pouring it down the drain where it can easily clog your pipes. Keep a coffee can or other metal container handy to pour grease into after cooking. Place the can in the freezer to harden the grease and when it’s full, discard it with the trash.

You should feel better after reading those tips when it comes to plumbing. That was a lot to read through, but at least you should have an idea of what to do and where to begin with your home’s plumbing. Besides, you can always come back to this list if you need to.

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Winning Strategies That Will Sell Your Home

April 14, 2022   Matt

Winning Strategies That Will Sell Your Home

There are different categories of real estate and different terms you will need to know if you’re a seller. In fact, there are a lot of things you need to know, in order to effectively move your properties in today’s marketplace. Check out this article for some helpful information on how to sell your real estate.

You should make yourself scarce when potential buyers are viewing your home. Any opinions you try to give them will seem biased and make you seem like you are being pushy. Allow them to look at it on their own or with a realtor, so that they can make a decision on their own about whether they like it or not.

Choose your real estate agent carefully. When looking for a real estate agent, choose one that is familiar with the neighborhood in which you are looking. They will be aware of a reasonable price to offer, and will also be able to tell you if your house is expected to increase in value in the future.

Staging your house can be one of the most effective tools for selling in a difficult market. Keep your house as neutral as possible, removing personal pictures and painting walls an ivory, light brown, or off white. This allows a potential buyer to picture themselves as the homeowner, rather than you.

If you have an excessive amount of furniture in your living area it may be a good idea to have a lot of the excess removed and placed into storage for a while. Many people rely on space when they look at homes and having less furniture allows them to get a better visual.

If you decide to paint the outside of your home, take a good look at the other homes on your street. It is a good idea to paint your home in a color that will be unique, however, make sure that it does not stick out like a sore thumb among the rest of the homes.

As a seller, before showing your home to anyone, be sure to have it professionally cleaned. Cleaning the home yourself is an option, but you want to put your best foot forward so that any prospective buyer can imagine his or her family in the home. A professional cleaner will give your house a deep cleaning, without damaging anything. This will let you focus on other aspects of the sale.

Your house should smell fresh. If you have pets or you smoke, you may have become accustomed to the smell. Have a friend come over and give you an honest opinion. If there are any lingering smells, scrub the house from top to bottom, open all the windows to get some fresh air in, and throw out anything that is beyond help. Don’t fall into the trap of using scented candles or a strong air freshener. If a prospective buyer doesn’t like that particular scent, they may be put off the house entirely.

At the end of the day, selling real estate doesn’t have to be a very difficult process. As long as you’re reading and following tips like in this article, you should be just fine, as long as you’re willing to put them into practice and follow through with anything you start.

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Valuable Plumbing Information For Any Home Owner (2)

April 08, 2022   Matt

Valuable Plumbing Information For Any Home Owner

This article has some of the best tips and tricks available to you concerning plumbing. You can check elsewhere if you want; however, in order to make the most out of your time, we suggest that you take a few minutes to check out the expert advice provided here.

Tank-less water heaters are a great space saving alternative to traditional tank units. They are available in many models, some for indoors and some models are capable for outdoor mounting. Tank-less water heaters are known as great money savers when it comes to your water bill.

Throw coffee grounds in the trash, don’t rinse down the sink. Coffee grounds that are washed down the sink drain can cause severe blockages that will be a challenge to take care of. If you are making coffee, you want to always throw your grinds into the trash to dispose properly.

To help keep your drains working properly you should pay attention to clogs. Clogs are a common problem at home but with proper maintenance and preventive measures you can avoid a messy situation. Clogs are not only an annoyance, but can also lead to overflows and water damage. So make sure you keep your drains clog-free by implementing easy preventative practices.

When it comes to plumbing a great choice is to invest in brass fittings. Sure, they may be more expensive upfront, however their longevity is amazing compared to the alternatives, so you end up saving money. As an added bonus, the brass fittings look so much better than the other alternatives.

Check for leaks behind the wall tile in your bathroom, especially any tile surrounding your bathtub, by gently pressing each tile and feeling for some give. If you find any mushy or soft spots, you will need to find the source of the leak and repair it to prevent further damage.

Avoid pouring grease or oil down your kitchen sink drain. Grease and oil can build up in your pipes and cause a backup. Instead, wait for the grease or oil to cool and solidify and either throw it away or see if there’s a place to recycle it near your home.

Frozen pipes can lead to many problems, most of them expensive to fix. So you want to avoid that at all costs. To avoid frozen pipes, make sure the temperature in your home never drops below 55 degrees. Look for any air leaks around your pipes and make sure they’re sealed up.

If you are considering a plumbing project due to having what appears to be pink or red water have your water tested first. This coloration is likely due to having rust in your water, which an average plumbing project is unlikely to fix. The rust is likely coming from your well and installing a water softener there is the best remedy to the problem.

