Winters can cause a lot of damage to your property over time, which is why regular maintenance is so important. Think of maintaining your home a lot like maintaining a garden. Before winter hits, you will likely go through and snip unwanted branches, cover shrubs, and otherwise prepare your garden so that, come spring, everything can bloom to life like the year before. With your home, however, problems only get worse if you don’t fix them. That is why before this next winter sets in, you should go through these steps to prepare your home.

Monitor Your Home for Any Damages and Fix Them

Every bit of damage on your property can become worse during the winter. This is particularly true if you live in an area that experiences freezing temperatures or snowfall. If you have a damaged fence, for example, that damage will only become worse as the winters go by. Water can get between cracks and expand as it freezes, worsening the problem and even turning a fence repair job into a fence replacement job. By monitoring your home and making fixes as needed, you can prolong the overall life of your property with ease.

Protect Your Pipes

One of the worst situations is that it gets so cold outside that your pipes freeze. It usually occurs in areas that have their pipes above ground, instead of buried. Perhaps currently, your winters are milder, but with changing climates, this could change. Get your pipes properly insulated to ensure running water throughout the winter.

Improve or Replace Windows and Doors

Doors and windows release the most heat in your home and therefore should be the first place that you look to improve your home’s efficiency and overall comfort. Replace all single pane windows with either double or triple paned windows. Fix any damages in the frames, or, if those are beyond your budget, use thick curtains to retain heat during the nights.

Use Carpets and Thick Curtains to Retain Heat

Carpets, curtains, and even tapestries can all help retain heat without touching the overall exterior of your home. If you rent, or cannot afford to have installation put in, this can be a great way to reduce your energy bills and to maximize your overall heating efforts for longer.

Improve Your Home Heating System

A good home heating system should be able to turn off and on by itself. It means it should be able to turn off when your home has reached the desired temperature, and it should turn off when you aren’t using it, for example, when you are at work, or your children are at school. You can also lower your home’s temperature at night when you are all sleeping by using thick covers and easy tactics like thick curtains to keep bedrooms warm without actively heating them.

Using less energy is the most obvious way to reduce your home heating bills, but you never want to do that at risk of your family. Follow this guide to protect your home and keep your family safe and comfortable this, and every winter forward.

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Burglars are very particular as to which properties they choose to break into. Most burglars want an easy target and they will scan a property for obvious security flaws whilst looking for tell-tale signs that no-one is home. Here are just a few ways in which you could be advertising your home to burglars without knowing and what you can do to fix this.

Visible valuables

The most obvious way in which you’ll attract burglars is by flaunting your valuables. Make sure that passers-by can’t see your TV or computer through your window. Avoid putting your TV in front of your window and try distorting the view into your windows. You could do this through frosted glass or by simply hanging up net curtains – both options allow privacy, whilst still letting the sunlight in. If you’ve just got a new TV, you may even want to be careful of where you put the cardboard box – leaving it outside your home will tell burglars that you’ve just bought a new TV.

It’s worth also considering you garden valuables. Lawnmowers, barbecues and bikes are some of the most popular items to get burgled – make sure that these are locked away in a shed when not is use and not left out in plain sight.

Damaged windows/doors

A broken window or a flimsy door frame will stand out as an easy point of entry. Make sure that any damage to windows and doors is repaired. It could even be worth investing in some replacement windows made out of a sturdier material. You could try opting for uPVC frames with locks and reinforced glass. Multiple small panes can also be harder to break into than one large pane. As for doors, consider replacing any old doors with new reinforced doors. Make sure that the frames are also sturdy – there’s not point investing in a secure door if the flame is flimsy.

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Piled up mail

Visible piled up mail will tell burglars that no-one has been at the property for a while. Glass doors are a big giveaway, so consider going for something opaque. If you like having a glass front door to let the light in, consider getting someone you trust to go around your home every so often and collect up the mail so that it’s not piling up on the doormat whilst you’re away. The same applies to overstuffed mailboxes.

Social media oversharing

Think twice before sharing those vacation snaps. Burglars are now starting to use social media to pick their targets, finding people that are on holiday so that they can target their home safe in the knowledge that they won’t be there. Unless you’ve got someone to house-sit your home, avoid sharing vacation photos until you get back. You certainly don’t want to be broadcasting the dates that you’re away. Also, be careful of uploading lots of pictures of your home’s interior – the odd photo won’t do any harm, but photos of every room as you’ve just moved in could give burglars ideas.

