Monthly Archives: December 2022

A renovation can be a great way to update your home and create the dream living space that you’ve always wanted. It’s also a big commitment of time, money, and effort – and it pays to do your homework before you start. It’s important to talk to a renovation consultant to ensure that you’re making the best decision for your family and home, and the ideas you have in mind will work the way you expect.

But what should you discuss with your consultant? In this article, we will discuss some key topics that your family should discuss with your renovation consultant to get the most out of your home renovation.

1. Updating Your Roof

The roof is a critical part of any home renovation project your family should discuss with your consultant. After all, your roof is one of the most important (yet often overlooked) parts of your home’s structure.

When renovating, you’ll want to give your roof the attention it deserves to ensure it can protect your home adequately. Start by talking to your renovation consultant about the following:

• • Age of your roof.

 

• • The materials that are currently used.

 

• The areas that are vulnerable to leaks.

Your roof will also determine the look of your home, so it’s important to consider different options, such as sloped, flat, or metal. You can also discuss the type of shingles you would like to use and the style that’s most appropriate for the size and layout of your house. Additionally, ask if they can recommend reliable local roofers to carry out the work properly, as this is a critical element of the renovation process.

It’s also important to consider whether your insurance will cover any damage or other potential issues. Review your policy with your consultant and get any information you need to ensure that your roof is safe and secure.

2. Landscaping

Most people think only of their home’s interior design and structure when renovating their homes. But landscaping often gets forgotten, which is equally important to ensure your home looks inviting.

Talking with your renovation consultant about landscaping is a great way to ensure your home’s exterior looks its best. When discussing landscaping with your consultant, there are several topics you should bring up.

First, consider what type of vegetation and plants you would like on your property, as this will inform how the rest of the landscaping design plays out. You should also talk about the type of lawn you would like and if you wish to install a lawn irrigation system for easy maintenance.

Moreover, discuss the type of stone or gravel you would like to use and if you need to do any gravel dredging. Remember to ask about patios, retaining walls, outdoor lighting, and topsoil.

Keep in mind that landscaping projects boost the visual appeal of your home and its value. So, if you’re looking for an exciting and rewarding home remodeling experience, make sure that your family has talked to your consultant about all aspects of landscaping.

3. Repairing Your Vehicle

Renovating your vehicle can be an exciting but sometimes stressful process that involves many tough decisions. Choosing the right consultant is key to ensuring a quality repair job. Whether it’s a simple repair or something more complex, here are some of the things your family should talk to your consultant about before getting started:

• Cost: Knowing how much the repair will cost is essential for making a budget for the project. Discuss your budget concerns, ask questions about warranties to cover additional costs, and find out if financing is possible.
• Services: Find out what kind of services the consultant can provide. Discuss whether you want minor or major repairs. Make sure you find out what parts or tools the consultant will use, and whether you’ll use a local welder, or if you need to transport the vehicle to another location.
• Timeline: Ask your consultant how long the repair will take so you can plan appropriately. Find out if they can guarantee a timeline and ask about the worst-case scenario to plan for in the event of unforeseen delays.

These are just a few topics your family should discuss to ensure you get the perfect repair job for your needs. Make sure to research and ask questions to find the best consultant to get the job done right.

4. Repairing Your Heating

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the average American family spends $2,200 a year on energy bills – most of which go to heating and cooling. It’s no wonder why homeowners want to maximize the efficiency of their home’s heating system. The best way to do this is to consult a professional consultant who can provide expert advice on repairing and optimizing your heating. Here are some things your family should talk to your renovation consultant about:

• Assessing efficiency: Not all heaters are created equal – some are more efficient than others. Ask your consultant to evaluate your existing system and advise you on the best option for cutting down on energy costs.
• Repairing problems: Has your heating system failed to keep up? Before undertaking any repairs yourself, talk to the consultant about the potential cost of heating repair and the likely outcome.
• Replacing the system: If repair isn’t an option, replacing the full system may be the best option. Talk to the consultant about the brands and models with the highest ratings and the best value.

