How to Ready Your Home for Winter

Winterizing your home is easier than you think. While it takes more than a roll of duct tape to get the job done, getting a role isn’t a bad place to start. Afterward, print the following list out, or scribble up a similar one of your own. When you’re finished with that, it’s time to get started.

Store outdoor furniture and tools

Simply throwing a tarp over your outdoor deck furniture, lawnmower, and other warm weather items won’t keep these expensive items immune from the damages of cold weather. Freezing temperatures can crack plastic, the weight of snow and ice can break glass, and sensitive internal components can be irreversibly damaged after months of exposure to extreme weather. Put these items in your garage, or in a self storage unit.

Stock up while you can

Stores only have so much floor space they can devote to snow shovels and bags of salt. When a snowstorm looms, you don’t want to be stuck without these essentials. Make sure you have what you need to dig yourself out of snow and sleet before the bad weather kicks in. This includes canned goods and potable water as well, in case the power should go out for a significant length of time.

Seal ducts, doors, and windows

This is where that handy roll of duct tape gets used. Estimates figure that the average home sees between one-tenth and one-third of its heat escape through unsealed ducts. Combine that with how much cold air can make its way through improperly shut windows and door cracks, and it’s easy to see how the energy bill can get so high in winter. Run through the house and seal those ducts, doors, and windows, using duct tape, heat-retaining plastic sheeting, and other means of insulation and encasement.

Switch ceiling fan direction

This is a little known piece of advice that goes a long way when it comes to winterizing your home. During the summer your ceiling fans should be moving in a counter-clockwise motion, which helps to push cold air down and bring hot air up, due to the angle of the blades. Reverse this, and you will cause cold air to be channeled upward while warmer air is distributed below.

It doesn’t take a big investment to prep your home for winter – nothing more than the cost of essentials and the $2.00 roll of duct tape. Spend an afternoon getting geared for the cold season, and thank yourself for it when winter finally arrives.

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Balancing the Home Repair Budget

Considering current economic conditions, doing a home improvement project can be a much more affordable task than purchasing a new home. Detailed strategic planning should be completed before starting a project in an effort to avoid becoming over budget before completing the project. A budgeting worksheet can be developed or one can be downloaded from the internet for free.

Once the worksheet is in hand, a cost estimator should be put to use. This allows for the comparison of approximate costs with similar remodeling projects in your area. Jotting down notes as the research is completed on material cost helps to match ideas with available building funds. Available money-saving tips can be reviewed. All of this can help to determine if the funds on hand will cover the costs of the project. If a loan is needed, credit worthiness can be checked to determine if the credit score should be increased prior to starting the project. Get the appropriate building permits before any work is begun. It is also best to obtain the services of a licensed building design contractor to draw the plans if this is a major home improvement.

Once the decisions are made on the size of the project, then determine if it is going to be a do-it-yourself project. If so, this will help to decrease costs considerably. If professional help is going to be needed, research must be completed on who and at what cost. Determine if the homeowner will be shopping for the building materials or the professional who is going to assist with or complete the home improvement. Every aspect of the home improvement plans should be written in the cost estimator on the budget worksheet. Contracts are signed if assistance is hired.

Even after these decisions are made the project is started some homeowners still find themselves over budget. Phases of the project need to be adjusted so that it can get back on budget. Possibly, the size of the project can be adjusted. If not, the type of building material can be changed to a less costly type. Check to decide if this can be done without compromising too much on quality, if possible. Verify whether or not the improvement has reached a stage of completion at which work can be halted for a specific time period without affecting the quality of the completed project. This would be done for a period of time that allows for the accumulation of the needed funds.

Another change that can be addressed is the supplier for the building materials. Sometimes suppliers will give better discounts on the prices of their products than their competitors; if certain legitimate concessions are made. If the project is being funded by the property owner who is running short of funds for completion, then there is the possibility of pursuing a loan to complete the project. It would require appropriate drawing plans to be available with those plans having been followed. Proper building permits would have to be available. The entire property would have to meet the criteria of an appraisal and the required value. This is another reason for planning the home improvement from an official documented written format at the outset. Writing everything down allows for a well planned project at the outset.

