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My house was sucking my money down the drain; here’s what I did

I’m a saver. I only spend money on things that are necessary. When my husband and I became first-time homeowners, I was shocked at how much money it took to keep my home functional and comfortable. We were spending way more than I wanted to, but it was necessary. The money spent on electric bills went to powering our home. We had to pay the gas bill to avoid freezing during the winter. It felt like our house was sucking every penny out of our budget. To avoid breaking the bank, we started doing a few simple things around the house to save some money.

Turn off the A/C

I like to keep my home at comfortable temperatures, especially during the summer. I can’t stand the feeling of a hot, stuffy house. But the cost of cooling our house was getting out of control. I hated seeing money fly out the window every time we turned on the central air. But there are plenty of ways to combat energy loss during the summer, other than roasting in a hot home. First, I bought some heavy drapes to keep out the sun and turned the A/C way down at night. We found that once the temps get low enough, the thick drapes helped block the sun from making it too hot during the day. We also started using our ceiling fan a lot more when we were home. These simple tricks helped to keep our electric bill at a price that wasn’t breaking our budget.

It’s all about insulation

When we first bought our house, the insulation wasn’t that great. We could feel cold air seeping through the windows and doors during the frigid winter months. We were turning up the heater way more than we should, which drove up our gas bill. After doing some research, we found a few, easy ways to insulate our house. Spraying some insulation in the attic; adding weather strips to the windows; and replacing the older, weather-beaten front and back doors with newer ones helped to keep the house better insulated. Remember the heavy drapes I bought over the summer? It turns out they’re great for winter too. On the coldest of days, we would close them, throw on a sweater and some woolly socks, and become totally warm. We rarely found ourselves turning the heater up past 60, which dramatically reduced our gas bill during the winter months.

Install CFL and LED lights wherever it makes sense

If you’re still using incandescent bulbs, you need to stop. They’re expensive, don’t last long, and use six times more energy than an LED light. I made the switch to LED lights as soon as we moved into our new home, almost three years ago. To this day, we haven’t had to replace a single bulb. And we’re using a lot less energy than we did in our previous apartment where all we used was incandescent lights. Replacing a few bulbs in our house was fast,  easy, and helped us to keep our electricity costs down.

Doing these few, simple things around our house helped us to save so much money on our gas and electric bills. But it didn’t stop there. Once I discovered how much money we were saving, I wanted to find even more energy-saving hacks. Here are a few of my personal favorites.

  • Turn off all lights when you leave a room; also, take advantage of the natural light whenever you can.
  • Invest in power strips and turn them off when you’re not watching  TV, using the computer, or playing gaming consoles.
  • Perform a weekly maintenance check on your appliances; make sure they are clean and working properly.
  • De-clutter every room. We actually made some fast cash by selling all the stuff we didn’t need—plus it made my house feel so much cleaner.
  • Making more crockpot meals helped us to save time and money, since most meals involve three ingredients and almost no prep time. Plus, they’re delicious and make me seem like an even more talented chef than I am.

What are some ways that you’ve saved money on your home? Let us know in the comments below.

 

       

 

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Home & Garden

Revitalize your space: Out with the old, in with the new spring design trends

As the warmer weather approaches and we all prepare to shed the layers and clunky boots, opting for brighter and lighter colours in our wardrobes, I often look for ways to make necessary changes in my home as well, by shedding the dull, then bringing in the lively and new. Spring is often associated with new beginnings and a fresh start after enduring the Canadian winter blahs for so many seemingly endless months. Reinventing your space and wardrobe can assist in resetting your mind to switch things up and achieve a new focus or mindset, which in turn benefits health.

When it comes to my home, it’s not always possible to exchange whole furniture sets to overhaul a space, but there are small additions and alterations that can be made to make it feel as though you are arriving home to a whole new retreat each evening.

The styles of 2018 make it easy to infuse abodes with colour, brightness and lightness, in addition to comfort and chic appeal.

Colours of the season:

Gelato-inspired hues are huge for Spring & Summer 2018.  Complement your space with the tastiest options from your local gelato shop, many of which have pastel and neutral tones.  Often mixing and matching flavours while topping up your cone or dish is the outcome of a visit to the gelato shop, so go all out when it comes to home décor and select a variety of colours to liven your space as well.