Whether you’re planning to repair or replace your home’s heating system, it’s important to consult a professional consultant first. Doing so can save you time, money, and frustration later on.

5. Buying a Golf Cart

Imagine how much easier it would be to get to your golf course, the corner store, and even the beach if you had a golf cart to take you there. Before you take the plunge and purchase a golf cart, you should discuss some important things with your renovation consultant.

You’ll need to decide whether to buy a new or used golf cart or have one custom designed. An electric or gas-powered model? Make sure you know what terrain your golf cart will be exposed to, so you can ask your consultant about the most suitable components.

Your consultant can also guide you on any golf cart services you may require, such as tune-ups, oil changes, and other repairs. They should also be able to advise you on other things to consider, such as the cost of registration, safety regulations, and charging options.

6. Pumping Your Septic Tank

Pumping your septic tank is an often overlooked but important task when renovating your home. This vital task is performed by a septic tank contractor, who will remove sludge and scum from the tank and inspect the situation to ensure everything is working properly.

When you talk to your renovation consultant about your project, ensure you discuss the need to pump your septic tank. Your consultant should be able to recommend a reliable septic tank pumping company.

Your family should also be aware of the need to maintain your home’s septic system regularly. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, septic tanks should be inspected regularly and pumped out at least once every three to five years, as per the Environmental Protection Agency. However, it may be time to call a professional septic pump installer if you notice back-ups or slow draining.

When it comes to your home renovation project, pumping your septic tank is an essential yet often forgotten task. Make sure you and your family talk to your consultant about this matter of great importance.

7. Cleaning Your Home

Cleaning is one of the most crucial tasks that should be taken care of before, during, and after a home renovation project. A renovation consultant can assist if your family doesn’t have the time or energy to clean your home between construction phases. Here is what your family should talk to your consultant about when cleaning your home.

Planning for Trash and Debris

First, talk to your consultant about managing garbage and debris produced during the project. Your consultant likely has experience and contacts with local dumpster rental services, so they should be able to advise you on the best way to manage any waste.

Hire Cleaners or Handle It Yourself?

Also, talk to your consultant about whether you need an additional clean-up crew for the project. Depending on the size of the renovation, you may need an extra set of hands to help with handling all the cleaning that needs to be done. Your consultant should be able to recommend reliable cleaning contractors in your area who can power through any messes left behind.

From initial dusting to final garbage disposal, your consultant can advise on how to keep your home clean throughout the project.

8. Installing AC

Going through a renovation can be daunting, and asking your renovation consultant all the right questions is important. One important topic of conversation to have with them should be AC installation – after all, air conditioning is essential in many areas!

One of the first questions you and your family should ask your consultant is about the type of air conditioner that would be best for the space. This could involve discussing the best overall size for the area or any special features or technology that could enhance how the AC works. Again, this is an important area for your consultant to advise on, as they’ll be familiar with different requirements for different locations.

It’s also important to talk to the consultant about energy efficiency. Many modern air conditioning units are available today with varying energy efficiency levels. Make sure your family asks your consultant about the one that best suits your family’s budget and needs.

9. Waterproofing Your Basement

If you’re undergoing a renovation project that involves your basement, make sure to have an honest and open talk with your renovation consultant about waterproofing your basement. Water damage emergencies are often painful to address, but ensuring waterproofing will save you a lot of wallet ache and unnecessary stress.

Waterproofing your basement is essential for keeping it dry, safe, and up to code. Depending on the environment, different methods and materials can protect the area. Generally, outside waterproofing protects your basement from rain and water infiltration, and inner waterproofing blocks groundwater from building up and creating mold, mildew, and eventually flooding. A qualified and experienced contractor will be the best person to decide which route is most suitable for your project.

Waterproofing your basement is a must-have for any renovation project. Make sure to ask your consultant all the right questions so that you don’t have to deal with a water damage emergency in the future.

10. Checking Your Electricity

Not all conversations with your consultant need to revolve around color schemes and fixtures – there are also several important topics you and your family should cover. One of these topics is checking your electrical systems – and here’s what you need to keep in mind.

