HomeKeepr Blog

A new year is often a time you are thinking about changes you want to make. You may consider personal, financial, and other lifestyle adjustments, but what about your living space? Changes to your home may be necessary to refresh and renew it to increase safety and comfort and make you feel happier while also saving you money. A major renovation is an option, although there are some changes you can do cheaply and easily yourself without needing professional labor.

If you do not live in a warm, tropical climate, the fall months are the best time to get your home ready for freezing temperatures, snowstorms, and icy conditions that lie ahead in the wintertime. Without the proper care and adherence to a maintenance routine, your living space and appliances are prone to damage that can lead to considerable costs for repair and high energy bills.

Good siding can go a long way toward making your home look beautiful. For a lot of homeowners, they discover only one big drawback to having siding on their homes: it needs to be cleaned to keep it looking its best. Depending on the color of your siding, you may notice dirty streaks, dusty discoloration, and possibly even green tints from algae or mildew that will need to come off in order to restore your siding’s beauty.

If there’s one thing that you think about during the summer, it’s… probably not getting a fireplace installed. In fact, there are probably very few home updates or additions that are further from your mind when heat indexes top 100 degrees and the sun is beating down. Just because you’re not thinking about a fireplace doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be, though.

When you don’t have a lot of space or open ground around your home, planting a garden might seem impossible. After all, plants need room to grow and soil to grow in, don’t they? While this is true, there is more than one way to get a garden growing. If you have limited outdoor space or don’t have room for a large garden plot, one option is to set up a vertical garden instead.

Depending on where you live, this may be the time of year when you keep watching the mercury drop lower and lower as weather patterns come and go. Cold winter temperatures can be difficult for people and pets to deal with, but they can also be an issue as far as your home is concerned. Freezing pipes and faucets can be major hassles that cost a significant amount to repair, especially as they often require emergency service calls that cost extra. This is part of the reason that so much emphasis is placed on freeze prevention during the winter.

When most people talk about curb appeal, at least part of what they’re talking about involves landscaping and other greenery to make your home look inviting. That’s great during the spring and summer, and even the fall to an extent. What happens when the icy winds of winter sneak in, though, and a lot of that greenery is taken out of the equation until spring rolls around again? For some reason, it seems acceptable to just abandon curb appeal and making your home look inviting once the days grow short and the temperature drops.

Though a lot of people reseed their lawns in the spring, there are periods during the fall that are actually better for most grasses than spring seeding. Exactly when this seeding window is depends on both where you live and the type of grass that you’re putting seed down for. This may lead some people to believe that any time late in the year is ideal for reseeding a lawn prior to spring; unfortunately, that isn’t actually the case.

As the threat of winter ice and snow increases, many homeowners start stocking up on deicer and other products to try and keep their walkways safe and clear throughout the winter. Not all deicer products are created equal, however, and some can actually do some harm around the home. Not only can some deicing compounds harm plants around your walkway, but they can even cause some damage to your walkways as well if you aren’t careful.