Streamlining Your Home

Filling your house with furniture is nice and making sure that everything matches will bring your house together but there is one step beyond even matching your furniture to the design of your house. Make your furniture into a part of your house. Bookcases, bunk beds, television and even seating can become a part of your surroundings with a fair bit of effort or basic skills with a checkbook.

You can also convert pre-existing spaces into new storage. I live in an old apartment that originally had an ironing board built into the kitchen wall. With the ironing board taken out and some simple shelves installed I converted it into a perfect spice rack and freed up a lot of space in my cabinets.

With metal bunk beds or a cool loft bunk bed it’s really just a matter of extending the wall to encompass the frame of the piece. Make sure to match any woodwork that you use to the original molding of the house so that the transition is smooth and seems natural.
I have seen some houses in which a wall has been extended past its original frame, a sturdy platform is built to support a mattress and box spring and then the wall extensions are converted into cabinets. This new “bed” looks like it was a design element intended as a part of the hose by the original architect and comes off as very classy. If you plan to do this with bunk beds I suggest hiring a well-known carpenter who can guarantee that the second level of beds will be entirely sturdy and load bearing well beyond what you think it might need to support.

Integrating a TV into a wall is similar to installing a recessed medicine cabinet. Essentially, you cut a properly sized hole into the dry wall, secure the TV to the studs properly and rebuild the wall around the edge of the TV. To finish, you can either carefully edge the new drywall to the television or you can buy a large picture frame and mask the hole entirely. This is best achieved with a flat screen television but I have seen some people use full sized TVs by having the back extend into a closet or crawl space that is not going to be seen. This gives the illusion of a flat screen TV.

To further streamline your house you can remove doors between adjoining rooms then completely remove the hinges from the frames. Properly filling and painting the screw holes left from the hinges is key to making this seem intentional and visually pleasing.

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Beat the High Cost of Water Damage Repairs in Your Home

With the economy in the state that it is in today, it is hard enough to maintain a mortgage and have enough money left over to comfortably pay utilities and stay on top of general maintenance. If you are a home owner, you are probably already aware of this all too well. It may seem overwhelming to think of additional costs that may come from unexpected events, especially when the result is water damage in your home. Fortunately, there are some things that you can do yourself when water related issues come up as long as you are driven enough to learn how to address the problem the correct way and do not mind the work that will be involved. In addressing the issue of water damage in your home, you can save a tremendous amount of money by doing the work yourself.

The first thing that you have to do when an event occurs that leaves your house wet inside is to determine exactly where the fault lies that allowed the event to take place to begin with. If it looks like something that may be handled by your insurance company, you should definitely have them handle all of the repairs. If the damage is flood related and you have an additional flood insurance policy, then you will be well taken care of and you really don’t have any expenses to worry about. However, if the damage is related to something that is not covered by your insurance company then you will need to address it yourself. Hopefully, you have some friends or family members that can provide you with assistance in the work and possibly even give you guidance based on their own experiences.

Once you have determined what the source of the water issue is, and if you have confirmed that it is something that you are responsible for on your own, you will need to be ready to quickly address the issue before it has an opportunity to occur again or get worse. You will need to make a list of all of the items that you will need to repair or replace and take that list to your local hardware store. keep in mind that there are some things that should be done by only a professional, so be sure and ask for advice from experts in that particular field or even in that particular department in the store before you remove anything or begin the work. While your goal here is to save money in labor cost, you want to be sure that you do not create more damage by trying to do something that you are not familiar with and wind up breaking something else. You can cause your first estimate on the cost of the project to go through the roof if you are not careful and don’t pay close attention to what you are doing.

Take full advantage of the resources that you have at your finger tips when considering doing home repairs yourself. There are several instructional videos online, as well as articles written by experts on just about anything you could possibly need to do to your home. Seek assistance from employees at your local home improvement stores. They are usually contractors in the same fields as the departments that they work in and can show you the best parts to buy for your project as well as give you some fantastic tips on how to go about doing the work.

If you have a water related issue come up in your home that is creating damage or has the possibility to, responding immediately to the situation is the best thing that you can do whether you do the work yourself or not. If you decide to try to save some money and do the work alone, be sure that you tap into every resource that is available before you get started and do not be afraid to ask as many questions as you possibly can.