Posts in category 'Homeownership'

We're in the midst of a heatwave, and it's making it next to impossible to spend any significant amount of time outside, but honestly, I'm struggling to spend time indoors as well. My house is old, and the building where my business is located is old too, and they both rely on window air conditioners to keep them cool this time of year. Although the window air conditioners try their best, when it's this hot outside, by the middle of the day the air inside will feel almost as hot as the air outside, both at my house and at my store. It's brutal, to say the least.

I've been considering having mini-splits installed in my house for quite some time, but each year I put it off; then summer rolls around, and I find myself in an August heatwave agai...

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If you're looking to preserve a piece of architectural history and repurpose it into a living space, converting an old barn into a home might be just what you need. Across New England, converting an old barn frame into a new residence or secondary home building has been catching on. 

While it seems like a simple enough project, there is much more challenge than meets the eye when building a barndominium. If you're up for the task, here's how to get started. 

Research Old Barn Frames

You will want to make sure you have a solid understanding of common layouts in historical barn frames so that you can incorporate your new living space details well inside the old framework.

Having thi...

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Never did I think that I think I would pay so much attention to front porches, but here I am. Without intention, I find myself scrutinizing every house I drive past with a porch attached. Does it wrap around the whole house? Is it screened-in? How big is it? What's the railing situation? Stairs?

My house had a front porch until it didn't; it was more like a platform than a porch, as it was never intended to be permanent. It had a few steps off the sides, no railings. It served me well, but after a decade or so, it started to fail. Last fall, it began to pull away from the house and took some of the siding off with it. We replaced it with a much smaller porch, more like a landing pad for the stairs leading in and out of the front door. Altho...

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Last month, I noticed a massive groundhog hanging out in my yard. I've seen groundhogs around in the past, but usually an infrequent sighting here and there, as if my yard served as a pass-through rather than a home. This one, however, was lying on the ramp leading into my shed, sunning herself. As soon as she noticed me, she scurried under the shed, which I presumed to be the location of her burrow. The next day, there she was again, all flubber and fur laying out in the sun. This went on for a while, until one day she was flanked by two other groundhogs, much smaller than her. All three retreated to their burrow once they noticed me, and that is when I realized I didn't have just one groundhog living under my shed, but an entire groundhog family lived unde...

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If there is one thing New Hampshire has a lot of, it's trees. Pine, maple, oak, birch, apple, poplar, ash; the list goes on. Some are more desirable than others, but they're abundant all the same. When I first moved into my house, the previous owner had cleared the field, and the majority of the trees were off in the distance, with the exception of a few around the house. A few years back, a couple of pine trees popped up near the edge of the yard. Then a few more. Then a lot more. It didn't take long for them to grow quite tall, creating somewhat of a curtain between the yard and the rest of the property. Now there are so many, it's hard to even remember what it looked like before they were there.

On the backside of the house are a...

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