No exterior lighting

The majority of burglaries like to operate in the dark – this gives them less chance of being seen by someone. Installing exterior lighting could help to keep your home illuminated at night and make it harder to break in unseen. Motion sensing exterior lighting is the most popular – it will save you power compared to permanent lighting. Place lighting in key locations where burglars are most likely to try and enter such as your back door or the fence near the end of your garden.   

High hedges

High hedges may stop passers-by peering in, but they can also make it easy for a burglar to break into your home undetected by offering a barrier to hide behind. If you’ve got a high hedge or a high wall outside your home, consider getting lowered or removed entirely so that the front of your home can still be seen. Passers-by should be able to see your doors and windows, just not inside them.

 

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So you’ve just become a new homeowner. What an amazing time for you and your family! Now you can begin the life of settling down and becoming your best self, the self you were searching for all throughout your younger and formative years. This is an exciting time, because it somewhat takes off the pressure of everyday life. No longer do you have to deal with rental contracts, loud apartment neighbors, maintenance workmen entering your property without the proper warning, landlord disputes, odd maintenance working timeframes, and getting an elevator to the apartment each day. No longer do you have to deal with insufficient parking space, paper thin walls, and the feeling that you’re simply a traveller in the property market, not a fixed entity.

Well, now you’ve become a homeowner, there are so many things you can do. This guide is here to celebrate your new life circumstance, and remind you of all the wonderful and exciting things you can do to enjoy this period, and outfit your home appropriately. It’s good to get excited from time to time, and we wish to help you do that.

Consider these possibilities:

A Beautiful Garage Space

No more parking on the street and feeling annoyed that you have to battle for space. Now, a wonderful garage space, panel doors and garage door remotes are yours to make use of. Ensure you make the most of this by organizing the space from the beginning, installing shelving units and storage drawers in order to keep all of your belongings, ensuring your car always takes precedence over filling the space with storage items only. You may decide to implement a desk you can perform  basic DIY at here, and once and for all begin building your toolbox to best cater to your overall needs. This can be an exciting time for you, because in apartments and rented flats, that sense of personal maintenance and workmanship is often vacant.

Kids Bedrooms

Kids bedrooms can now be decorated with real fun. Painting the walls top to bottom with fantasy motifs can now be possible, as well as outfitting the room with many silly and fun items. Wish to craft a fairytale princess bunk bed for your two young daughters? Now you can, and you’re not limited by the already furnished nature of a rented abode. You can also install worthwhile security features in the home that you may have been missing, such as window latches that protect excitable children from exploring dangerously. When you can implement creativity in your children’s bedroom, you gift them a sense of space and wonder they may have been missing all this time, and as a parent that can be essentially exciting to consider.

Personal Autonomy

No matter what room you make use of it in, you can now exercise autonomy over your space.  Knocking through walls, applying completely new motifs, ripping up the flooring, completely reorienting the plumbing network, all this can be achieved so long as you keep the property functional and able, and that might be something you have yet to experience. Some rented homes won’t even let you hang a picture up if it requires a nail, and so enjoying so much potential utility can feel overwhelmingly awesome at first.

Why not make the most of this by getting a little weird with it? You might decide that your basement should be decorated exactly like the Red Room from Twin Peaks, or perhaps you simply wish for a personal Netflix and Gaming den in the basement – no boys, or girls allowed! Indulging in your own space is only limited by your budget and creativity.

Personal Security

Sure, apartment buildings are often quite well guarded. There are usually a network of security cameras and maybe even a security guard to keep you safe. However, now you can stay safe on your own watch. You can implement floodlighting for the hidden exteriors of your property, implement security camera systems as well as install a personal alarm. Being part of a community can also help you enrol into a neighborhood watch scheme, giving you that sense of mutual protection that helps a community feel safe and catered for.

Zany Hobbies

Zany hobbies can now be indulged in! Dedicating an entire room to relaxed meditation practice could be a wonderful thing to do, or perhaps opening up the garage to your artistic endeavors, filled with canvasses and beautiful paintings can all truly mean something in the scope of your creative vision. Sometimes, you just need the space to conduct your best work, and with this new possibility you’ll have no excuse to follow down that path.

Storage

Of course, now is the time where you can pick up items from abroad, items that means something to you in your personal life, and accept gifts from friends and family without having to worry about where you’re going to place the item. Long-term items can be stored in your new attic, giving you a real sense of personal history, of establishing your family in an environment, and generally helping your family live as its best self.

