Posts in category 'Home Improvement'

It is no secret making the best and highest use of our homes is important to us all. In general, we don't like to have wasted spaces and this time of year most certainly don't want to be heating those spaces for no good reason. For the most part I have had my home-office in spare bedrooms. Once I actually had a whole half of our basement. That was fun, but kind of wasteful and silly. I used the space heater for nearly the entire winter. One great option for optimizing the space in your home is the attic. Today I'd like to take a walk up those stairs and share a few insights for making great use of that space.

Unless you are fortunate enough to live in a newer home, many of the homes around New England are getting a little long in the tooth. If the attic was never used (or even intended to be used) for a living area, it is going to b...

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I think it began for me about 30 (sweet Jesus!) years ago. It was Christmas morning and dad (Santa) saved his pennies (or whatever our parents did to save money back then) and bought mom a microwave! Looking back on it through today's hyper-sensitive lens, it sounds sexist and patronizing. I promise you it was the polar opposite. The reaction, including giggles and tears of joy, has forever fueled my penchant for acts of service combined with the element of surprise. I simply love doing things for friends and family without them knowing and in order to provide a service I know they'll appreciate. From simple mowing of the lawn and clearing the snow off a car to sanding and restaining the deck, the joy I get from the deed feels almost selfish!

As I was digging into the article this week, I came across a slew of mi...

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So it's overcast, a little breezy and just plain cold. If you don't feel like venturing out into the woods and it's too cold for a bike ride, how about a little home improvement!? This is my favorite time of year to dig into a quick remodeling project. It is a perfect project to tackle while the Patriots are banging up on some other hapless team and you can feel less guilty about those adult beverages you're enjoying while you're at it! Let's take a peek at a few projects that will make you AND your prospective buyers giddy.

The National Association of Realtors did a big survey and assigned a "Joy Score" to the possible projects that homeowners could undertake. The factor relates to not just how happy the homeowners were with the completed project and how it made their home better, bu...

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I simply love living in northern New Hampshire and there's nothing quite like the seasonal transitions to keep us entertained and amazed by nature's beauty and strength. One of the more exciting and visually stunning changes is our migration towards Fall. I know, if you are reading this and are under the age of 18, you are cursing those words and are bemoaning the end to the carefree days of summer and YOUR shift towards homework and study hall. If you are a homeowner, I hope you are asking yourself the question: "Is my home ready for the colder temps?"

As we are forced to reach for that extra blanket at night and even move the slider in the car from blue to red, our thoughts should also be directed towards readying our homes for the coming white stuff!
Getting and Staying warm inside the home...

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The first property I bought was in desperate need of some TLC in the downstairs unit. I ripped up all the flooring, entirely replaced the bathroom and painted nearly every surface in the whole place. In that instance it was all well worth it. The upstairs unit was covering the mortgage and thankfully the repairs did not end up being that extensive (or expensive). In many cases though, folks get too excited about some (likely false) fantasy of a fixer-upper they see on some reality TV show and are more than disappointed at the end-result. Let's take a look at some history in the "needs some TLC" world and see if we can come up with a more solid strategy.

Porch.com did a study of over 1,000 homeowners and the data below comes from their findings. Most of us think that buying a home that needs so...

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