• Ask your consultant how old your house’s wiring is. It is important to ensure everything is up to code and safe for use. If the wiring is outdated or too frail for your current needs, it’s time to consult a local electrical contractor or electrician.

 

• It’s important to check if all outlets are grounded. If you plan on using computers, printers, or other electronics in the house, ensure the outlets are all up to date. This can help prevent future electrical shocks, surges, and other mishaps.

 

 

• Check if everything else, from switches and lights to outdoor electric supplies, is functioning properly. You don’t want to start your renovation only to discover that the electrical work needs an overhaul.

 

Inspecting your home’s electrical system is essential to having a safe environment. Keep these tips in mind, and you can rest easy knowing that your home is safe and up to code.

 

Renovating your home can be an exciting and rewarding experience. However, it can also be expensive and time-consuming if you don’t plan it correctly. Fortunately, you can avoid many pitfalls and make the entire process smoother and more efficient by keeping these points in mind when talking to your renovation consultant. So, don’t hesitate to get started – a successful home renovation begins with the right conversations!

 

 

You want your child’s first visit to the dentist to be a positive experience. The right family dentist can teach good habits, clean your child’s teeth, and create a positive association with the dentist. Here are some tips on how to find an amazing family dentist.

If you know any other families you can ask them for recommendations. It’s ideal if the family has children the same age as your kids.

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The family may also be able to refer you to the dentist, which will allow you to book an appointment instead of getting on a waitlist. If you don’t know any other families you can look at reviews online. Be sure to look at photos of their work and read the reviews thoroughly.

Look at photos of the office. A family dental practice should be friendly and inviting, and should have activities for children while you wait for the appointment to begin.

Confirm that the practice has all of the necessary qualifications to work in your area.

Get your child on the right path to healthy teeth with a good family dentist. For more details on finding a dental practice for your family, see the linked video for more information.

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Summer can be hot. But does it have to be unbearable? With an air conditioner installation, it doesn’t have to be! In this article, we will be discussing the three levels of air conditioners and figuring out which one is right for you.

Entry-level air conditioners are best for someone who has low utility costs, and they’re even better if you don’t plan on staying in the home you are currently in for long. On average, they cost $4,400-$8,000, and they work on single-stage cooling.

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This means it works on the standard level of cooling.

Mid-range air conditioners can cost from $6,200 to $9,500. They have two cooling stages, a high and a low, which works best for people who are looking for more of an even-temperatured home, instead of just cold air. This is best for people who are looking for energy savings for a long-term living situation.

High-end air conditioners can cost anywhere from $8,200 to $13,000. This is for a good reason. High-end air conditioners offer variable-speed cooling, which means it has 700 different levels of cooling that work to provide the best, most consistent, even temperature throughout your home. This would be best for people who are picky about their air temperature.

With these tips in mind, it should be easy for you to find your perfect air conditioner and get it installed today.

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Cleaning is not typically seen as a fun activity, but it’s necessary for a healthy and happy home. Nothing beats the feeling of coming home to a clean and neat space that feels inviting and smells awesome.

Keeping your house clean is about more than sweeping the floors, occasional pressure washing, and wiping off dust from furniture. It’s a lifestyle, just like healthy eating.

When you have the right habits, you will be much better at keeping your home clean and tidy.

And that’s why you’re here—you’re looking for good habits to keep a clean home so you can always be proud of your home and feel relaxed.

Stick around, because we’ll be sharing the top 18 habits you should adopt to achieve this kind of lifestyle!

One: Make the Bed

Start your day off the right way by making your bed as soon as you’ve awakened. Making this a habit will help you get in the right mindset for a clean home even when you didn’t sleep well, feel a little under the weather, or have a very busy day ahead.

You don’t have to perfectly make your bed, but at least make it look neat and smooth. Many folks may feel that making the bed is a waste of time since it will be messed up again later, but even a hurried smoothing of your comforter will already make the room look cleaner.

Plus, it feels really nice to get into a made bed at night when you’re ready for your beauty sleep.

