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Mountain Home Maintenance Advice According to Home Inspectors

November 13, 2023

A home inspector’s job is to know everything about what makes a home safe, comfortable, and habitable. Modern advancements mean that families are able to live in new jaw-droppingly beautiful environments, even despite their unique challenges. As people stretch the limitations of a modern home, home inspectors are still there to ensure necessary systems function as they should. When it comes to living in a mountain home, owners have to adapt to their surroundings. Whether you’re a new homeowner acclimating to life a little higher above sea level, or you’re a long-time mountain dweller looking for some tips to keep your home running smoother (and to keep costs down), here are some primary maintenance concerns worth tracking. Every Home’s Number One Enemy is Water IntrusionIn most climates, water management easily tops the list for property concerns due to the wide range of issues it can cause. Between poor water run-off, water intrusion, pooling and standing water, the development of mold, mildew, is a primary concern. In areas that have to deal with rain and snow throughout the year, water management becomes an even more important focus. Homeowners can start by regularly cleaning out their gutters and keeping their downspouts free

How to Start a Little Library

November 6, 2023

One major challenge that can come from moving into a new neighborhood involves transforming your new house into your new home. As we’ve discussed recently, a great way to become comfortable with a new city or a new area is to invest in relationships with your neighbors! Becoming familiar with (and hopefully liking) your neighbors often sounds nice in concept, but breaking through that initial comfortability barrier can be tough. The good news is this: there are many underutilized strategies that new homeowners and long-time homeowners alike can employ to make their neighborhood of strangers feel much more like a community. As homeowners, learning how to be a little more self-sufficient is smart. Challenging yourselves with progressively difficult DIY projects should give you an excuse to spend some more time outside and break the ice while meeting new neighbors. For a beginner-level DIY project that can be as simple or complex as your experience allows, nothing works quite as well as starting a Little Library. What is a Little Library?Also known as Little Free Libraries, Library Boxes, or just Neighborhood Book Exchanges, Little Libraries have been popping up more and more in coffee shops, apartment buildings, and neighborhoods all around

How to Survive a Scary Movie

October 23, 2023

Since we’ve previously discussed how to confirm whether your home is active with the paranormal, we thought it might be valuable to go over some additional Halloween-time survival strategies. When watching a scary movie, it’s easy to become frustrated by the classic mistakes and gaffes that the characters make as they bungle their way into the killer’s hands. Although it’s reasonable to assume that the stress and terror of running for your life can keep you from making practical decisions, choices made by horror movie protagonists can be baffling. In the inevitable case that you end up cornered by a masked, knife-wielding stranger straight out of a slasher movie, you don’t want to fall for the same old slip-ups. To be better prepared, we consulted some of the best minds in home maintenance, organization, and personal fitness for their tips on surviving a scary movie. How To Tell That You’re In A Scary MovieNaturally, the first step for surviving a scary movie is to confirm that you are, in fact, living in a scary movie yourself. Although it may seem painfully obvious to audience goers that the characters shouldn’t investigate that noise in the attic, or search their creepy, unfinished

Haunted Places Series: Winchester Mystery House

October 16, 2023

Location: San Jose, CaliforniaArchitectural Style: Exterior: Queen Anne-Style Victorian; Interior: Aesthetic MovementBuilt: 1886 – 1922 As we progress through the Halloween season, we thought there was no location more appropriate to visit than one of the most notoriously unusual architectural wonders of North America – and the tale of the woman behind it all. For our next entry, we visit the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah PardeeSarah Lockwood Pardee was born in 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut. In her upper-class New England home, Sarah had by all accounts a happy childhood with access to fantastic education, going on to learn four foreign languages (Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian). Pardee studied at Yale College’s associated female scholastic institution and became known for both her extraordinary intelligence and her beauty. Called the “Belle of New Haven,” Sarah had many admirers. In 1862, Sarah married William Wirt Winchester, a brother to one of her classmates and member of a wealthy New Haven family. William was an only son and, therefore, sole heir to his father’s considerable manufacturing company, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. William and Sarah Winchester were a well-off, idyllic young couple, but early on, tragedy beset the Winchesters. In 1866, Sarah gave

How to Tell if Your House is Haunted

October 9, 2023

October has officially arrived and, as we march closer and closer to the spookiest day of the year, it’s natural for our minds to focus in on the strange and obscure. If this was your first year in your new home, you may have noticed some of its more interesting quirks or “features.” Some houses seem to groan when the wind hits them just right, others might creak whenever the mood is right. These are just “house noises” that you’re slowly growing accustomed to…right? Many odd occurrences in the home can be explained away with a little bit of investigation, but when attempts at rationality come up short, it can be difficult to brush off the unexplained. As we all know, the Halloween season is best known as one time each year that the barrier between the material world and the spiritual world is its thinnest. In other words, if you have your suspicions that your house just might be haunted, you better figure it out now. To aid you in your investigation, we’ve placed our best paranormal researchers on the job to identify the surefire evidence that proves your house is haunted. Reader beware: only proceed if you want