Make ultra violet ultra cool.

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In addition to pastels and Gelato hues, indigo blue is a hot colour for home décor over the upcoming spring and summer months. Whether indoor overhaul is needed or the objective is to spruce up your outdoor space, this striking blue hue will bring a punch of pizzazz.

The perfect complement to indigo blue is glittering gold. Although gold is often associated with the holiday season, the glittery trend can be found in many accessories for the warmer months’ décor selections. Vases, artwork, mirrors and hanging pendants, are all the perfect accessories to accent a space in this hue.

Accents and Accessories

Geometrics are still big this season and can be found in artwork, wallpaper, rugs and on statement pieces.  Feathers, fringe and tufted cushions are also very much on the hot list. This season homeowners can find these accents on everything from duvets to throw pillows, adding texture and an original appeal.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf8proVhmMh/?tagged=featherdecor

Flooring

Often shimmer is reserved for artwork, fabrics and wall-coverings, but this year, that subtle shimmer is making its way into various flooring materials, including carpets! Grey and pale blue flooring matched with the said shimmer and complemented by soft shimmering wall paper and art work, is a trend of the upcoming months. The trend opens up any space, and the suggested hues bring a serene atmosphere to the home.

Be inspired by the trends of the season and have fun revitalizing your space. I know I will!

 

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Home & Garden

5 tips to transform your drab living room

Simple steps in decor choices can easily transform you living space for the better. No matter the size of space you are working with, the placement and design of products can help a large space feel cozy and a smaller space feel large. There are various design templates to work with, modern, mid-century, bohemian, glam, or traditional, but no matter your personal preference there are some basic key elements of design you shouldn’t ignore. Never fear — Women’s Post is here to help! If you desire that clean chic look, especially for your living room, follow these five rules.

Pick a focal point

Think of what you want the centrepiece of your living room to be. The most standard and best possible choice is to have a simple coffee table that can attract attention, but at the same time balance the elements of the room. A good coffee table can completely change the ambiance of a space. It should compliment the surrounding furniture, or even radically stand out. Keep it clean, simple, and minimal with just enough room for a beautiful plant, some books, or a hot cup of coffee.

It’s all about the little things

The more cluttered a room is, the smaller it will feel. A clean, organized space with just a few decorative accents is very trendy right now.  These accents are not just for decoration, but are a necessary part in creating comfortable conversation pieces. These pieces are meant to showcase your personality, so be creative! It may be a rustic brass ornament, a token from a trip, or something unusual and glamorous. Just try not to overdo it.

Fluff it up

Accent pillows are a living room’s best friend. You can change the look of your living room in a matter of seconds by refreshing the look of the cushions on your couch. If you have a basic white sofa, try to add a pop of colour to brighten the room. Darker upholstery may require similarly toned pillows or warm coloured accents.

Don’t forget your walls

When putting a living room together, think of the bare space you are working with. Depending on your style you can choose to add colour to your walls. The walls surround your living room will help to bring the space together. Bright walls can work for a colourful room, or beige/tan walls can help achieve a cozy feeling. For a more open space in a smaller room, consider keeping one white wall. Don’t overdo it with paintings. Chose one or two that you really love and place them strategically on walls that look a bit more empty. Spread them out in comparison to your lamps and curtains.

Consider lighting

The lighting in your living room can change the entire mood. Will it be warm, bight, or somewhere in between? It’s not just about the lighting, but the design of the lighting you choose to have. Floor-lamps or antique chandelier? There are many choices, and each one can help transform your living space into the room of your dreams.

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Home & Garden

4 ways to create your own gourmet kitchen

One of the most important rooms in your house is more than likely your kitchen. You cook there, sometimes you eat there. It becomes a hub of conversation, where friends and family can be creative. One of the things that many people look at when buying a new home is often the kitchen —  it it big enough, bright enough, and does it have state of the art appliances? Many foodies and aspiring chefs (and even amateur ones) love working in a good kitchen. Here are a few tips on how to create your own gourmet kitchen, or at least feel like you’re working with one.