In conclusion, not all advice should be taken seriously. Be sure to be careful who you take advice from especially when it is something that could lead to much frustration in the future. This article hopefully provided all of the details that you need to know about plumbing.

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The Ultimate Easy Guide To Prepare Your Home For Sale

April 04, 2022   Matt

The Ultimate Easy Guide To Prepare Your Home For Sale

If you have made the decision to sell your home and lets face it there are lot of people in that very position right now the very best thing you can and should do is prepare your home for sale properly. Most of this is common or uncommon sense as far as I am concerned but I will run through the basic steps any person can take when they are preparing to sell.

My first piece of advice is to determine how quickly you need to sell the property and how important price is, if like most people price is very important then you need to invest some time to do the job correctly. Make a list of any jobs that need to be done around the place and get them done, check taps, drains and gutters. Inspect the house from top to bottom for any obvious repairs or damage such as broken hinges on doors and cupboards, holes and dents in walls and other obvious signs of wear and tear.

These small things make a big difference in the way people and real estate agents will view your property, once you have the small jobs done then it’s time to start with the cleaning, if your not good at cleaning then hire a company to come in and do it for you, pay attention to windows and around doors and light switches. Make sure you get the floors cleaned by a professional. Once the house is clean then you can easily determine if you need to repaint, I always advise people to repaint as it makes a massive difference to the way the house will look on inspection day, make sure you use neutral colours that are going to appeal to the broad audience, your favourite shade of hot pink may not appeal to everyone. Once the house is neat and tidy on the inside with a fresh coat of paint then it’s time to address the outside and the garden, clean up as much rubbish and undergrowth as possible and take it to the dump, trim the bushes and mow lawns and remove grass cuttings. Consider repainting the outside if it needs it, if your not sure then paint it anyway. Check the condition of the roof and make any repairs cosmetic or functional that may be needed.

The front of your house is where potential buyers will get their first impressions so it must be spot on in appearance. Once you are satisfied with the general state of the house take a look at your own furniture and consider hiring in some new up to date items if needed for open inspection days. People like to be impressed and a little bit of money invested here might just pay off so look at modern furniture and paintings, there are companies who will hire you these items. On inspection day have nice relaxing music playing, some scented candles burning, fresh flowers on the table and you will be well on your way to getting the highest possible price for your home. Good Luck!

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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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Ideas And Inspiration For Home Improvement Projects

February 13, 2022   Matt

Ideas And Inspiration For Home Improvement Projects

If you’re interested in improving your home but aren’t sure how to, then look no further. This article is geared to help you learn ways to improve your house with many insightful tips. Just make sure you read and digest the information because that’s the only way you’re going to see any type of real change.

Installing a fence around ones entire backyard or a portion of ones yard can serve multiple home improvement purposes. It will protect ones family, guests, and pets from coming into contact with any stray animals. It can also serve to keep in one’s dog. A fence can be designed however one wants to improve their home.

After some initial use, your kitchen cabinets can start to lose their luster. You can shine up kitchen cabinetry by using car wax. Apply some car wax liberally to a towel and wipe your cabinets down in a circular motion. This can make your cabinets appear like they’re new and shiny.

When you are selecting a paint color for your home, be sure to make use of a light box or the sample cards at the hardware store. Many paint colors appear different under natural lighting, fluorescent lighting (common in most retail establishments), and incandescent lighting. You will be happier with your final choice if you make sure the color is what you expect once you take it home.

One of the smallest improvements to your home with the biggest impact is a deep cleaning of the house. Spending the time to clean every section of your house will improve the overall smell, look, and environment of your home. A thorough cleaning is often overlooked as a cost effective method of home improvement.

Synthetic building materials have a place in home improvement projects, and that place is usually outside. Synthetics tend to stand up to sun and weather better than the natural materials they replace. (Stone is a notable exception to this rule.) For wood in particular, there are a number of synthetic replacements that offer similar attractiveness and superior durability.

One of the quickest, easiest and cheapest ways to improve your home is paint. Whether it is the outside or the inside, both areas will look new and transformed. Pick neutral shades and brighter trim colors. Plain white walls tend to make your home look like a rental and not owner occupied.

If your low ceilings have you and your family feeling claustrophobic, consider updating your window treatments to create an illusion of more space and add a pop of color that can be changed with the seasons. To make the ceilings seem higher, simply position the curtain rod, drapes and valances, higher up on the wall above windows.

Hopefully, with the information you acquired from this article, you’re feeling like you have a better idea of what it is you need to do to improve your home. Now that you have this knowledge, formulate strategies for success and apply them wherever you see fit. If you do that, you should be satisfied with the results.

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