Tricky and Easily Overlooked Areas of the Home That You Should Clean Today

September 25, 2023

Managing to keep an entire home clean is no easy task. Between doing the laundry, vacuuming the rugs, cleaning the dishes, and taking out the trash, there are plenty of hours in the day already dedicated to housekeeping. Naturally, things fall through the cracks, and certain items in the home are naturally overlooked. The problem is that certain items that might have been easily cleaned in the past can prove a much more difficult task if neglected for too long. If you are interested in being proactive about keeping your home clean, consider taking another look at these often-ignored home items. Spend Some Extra Time in the KitchenDo people spend a lot of time cleaning their kitchen? Of course they do. Do people still overlook a few areas in their kitchen due to inconvenience or lack of awareness? Absolutely! Kitchens can become one of the grimiest, dirtiest areas in a house if homeowners aren’t consistent about their cleaning habits due to the many kinds of messes and spills that are bound to happen while cooking. It’s when only the surface areas are taken care of that problems begin to pile up. Starting with the dishwasher, some may think that this

How to Get to Know Your New Neighbors

September 18, 2023

The experience of moving into a new home can be like riding a chaotic roller coaster – with all of the anxiety and eventual relief that’s involved with the ordeal. Often, families can be so consumed with making themselves comfortable in their new home that finding comfort in their new neighborhood is an afterthought. Today, many can find it difficult to familiarize themselves with the people that share their block, whether because they might lean toward an introverted personality, or perhaps their hectic lifestyle limits opportunities to invest in new relationships. Regardless of the reasons for these hurdles, new homeowners should realize that their best opportunity to get to know their new environment is when they first move into their homes. If you’re interested in exploring some strategies for making a positive first impression with your new neighbors, you’re in the right place! The Benefits of Knowing Your NeighborsBased on some of the latest Pew research polls, a lack of familiarity with one’s neighbors is trending up. While only 4% of Americans ages 65 and up report not knowing any of their neighbors, this number grows to 7% for ages 50-64, 15% for ages 30-49, and a whopping 23% for

Home Organization Tips for Back To School Season

September 11, 2023

Regardless of the amount of preparation dedicated in advance, heading back to school tends to come as a shock. For families with more than one kid, systems of organization that worked perfectly fine during the summer can unravel quickly once hectic mornings and packed after-school schedules dominate daylight hours. No one wants their home to feel chaotic, and nothing builds up that feeling like disorganized clutter. The best way to combat the seismic shift that accompanies heading back to school is to discover a new rhythm that works for the entire family. Consistency, ease of use, and setting appropriate expectations that the family can keep up in the long term – accomplishing each of these are the keys to developing an efficient home. To avoid that seemingly inevitable shift that turns your home into a disaster zone through the course of the school year, consider adding these organizational tips to your arsenal! Establish a Doable RoutineIn life, some people can find a fondness for spontaneity, taking life by the horns, and pursuing each odd opportunity. For kids, though, this sort of lifestyle will likely create a sense of uncertainty that affects many aspects of their lives. Trying to leave in

The Keys to Assembling a Great House Flipping Team

September 4, 2023

Some of the best must-see reality television today comes from house-flipping shows: seasoned real estate experts find appealing residential properties or fixer-uppers, then transform them into dream homes for a tidy profit. It’s no mystery why these shows are so popular either, as real estate window-shoppers, amateur handymen, and people with an entrepreneurial spirit are all drawn to the home renovation genre. With that said, the average Joe who might be interested in jumping into the house-flipping world should take pause due to the considerable learning curve involved. Anyone who hosts a show on HGTV is going to have vast experience and a top-notch team behind them that can make house flipping look far easier than it really is. To break into the house-flipping world successfully, a person would either need broad experience in real estate and home improvement or (much more realistically) a great team to lean on. If you’re looking into house flipping for supplemental income or a career shift, here’s some of the essential traits you’ll need on your team. What is House Flipping?Before jumping into the deep end, let’s review a few important definitions. Namely, what is house flipping anyway? “House flipping” is a term best

How Pets Are Changing The Way We Design Homes

August 28, 2023

Pets demand so much attention, but homeowners have a tendency to bend over backwards in order to accommodate. Frequently, cats and dogs can seem to rule their homes, and since the pandemic saw over 23 million American homes adopt pets (per the Washington Post), the ways in which homeowners are learning to spoil them seem to be spiking. Barkitecture is a term used in reference to the recent trend of remodeling homes with pets specifically in mind, with more permanent and invasive remodeling efforts invested to make family dogs and cats feel more at home. If you’re in the market for a new home, or you’re considering a remodel to make your dog feel more at home, here are a few stylish and subtle home designs you might want to try out. Starting with the Classics With these more traditional pet accommodations in mind, let’s move onto some of the more unique home Barkitecture trends that are changing home design. Home Barkitecture Trends Dog houses, on the other hand, have been around for quite some time. In the past, these structures have been fairly simple, usually consisting of a few walls and a pitched roof. Nowadays, as TikToker @chipgirlhere has