Category: Home Improvement

DIY Tricks to Revamp Your Yard

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Tired of a plain-looking backyard that does not add any value to your home? It is time that you thought of an upgrade. The good news is that you do not have to call in a professional as there are some DIY backyards upgrade projects that you can take part in to transform it into a sanctuary that you will instantly fall in love with such as:

Love Life Gardens with our new sail shade

Building a stacked stone fireplace

The backyard can be transformed into a place where people can just sit around and get some warmth by simply building a stone fireplace. This is not difficult to do because all you need to do is get the stones and some cement that will be used to hold them together. Remember to build a good foundation for the fireplace so that you do not end up burning down the house. You can add some great-looking chairs around the fireplace which can also double up as a romantic avenue for couples who want to cuddle and catch up as they get warmth from the fire.

Create a rugged canvas rug

The floors of the backyard can be transformed using a simple drop cloth that can be changed into a unique rug. All you need to do this is some painter’s tape, a ruler, and some stripes of your preferred bold hue. This can be turned into a fun family project as you use the painter’s tape to draw some lines into the shapes or lines that you would like. The ruler can be used to draw straight lines that will make the job look more professional. This is usually easy to clean and looks great on the floor especially when matched up with the proper furniture.

Outdoor shade sails

These are great options that can be used when you are looking for incredible shade for your backyard. Adding a shade sail to your yard can provide a gorgeous look for your backyard. They are available in different colors and dimensions allowing you to pick the one that suits your needs best. You can have one side fastened to the roof while the other you can erect a pole so that it can serve its purpose without any problems. These can also be used in the pool area especially if you do not want to get direct sunlight over the place. They can also be used to offer shelter to the flowers and vegetation in your backyard.

Create a beautiful pathway

You might be surprised at the kind of impact that a simple pathway might have on your backyard especially if you are dealing with a large space. Simple stepping stones can be used to set a clear path that people will use to get around. You can use contrasting small gravel and large stones to come up with an interesting look at the end of the day. There are great pathway inspirations available here. This will also help to create an organized look for the backyard as well as help people to stay out of the grass which will help make it look more beautiful. Remember to always maintain the pathway so that it is not swallowed up by grass and other weeds.

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Little Kitchen Design Tricks That Increase Your Home Value

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

If there is one room you should improve it’s the kitchen, now being called the heart of the home. But you don’t want to spend a fortune designing your entire kitchen just to sell it on again, and understandably. Why not give it a low-cost make-over, creating a new feel and look without having the builders move in on you for months.

Let There Be Light

And I don’t just mean electric ones. If your windows are old-fashioned and the glass sits stained within a shabby frame, replace them with brand new ones that give the room all the light it can take, without having to knock down the walls. New lights can also transform your kitchen, if they’re old-fashioned or class terribly with the room, but this isn’t always necessary.

Go Green

It’s hard to get away from the green trend, with everything eco-friendly and organic these days. But somehow the kitchen accommodates the great outdoors perfectly, whatever your home’s style, and a larger standing plant or simply a smaller vase or two of greenery will give your kitchen that fresh modern feel.

Image by home space

Paint the Town

…Or just your kitchen. Slap on a light colour like a light cream to make it feel more roomy and light. Don’t be afraid of bright colours though, they’re one of the big kitchen design trends at the moment, but if you do stick to one smaller wall, or your smaller appliances like a stylish red kettle and keep it simple. If the colour you set your heart on unfortunately doesn’t match the cupboards, don’t shy away from painting those too and giving them a good thorough clean. They’ll look like new.

Get Coordinated

Making your kitchen match consistently throughout the space can come down to making sure all the appliances coordinate. If your oven and fridge are sleek stainless steel and your microwave and dishwasher are a tacky white plastic, swap them. They’re not always hugely pricy to replace and can be installed for you to save you the hassle, but it’ll bring the room together nicely.

Stay Seated

With the kitchen becoming a social hub and the room everyone gravitates to at gatherings, lots of seating is crucial. Whether that be a nicely co-ordinated sofa to make the room more social, or bar stools if your kitchen is smaller, seating adds a relaxing element to the room, giving buyers the ability to picture themselves using it in a variety of ways.

