Going up to the cottage this summer for some R & R? Make sure your home is not the victim of a B&E with these security tips from Homeservice Club for exterior renovation:
“Â Â Â Check your home insurance policy before you leave on vacation. Some have a clause that requires that the premises be checked every 48 hours in your absence for the policy to be valid.
“Â Â Â Arrange for someone to come in once or twice a day and take in the mail, open curtains in the morning and close them at night, and cut the grass.
“Â Â Â Illuminate dark corners of the yard with motion-sensing floodlights, replace burned-out bulbs on exterior light fixtures, install inexpensive motion-sensing lights near entrances, garage doors, walkways and porches.
“Â Â Â Place landscape lights, porch lights, a few interior lights, and a radio on different timers so it looks – and sounds- like somebody is home.
“Â Â Â Stop newspaper deliveries before you leave. Most newspapers have vacation stop/start forms on their websites.
“Â Â Â Invite your neighbors to park their cars in your driveway to give the illusion of people coming and going.
“Â Â Â Garages and garden sheds can provide a thief with the necessary tools to break in your home. Keep them locked and ensure ladders are locked up and out of reach.
“Â Â Â Leave an itinerary, a phone number and a house key with a trusted neighbour so they can contact you if something goes wrong with your house.
“Â Â Â And finally, bolt patio doors and install deadbolts on all exterior doors and interior doors leading to the garage, basement or solarium. The deadbolt should be at least an inch long and the strike plate should be secured into the door framing stud.
If your home is broken into, you may have to do a major overhaul on your home. Household items can be broken, stolen, and sentimentally irreplaceable. Suffering this set back, you may have to renovate your current home as a result of breaking and entering. Furthermore, you may have to move to a completely new home to avoid any future incidents.
Follow these tips prior to leaving for your vacation, each exterior renovation tip will prove vital to keeping your home safe and beautiful for the remainder of your leave. You will rest easy knowing you took precaution from having all your valuables taken away from you.
Source: http://easybasementrenovations.com/home-exterior-renovation-a-necessity-without-vacation-precaution
August 11, 2010
Home & Exterior Renovation a Necessity Without Vacation Precaution
August 5, 2010
Custom Home Design – Important Floor Plan Considerations by Design Alternatives
During the development of your custom home design, there are numerous floor plan features that should be considered. Maximizing the enjoyment of your custom home can be accomplished by devoting ample thought to key areas of the overall floor plan. Areas of consideration for your custom home design should include and open layout concept, ceiling heights, traffic flow, recreational areas, sight lines and exterior views.
Becoming a key feature of almost every custom home design, an open floor plan concept allows better flow between spaces. A good custom home design floor plan will maximize the useful square footage of the custom home while also creating a sense of special separation. One way to achieve this effect is implementing half walls as a design element between rooms. Maximizing the open concept for your custom home design can also be done by separating each space with a change in floor treatments. The open concept can also have some influence on how the ceiling heights affect the whole design.
Varying ceiling heights or changing the design elements of the ceiling can also create an open feeling throughout the custom home. Tall ceilings and vaulted ceilings are popular trends used to create the open concept of the custom home design floor plan. It is common to see ceilings in great rooms achieving heights of 20 feet either by vaulting or 2-story space. Additionally you will find ceiling heights of 9 to 10 feet in kitchens, dining rooms and bedrooms of new custom homes.
Particularly in an open concept custom home design, the floor plan must cater to the overall traffic flow throughout the home. Single story custom homes typically have bedrooms adjacent to a family room or media room. When designing these areas, Design Alternatives also makes sure too much traffic flow doesn’t cross over one another since the kitchen is usually located in proximity of the family room as well. Although the importance of traffic flow is often neglected in custom home design, experienced designers will also give much consideration to the location of stairways in the overall traffic flow scheme.
Home technology and home theaters have also increased the necessity and importance of recreational areas as a key aspect of custom home design. Adequate thought must be given to not only identify where the television screen will be located, but also how the furniture will lay out around the home theater speakers and components. If the recreational area is not attached to the kitchen, consideration must also be given to including a wet bar as part of this floor plan concept.
As previously mentioned the open concept has become an increasingly important feature of new custom home design. By creating an open floor plan, it opens up sight lines between spaces and to the outside. A quality custom home design incorporates wall openings and doorway locations to utilize critical sight lines. Limiting sight lines not only creates a mundane space, but will also make the whole house feel smaller due to the visual obstructions. These sight lines should open up all the way to the exterior surroundings as well.
Locating the house on the building site is just as important as the custom home design itself. Care should be given in considering how the sun will enhance the natural lighting throughout the home. If there are certain views that should be maintained, window type and positioning are also critical features which need to be planned out. Design Alternatives Custom Home Design incorporates all these important aspects when designing each and every floor plan. Your dream home is a big investment, so your custom home design should be completed by a designer who knows how to maximize all these important features.
July 19, 2010
Concrete Repairs – Improve Your Homes Exterior
Maintaining the concrete hardscaping around your home will help retain your home’s beauty and value and it is something that it usually well within the skill range of most home do-it-yourselfers.
Even well-laid concrete can develop cracks, chips and broken patches. If left untreated, those damaged areas can contribute to other areas of your walkway, patio or driveway deteriorating as well. Water can seep into small cracks and openings and when it freezes, the pressure created can increase the size of the cracks and even create new ones or cause surface areas to lift away. It is vital to find and seal the cracks and openings before this happens. The best time to check for cracks is in the spring, when the weather has warmed.
Deciding on which concrete repair product to use can be the most difficult part of the process. Check with the experts at your local hardware or home center for their recommendations but basically you will want to use a patching compound if the cracks are large or if surface patches have broken away, or a sealant product if the cracks are small, one-eighth to one-half inch wide. Sealants work well with both horizontal cracks, like on a patio or walkway surface as well as vertical cracks that may have developed along the foundation of your house or garage.
If the concrete you are repairing has been colored, now is the time to buy a colored sealant or patch, or to buy a colorant to add to the product you will apply so that your repair will match the existing surface.
Do your repairs on a warm day when no rain is expected. Begin by cleaning the area well. Use a wire brush to remove any debris from the area. Leaves or grass that have gotten into the crack or loose cement will keep the sealant from getting into the cracks and bonding to the cement. Next clean the area with concrete/asphalt cleaner to remove any grease that could also prevent a good bond.
Create an opening in the tip of the sealant tube no bigger than the width of the crack, which will assure that you get the sealant into the crack and not beside it on the surface. Using a caulking gun, slowly squeeze the gun trigger so that a slow, steady stream of the sealant goes into the crack, filling it only to the surface.
If the crack is very deep, fill it a quarter of the depth with sand and then apply the sealant to fill the crack halfway. Add more sand to fill to a depth of three-quarters of the original depth and add more sealant to fill the crack to the surface level.
For vertical cracks the procedure is similar. Clean the area with a wire brush, then use the cleaner to remove any grease, followed with the sealant, applying it at an angle just until the crack is filled.
Once the sealant is dry, use a fine-grit sandpaper to remove any overfill and to feather the edges. Your concrete surfaces will give you many more years of good-looking service with a little tender loving care.