Two: Keep Basic Cleaning Supplies Close to Where You Use Them

Having all the basic cleaning supplies you need near at hand makes it easier to clean up messes and keep your home clean. This is one of the most important habits to keep a clean home, because if you can easily clean up spills with close-at-hand spray bottles and microfiber clothes, a neat home is not a distant dream.

For example, you should keep an attractive toilet scrub brush close to the toilet, as well as your favorite toilet cleaner. Having a reliable drain cleaner in all the rooms with basins is a good idea too, you’ll less frequently have to call drain cleaning companies.

Three: Deep Clean Your Rugs Regularly

For many people, their rugs are the pride and joy of their homes because each one was chosen with care. It’s not uncommon to find people who build an entire room around a rug’s appearance and colors.

With that said, even the most beautiful and lush rug can look unattractive and unappealing if it’s not cleaned regularly. You should deep clean your rugs as often as you can so they remain bright and lovely.

If you have too many rugs, or they’re too heavy for you to clean properly, call in the help of vacuum services or a rug cleaning company. They’ll have your rugs deep cleaned in no time!

Four: Clean as You Go

One of the most fundamental and useful habits to keep a clean home has to be ‘clean as you go’. Leaving items lying around or procrastinating cleaning your room after you’ve tried on four different outfits is a nice way to ensure your home stays untidy and feeling cluttered.

Clean up things you’ve just used immediately so you don’t have to worry about it later. If you’re truly in a hurry, make sure you clean up these random, small messes as soon as you find a moment to do so.

Cleaning as you go will ensure that you never get caught with dirty clothes lying on the bathroom floor or pots and pans spending too much time on the kitchen counter.

Five: Wipe Down Surfaces

You would be amazed at what a difference it can make when you habitually wipe down all your home’s surfaces. It doesn’t even have to be a thorough clean, a quick wipe-down will be good enough to keep your surfaces shiny and looking good.

After you’ve finished a task such as cutting up veggies, wipe the counter and you’ll feel more encouraged to keep the entire kitchen clean as you prepare your meals. When you’re done showering, give your shower door a quick wipe to clean it and you won’t have to struggle with soap scum later on.

Six: Do the Laundry Each Day

This may not be something that you’ve ever considered, but you should adopt a habit of doing your laundry every day. When you do, you can easily avoid an overflowing hamper that makes you feel like you’d rather do anything else. Saving the laundry for the weekend is a bad idea—you should be enjoying your weekends, not spending them doing chores.

Do your laundry every day, first thing in the morning, so it’s dry when you get home from work. You can also simply load the laundry and turn on the machine when you get home if that’s how you want to do it.

Seven: Prioritize

One of the most recommended habits to keep a clean home is ensuring you’ve got your priorities straight. Not all the cleaning chores are equally important, so you should make a list of what you need to do and a list of what you would like to do.

Prioritize the list based on how much free time you have and get the most important cleaning tasks done first. Do them before you do anything else so you can get the important tasks out of the way quicker.

For example, if you feel that cleaning the dishes is more important than dusting the living room furniture, then that’s how you have to prioritize your cleaning tasks.

Eight: Do Regular Home Repairs

Home repairs may not feel like part of keeping your home clean, but neglecting important repairs will lead to disasters that are a pain in the behind to clean up. For example, if you need to consider a new siding install job, get it done as soon as possible and clean the area as soon as possible.

Other cleaning tasks, such as drainage cleaning and making sure the gutters are free of debris, should be done often too. If you can’t find time, consider asking a local janitorial services company for assistance.

Also, if you hire a construction service for any repairs or renovations, remind them that they need to keep your clean home clean!

Nine: Categorize Paper

You may not think that mail, bills, take-out menus, pamphlets, notes from work and school and other paper items have to be organized, but if they’re not stored neatly, they can make your space feel messy and very cluttered. Paper tends to pile up really quickly.

For this reason, it is a good idea to have designated places for the papers in your home. You can have a drawer for all your coupons and take-out menus, and folders for your bills and notes, for example.