Free the Floor

The rustic, retro look has made a triumphant yet comforting come-back in the designer home, and with that come the floorboards. You may associate floor boards with dust, bugs and the endless splinters as time goes on, but a coat of varnish or some new planks will change that perception and give the house a stylishly vintage feel.

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A Well-Kept Lawn Increases Property Value

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

According to a study done by the University of Central Florida, good landscaping can increase the value of your home up to 11%. This is too significant a number to ignore. Quality landscaping is an excellent investment for many reasons.

Many people when attempting to increase the value of their home focus on interior projects. It makes sense, however, that the lawn would be an extremely important factor to a potential buyer, after all, it is the first thing they will see. It will also make the buyer feel as though the house is less of a “fixer-upper” if the lawn is well maintained. With all that goes into buying a home and moving, knowing that the lawn is already in good shape could be a very attractive perk.

The ideal length for lawns is about 2 ½ to 3 inches high. Cutting grass too short will actually make it grow back faster. Older lawn mowers may not have the option to leave grass this high, as the thinking used to be the shorter the better, so you may want to check what the highest setting on your mower is.

Another incentive to keep your lawn well maintained is that it can help to boost the property value of your neighborhood overall. If your next-door neighbor’s lawn is overgrown and full of brown patches, and you make the effort to make your lawn look exquisite, it may prompt the neighbor to clean up his yard. Ideally, this would catch on throughout the neighborhood. Property value is partly determined by what homes around you sold for, so it is in your best interest for your neighbors to sell their homes at the best possible prices.

The good news is that the peak of real estate season tends to be in the spring, which is also the best time for gardening. Here are some of the key factors to think about when creating a beautiful looking lawn:

  • Paths and Walkways – It is nice for a guest visiting the home to have a clearly defined walkway to use when walking up to the door. Make sure it is clear of obstacles or overgrown plants because if someone trips on your walkway you could be held liable.
  • Trimmed Hedges – Hedges can be utilized in a variety of ways, whether to separate your yard from the neighbors’, to line walkways, or to provide some privacy on the front porch. Regardless of where your hedges are, keep them evenly trimmed as unruly hedges make a yard look sloppy.
  • Flower Beds – Flowers will add a beautiful pop of color to your yard and make it stand out. Flower beds can go right under windows, or on the ground in front of the house. Be sure to do a little bit of research into what the best flowers for your climate and soil type are. The associates in most garden centers should be able to help you pick out the best flowers for you, whether you want specific colors and are willing to meticulously maintain them, or just want to buy resilient flowers that can handle most conditions.
  • Grass – Of course, the main component of the lawn is the grass! Healthy grass is the foundation to a beautiful lawn. If you do not have the time to regularly mow and fertilize your entire lawn (as many people don’t), consider hiring an Orlando lawn care company. This will ensure that you always have healthy grass to use as a canvas on which to create a gorgeous lawn.

A house is much more likely to sell if it has good curb appeal, meaning even from the curb it looks like a place someone would want to live. A well-maintained lawn is the first step in creating curb appeal, and it can mean a much higher offer on your home.

Looking for an Orlando home with a big backyard? We can help visit https://orlandorealtyconsultants.com/

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A Guide to Loft Insulation

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Getting your loft insulated is one of the best measures you can take to safeguard your home against energy inefficiency. But, it can be confusing deciding what type of insulation to go for and understanding the benefits to your home. For a guide to what loft insulation entails, read on.

Why get loft insulation?

Loft insulation will cost you money, but it’s worth the investment, and after a number of years you end up recouping the money spent with the savings you made. How does it work?  Basically, loft insulation stops heat from escaping out of your roof. During wintertime, when you need the heat most, a loft that hasn’t been insulated can lose up to a quarter of its heat from the roof. By getting your loft insulated, it will have a positive impact on your energy bills, and the environment. You could save over 700g of carbon dioxide annually from getting your loft insulated.

In the summer, when you don’t want the heat entering your home, the insulation acts like a barrier trapping the sun’s energy from coming through the roof, thus keeping your home nice and cool – just when you want it most.