Get Organized

No matter the size of your kitchen, it is essential it be clutter free. This creates the feeling of a grand working place. You should have select storage areas for specialty items and an organizer for everything from your cooking utensils to your excess plastic bags. Keep you kitchen streamlined and know where everything is kept for easy access. In terms of design, keep it minimal and tidy with easy to clean surfaces.

Bright Colours

Thanks to many optical illusions, a room painted in white or even cool bright colours often tend to appear larger. The reflective surfaces of the lighter paint helps a room feel bigger with wider walls. Try to find reflective surfaces that will lighten the room. For instance, white moulding or trim adds depth to a wall and using quality paint provides a bit of shine or gloss helping the flow of light. Avoid darker or muddy colours at all cost. If you want to add a pop of colour to your white space, use colourful appliances.

Invest In The Proper Tools

If you want to work in a high performance kitchen, it might be time to invest in some high performance tools. Try using professionally made pots and pans and especially appliances with a brand you can trust. These products will be worth the investment because they are durable and should last for an extended period of time, making you feel at ease in having a product you can depend on. At the same time, monitor the performance quality of any new appliances you consider investing in and see which one works best for your space.

Gourmet Products

Put the salt and pepper down if that’s your basic seasoning. It’s time to invest in some gourmet spices (and I use the word gourmet as just an upgrade from salt and pepper). Open your mind and your spice rack to different flavours and aromas. Get new spice blends, oils, vinegars and open yourself to trying new flavours. From Peruvian pink salt to pineapple curry, discover new and interesting products.

Let us know how it goes! Post a description of your kitchen in the comments below!

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Money

How to budget for the new year

Personal finances can get complicated. Should I invest, save, or spend? How come I only have a few bucks to spend at the end of the month? Where did all my money go?

These are all very real questions people ask on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. A monthly budget will help you answer at least some of these inquiries — and if all else, it will help you save up for that much-needed summer vacation.

To help you out, I’ll go through the basics.

Find a mode of keeping track of your spending and income: If you don’t want to invest in a personal accountant, purchase Quickbooks or some sort of accounting software. You can also get started using an excel sheet. Whatever you use, make sure you are able to alter numbers as the month progresses. Keeping a firm track of your finances, no matter how depressing, is the only way to create a successful budget.

Fixed costs: Fixed costs exist and there is nothing you can do about it. The mortgage payment, rent, insurance — all of these things need to be paid promptly and on-time, so ensure they are a priority in your budget. If using quickbooks or an excel sheet, these payments would go at the top of your list.

Varied costs: This section includes cell phone bills, groceries, Internet, and cable. You have a little more control over when you pay these items and how much they are, but know there are always consequences for late payments. This should be the second section of your budget. When doing these calculations, make sure to note interest rates for late fees so you are aware of what happens if you don’t pay on time.

These varied and fixed necessary costs should, ideally, make up half of your monthly income. This may mean you have to adjust your Internet packages or change cell phone providers for a cheaper deal.

Calculate the small things: Toiletries, groceries, your morning coffee — anything that you purchase on a monthly basis needs to be in your budget. Don’t omit anything, even if you do drink an embarrassing amount of Starbucks. The point of this exercise is to see if you can decrease your spending while still ensuring you have the necessities of life.

A key tip for these calculations is to always over-estimate: If you think you spend $50 a week on groceries, say you are going to spend $70. If you think you spend $2 a day on coffee, double it! One day, you may get a pastry with your coffee and it will screw your entire budget up. If you overestimate and you have money left over, all the better! You can either spend it or put it into your savings account. Either way, it ensures your budget is more accurate. It’s always better to have money leftover at the end of the month than realize you spent more than your allowance.

Savings/Paying off Debt: It is imperative that you include a section for savings and debt in your budget. If you don’t, you will never save any money. Decide on a monthly amount you will put into a savings account of your choice, and count that money as already spent.  If you have loans or a credit card, use some of these funds to pay it parts of it off. Try to use 20 per cent of your monthly income to pay things off and save up.