Outdoor Fun

Now is the time to make full use of your garden. Just imagine the fun you can have outside, building and crafting the perfect treehouse or climbing frame for your children. Of course, only those with experience in woodworking and crafting should do this, if that’s not a possibility then purchasing pre-crafted ones are a must. Having outdoor fun in terms of summer campouts, sporting practices, trampolining and other silliness can be a wonderful thing to do all summer, and help you bond with your children. It can also connect them to nature, no matter how small and how humble your garden is. Care for your garden the moment you move in. It can treat you and your family very well if you make the most of it.

With these excited possibilities, you will no doubt realize that a home is what you make of it, thus you’re sure to make the rest of your family life the best of your family life.

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Fall is here, and winter is coming, meaning it’s time to get ready for darker nights and colder weather.  Whilst that sounds quite grim, in reality, this season can be one of the cosiest and most romantic seasons of the year – indeed, the prospect of battening down the hatches as the chilling breeze howls at your windows whilst you cuddle up to an open fire, watching your favourite film with some warming soup is one to be savoured.

However, in order to have such a cosy time, there are certain things that need to be taken care of at this time of year. For instance, if you want a nice warm house then now is the time to visit here and sort out replacement windows as drafty windows can be one of the leading causes of heat loss and energy inefficiency.

We often leave home maintenance tasks to the very last minute, for instance, you’ll notice in many stores that it’s only when the snow storms hit that people go out and buy grit or snow shovels whereas it makes much more sense to have this in the garage ready for when it comes.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the things you’ll want to do around your home and garden to prepare for fall.

1. PREPARE YOUR OPEN FIRE

If you’re lucky enough to have an open fire, then you will want to get a chimney sweep to come in an clean it, as if there are any blockages these can cause chimney fires.

The reason to consider doing this task now, rather than later is that everyone puts this off – so there’s an influx of demand when the cold weather hits; meaning you might have to wait for a while before you can safely light your fire.  In addition to this, fall can be a great time to gather firewood, so now is the perfect time to gather up fallen branches and chopped down trees so that you can dry it out before using the wood in winter.

1. TAKE CARE OF YOUR GARDEN

There are certain things within your garden that are much better to take care of when the temperature and weather is still reasonable.  Gardening in these months is much more pleasant than in the wet, cold, dark days of late autumn and there are a number of preventative measures that are worth taking in the run up to the winter weather.

For instance, it would make sense to take care of any broken tree branches now, in order to avert disaster should a storm come.  There are also certain plants that need to be planted now, in order to flower for Spring and Summer.

3. ORGANIZE YOUR SHED

If you’re anything like most people, your shed is a mess, filled to the brim with all sorts of things that were used in summer – for instance, you might have a paddling pool, bodyboards, wetsuits, and all sorts of other summertime instruments… the last thing you want, if you’re having to go out into the garden in freezing conditions, is to have to plough through loads of stuff to get to the snow shovel or grit that’s kept at the back of the shed.  The point, therefore, is not just about clearing out your shed but organising it so that the items you’ll need for winter are easy to access.

4. INSULATE YOUR HOME

There’s an idea that you can never have enough insulation within your home, as insulation is what saves a lot of money in the long run… indeed, being more energy efficient not only saves money but also the environment, as the less energy we use the better.

5.  CHECK YOUR CENTRAL HEATING

It pays to check your central heating before the cold weather strikes, as often we don’t use this for many months in summer, meaning there might be unknown issues – which it pays to resolve when we don’t need the heating on rather than be stuck in an icy cold house.  It can be a good idea to bleed your radiators at this time of year too.

In summary, getting your home prepared for fall and winter requires forward planning in order to ensure smooth running when the cold weather does hit.  The last thing you want is to be without central heating, or scrambling for winter readiness equipment in a cluttered garage, battling inflatable crocodiles and surfboards to get to the de-icer spray.  Therefore, like the scouts and girl guides tell us – we just need to be “prepared”.

 

There is nothing more satisfying than living a minimalist lifestyle, we all know that. However, a tiny kitchen can be a source of frustration when you want to cook and organise. There are a good few things about your tiny kitchen that you can’t change; you can’t make the walls any bigger and you can’t expand the floor space. There are, however, lots of things that you can do to give your tiny kitchen the illusion of being bigger. Your kitchen already has a big personality, and it’s up to you to make it feel that way. Below, you’ll find some of the ways that you can add big personality to your little kitchen.Image Source

Neutral Colours. There’s nothing worse than clashing colour schemes, and with a small space you need to keep it light, bright and as neutral as possible to keep it looking endless with clean lines and beautiful tones. The cabinets and appliances can all blend together this way, giving you the illusion of space.