As soon as a new piece of paper enters your home, make sure it is put away in the appropriate storage place.

Ten: Declutter Regularly

Decluttering regularly is one of the cardinal habits to keep a clean home, or at least, it should be. It won’t matter how much you clean your home if you have lots of items taking up space and making the entire place look messy.

Plus, who feels like really cleaning when there’s clutter everywhere? It is important that you get rid of as much clutter as possible as soon as you notice it taking over your home.

When you buy something new, get rid of something old (and get a warm and fuzzy feeling from donating!).

Eleven: Clean Your Fridge Weekly

Your fridge could be possibly be one of the most overlooked spaces in need of a good cleaning in your home. We use our fridges all the time, but only notice that they’re dirty when we smell something funky or notice gross goop.

Don’t let your fridge get to that point. After all, it’s where you keep your food! Keep it neat and shiny by giving it a weekly cleaning. This can also help you shop for items as soon as they’re finished instead of not noticing until it’s too late.

Twelve: Clean Up After Cooking

What is worse than having to wash the dishes when you’re stuffed full of macaroni and cheese (and that yummy dessert you decided to make)? Leaving the dishes to pile up until the next day!

Don’t give in to temptation and start relaxing the moment you finish dinner. Instead, quickly tidy up the kitchen and put away all the dishes so your kitchen is nice and refreshingly clean. It’s also a good idea to clean as you cook so you don’t have as much to clean afterward.

Thirteen: Give Everything Its Own Place

Number thirteen on our list of habits to keep a clean home is not unlucky at all. In fact, it will help you keep your space tidy and neat in the long run. It’s difficult to put stuff away if you don’t really know where you should be putting it.

So give every item in your home its own place and make sure that it is put there after use, immediately if possible.

Fourteen: Straighten Before Bedtime

This may be one of the hardest habits to keep a clean home to adopt, because it is really easy to unwind and get lazy when the sun goes down. However, doing a quick sweep through the most used rooms in your home before you go to bed is a very good habit.

Quickly put away all those toys, shoes, clothes, blankets, and other miscellaneous items that weren’t put in their places during the day. Then you can head to bed knowing you’ll wake up to a fresh, clean home.

Fifteen: Never Leave a Room Empty-Handed

If you want a cleaning habit that will make a very big difference in the general cleanliness of your home, this is it. As you move from one room to the next in your home, make a point of doing a scan of the space and finding something that you can take with you to either put away or throw away.

By doing this, you’ll be passively cleaning your home so the work left for the end of the day is much less. Make these one of your most focused habits to keep a clean home, because it’s easy to forget when you get distracted by life and other things happening.

Sixteen: Create a Cleaning Checklist

Sometimes, cleaning your home as thoroughly as you should can feel rather overwhelming. Where do you start? Well, create a cleaning checklist and that won’t be a problem at all. Remember that you don’t have to do everything at once.

Try to take on two or three big tasks a day while also finishing the smaller but daily tasks like the dishes and laundry. Your list should be in order of importance, as discussed in habit number seven.

Seventeen: Get the Whole Family Involved

A clean home is a team effort, especially if it’s a bigger home with several people living in it. That’s why you should get the whole family involved in adopting habits to keep a clean home. It will be much easier to keep the house clean if everyone is pitching in and doing their part.

Eighteen: Don’t Aim for Perfection

Although you should try your best to keep your home as clean as possible, you don’t have to aim for a perfectly spotless place. Perfection takes time, so perfectly cleaning your home will take time as well, which means this isn’t always a realistic aspiration.

Clean your home to the point that it’s neat and tidy, and don’t worry about cleaning it perfectly and making the house feel like a place where you’re punished for being a bit messy.

Enjoy Your Clean Home! Once you’ve read through this list of habits to keep a clean home, you’ll be ready for the hard part—actually keeping your home clean. It will be fun at first, then feel tedious, and then become a part of your daily routine. Once you’ve reached that point where keeping your home is habitual, you can relax and enjoy your clean house with pride! It may take some time, but once you’re there, you’ll feel awesome.