Once you’ve got your loft insulated, it should last you around 40 years, so the inconvenience of installation is nothing compared to how long you’ll benefit for.

Types of insulation

There are different types of insulation, so you’ll need to choose the type that works best for your home and is within your budget. You can either get bulk insulation, which contain fibres that trap small pockets of air, such as glasswool or rockwool. You could also choose reflective insulation, which reduces infrared radiant heat transfer from a hot surface to a cooler one, and includes foil products. Or, you could choose composite materials, which are a combination of bulk and reflective.

The type of roof you have, and who is going to install it, are often deciding factors when it comes to choosing insulation.

The process of insulating your loft

A straightforward, easy-to-access loft, with regular joists and free from condensation issues is easy to insulate, and can even be done as your own DIY project, which will save further costs. Rolls of mineral wool can easily be laid between the joists, then at right angles covering the joists so it meets the required depth.

Some people who use their loft as living space decide to insulate the loft roof instead of the floor by fixing insulation boards between the roof rafters.

Lofts that are hard to access are more likely to need the expertise of a professional. In this instance, specialist equipment is used to blow the insulation material into the loft.

If you have a flat roof, then insulation is normally added to the top of the roof’s weatherproof layer. Again, this is normally a job for a professional.

Any pipes or water tanks will also need insulating so that they don’t freeze up. Don’t forget about the hatch as well.

Value

Not only will adding or improving your loft insulation decrease your energy bills and contribute to helping the environment, it will also increase the value of your home. Any measures that are taken to increase the green factor of a home are appealing additions that buyers will appreciate. These could be the selling points that make your home stand out over another.

 

 

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What Future Holds For The Real Estate Market Worldwide

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Construction of homes in all their alternative forms is everywhere. We, as the most intellectually-advances species on the planet, use our brain capacity to overwrite that which mother nature never did for us. We come up with remarkable ways to satisfy our basic needs. Once upon a time, the thinking was very basic. But as the world population grew, so did ingenuity.

Being able to construct real estate properties, no matter where we set foot, has been a technique mastered quite a while ago. What has changed is the design and efficiency of these buildings. What hasn’t changed is the need for these buildings. The present strictly uses forms of commerce and management to operate the construction, sale and maintenance of real estate. The era of advanced communication makes it possible even more than that. Technology is an ever-changing factor, always present. Unfortunately we have lost touch with the animal part of ourselves, therefore unable to to survive a naked exposure to nature for a long period of time.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t use technology to understand how things work in the universe. As it turns out, doing is just one step ahead of understanding. In that light, the work of buildings will never truly be out of demand. The reason lies within the fundamentality of home. Although the term is relative, construction doesn’t happen by magic…yet. There are many pre-circumstances towards creating something spacious, and that doesn’t only mean plain large. Surely more are to come upon completion.

As mentioned, in order to do something useful, you must first understand it. We will now turn our attention to another great function – the trade value of money. As per usual, currency interferes. Because there’s no other acceptable way to perform payment or exchange for usefulness, money is once again the way real estate is driven. Back in the past, there were alternatives, such as the favour-to-favour way for concluding a type of service, and the material exchange to conclude trade deals. Only later it was broken down to “buying” and “selling”. Before that, those two words had equal meaning.

As long as properties exist materialistically, business will legally allow the creation of ideas that target exploring profit opportunities associated with the many individual work that maintaining home is consisted of. Those include jobs such as cleaning, household work, repair, internal design and construction, gardening, moving/relocating, even packing services London, if you happen to be lucky enough to live in England’s capital city. Any business that revolves around the “home” subject is bound to be profitable. There are more than 7 billion people in the world, which number continues to increase. However, there is only a limited amount of space to build. Of course, no building created by man is forever.

Demolition is the only way to be economic and environmental-friendly. Extensive growth, in the future, is planned to go underground, under and above waters, as well as the sky. We are already running out of space and destroying habitats for other creatures in this world. Although business is looking even more promising for our generations, we cannot allow our offspring to be encouraged to practice freedom abuse, vandalism and greed.

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