Flooring. The flooring in the kitchen should always be either vinyl or Carpet One laminate floors, because of how easy they are to take care of. You shouldn’t put carpet or floors that are too dark in a kitchen, because not only is it too hard to clean spills on carpet, it’s also not easy to make a tiny room look big if the floor is dark wood.

Shiny. If the surfaces of your kitchen are shiny, you are going to have a far better time making everything pop. Reflective surfaces work like mirrors, giving the illusion of tons of space where really, there is none. It’s also a good way to make your kitchen look far more modern than it actually is.

Open Shelving. It’s always tempted to have closed cabinetry in your kitchen, but if you can have open shelving you can give it a fairly airy look. Of course, this only works if you can refrain from cluttering up your kitchen and having messy cupboards.

Blinds. Kitchen curtains are a lovely window treatment, but blinds can fit to the windows and shorten how much of the wall space you use. Blinds are beautiful in a kitchen and they can make the space look far bigger than it actually is.

Neatness. The personality of your kitchen should be smooth and tidy, and when you hide away the clutter and keep things clean, your kitchen maintains its clean lines and overly decorative ‘stuff’ everywhere. Minimalism is key when it comes to your small space, because it’s this that will make it look great at all times.

The kitchen is the space where most people entertain their friends and they spend their time cooking up new dishes. You need to make it a place you want to spend your time and you want to take a moment to enjoy decorating it – even if the size of the kitchen means that you don’t take long!

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Over the last couple of decades, the world of DIY has become somewhat of a sensation. Saving people loads of money, giving them access to styles they would never otherwise afford, and enabling change without needing the help of a professional, it makes sense that people love this trend. Of course, though, achieving the best results can’t be done without the right know-how. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some simple tips to help you to start designing beautiful rooms.

Planning: To begin, there is almost no point in trying to start a large project like this without first doing some planning. You will have to use the sections below to help you to build your plan, as they will fill in the missing pieces. Along with this, though, you should also think about time, money, and the quality of the results you want. It will be a nasty surprise to find that you don’t have enough time from work to get the job done.

Inspiration: One of the most important parts of a job like this is the inspiration which you start off with. With websites like Instagram and Facebook playing host to loads of users who love interior design, they are perfect for anyone looking to improve their DIY. With a simple search of the room you’re trying to put together or the style you’d like to capture, you’ll have access to thousands of photos to help you out.

Research: Along with finding inspiration for your work, it will also be worth spending some time doing some research to see what is available on the market. Stores like Ikea will only stock items which match current trends. This makes them great for anyone trying to establish the style they’d like to use for their rooms, as they will help you to get an idea of what you will have available to you once you start shopping.

Variety: Most homes follow very similar themes throughout, making it very easy for the owners to put it all together. This can make a place feel drab, though, and isn’t always the best option when it comes to creating a beautiful home. Instead, you should aim to achieve loads of variety, with websites like Home Designing showcasing some great examples to get your ideas flowing. This can be a hard approach to take, but will be worth it once you see the finished product.

Support: While this post is aimed at those looking to handle DIY projects, doing everything yourself is rarely a sensible path to take. Instead, you should handle things like design, decoration, and other jobs which don’t require special skills. For the harder stuff, an A+ construction pro will have a much better chance of producing the results you’re looking for. It can be hard to accept this when you’re trying to be independent, but will be worth it in the end.

Feedback: There will be loads of people in your life who can give you feedback about the approach you’re taking. Before you put money into anything, you should show friends and family members what you plan to do, asking for feedback along the way. While this will enable others to influence your project, it could provide you with invaluable ideas which you’d never come up with on your own. This is great when you’re first starting out.

Tested: Finally, as the last area to consider, it’s time to think about the styles available on the market. Alongside all of the traditional options available, there will be loads of new examples on the market, and a lot of them may catch your eye. These are rarely the right path to choose, though, as they won’t age very well, and will be very easy to date when people visit your home. This isn’t an issue which older themes will suffer with.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working harder on your next DIY project. This sort of work is incredibly fun, satisfying, and worthwhile. If you don’t handle it correctly, though, you could be disappointed with the results you are able to achieve, and this is a shame. It never has to be this way, with all of the tools and resources available to help you. Of course, though, it’s important to remember to get help when you need it, especially when it comes to the dangerous parts of your home. It’s never worth hurting yourself to save money on a renovation.