Always put some money aside for “fun”: Let’s be realistic. At some point in the span of a month, you will go out to dinner with friends, see a movie, or  take a day trip somewhere. If you don’t set aside some cash for entertainment, a) you may go a little insane and b) you’ll end up spending more than you’d like on a spontaneous splurge. The remaining 30 per cent of your budget can be spent on these activities, although if your priority is paying off debt, swap the numbers with your savings. The idea is to give yourself a weekly or monthly allowance to spend on fun things — that way, you don’t feel deprived, but at the same time, you don’t overspend.

Keep your receipts and actually look at them: This is the hardest habit to break. Most people try to avoid those pesky small pieces of paper in their wallet, but it really is necessary. If you use quickbooks, this will allow you to keep track of all your payments by manually inputting your spending. If you use excel, it will help you reflect on what you spent money on, and where you can cut back. Not to mention you may find a lot more deductibles come tax-filing time.

I hope this helps you create a basic budget. Remember, keep track of everything — no matter how depressing it will be. Who knows? Maybe after a few years you won’t need such an intensive system, but for now, embrace it! Think of what you will do with those savings. Will you buy a house? Go on a vacation? The possibilities are endless — but only if you budget.

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Home & Garden

What’s the appeal of minimalism?

Minimalism — to live with fewer possessions, free from ties and free from consumer culture.

The concept of minimalism appears to be a trend for 2016-2017, especially for millennials who can’t afford to tie themselves down to a set lifestyle. But, while that definition may give off the impression that it’s part of hippie-culture, it’s actually a philosophy more people should be adopting.

As a human being, I generate a lot of crap. I keep movie stubs and theatre tickets, I have drawers overflowing with 10-years worth of birthday cards books and notebooks, and my closet is bursting with sweaters I hope to fit back into some day. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

I wouldn’t label myself (or anyone who falls under that description) as a hoarder, but I think it’s fair to say that I tend to get overly attached to inanimate objects. That is, until now.

One random day in December, it all started to bother me. The fact that I couldn’t sit down at my desk and use the entire space.  I felt closed in and cramped in my own room. Of course, the feeling could be associated with some serious PMS or life-changing obstacles I was facing throughout the terrible year of 2016, but either way I resolved to do something — to de-clutter my life and keep only what I use.

As Kelly Bishop’s Gilmore Girl character, Emily Gilmore, said in the revival: “If it brings you joy, you keep it. And if it doesn’t out it goes.”

The last year has been an emotional roller-coaster, and adopting certain minimalistic principles is a refreshing way to rid your space of negative elements. You’ll find that once you get yourself organized, you’ll feel a lot better. Your mind will be clearer, you’ll be less stressed and experience less anxiety. There is something incredibly satisfactory about knowing what is in every drawer, and being able to open it and see the contents clearly. You’ll also find you have more space in your home than you realized.

I’ve already gone through a number of my possessions and divided them into three — a garbage pile, a donation pile, and a re-sell pile. Anything that I haven’t used over/worn over the past year I’m getting rid of. If something has a strong memory, I may keep it, but I have to ask: “will this bring me joy”. Will I even acknowledge it’s existence, other than when I clean my house and suddenly find it again. Usually, the answer is no — however, if you are overly concerned with the loss of memories, keep a memory box in your closet. When the box gets full, it’s time to re-evaluate those keepsakes.

At the end of this process, you should be left with the essentials. Everything should be in its proper place and your home will look more like a real home as opposed to a place you go to sleep at night. From the money you make at garage sales or by selling larger items online, maybe you can do some travelling? That is the very essence of minimalism — being able to do what you want, when you want to, because you don’t have many unnecessary expenses. And of course, there is nothing like the feeling of dropping off bags of  clothing to good will!

This year, make 2017 about re-adjusting your lifestyle. Go through all your things and decide whether or not they bring you joy. Do you NEED all those shoes? What about that dress you wore once and never had occasion to again?

The answer is no. Get rid of it and make room for new experiences in your life! We can all use a bit more joy in our lives, don’t you think?

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What's Hot

Moving in the summer: how to do it right

Moving in the summer can be very hot and sweaty, but sadly it is the most popular time to change homes because the weather is nice — no one wants to move in the snow, right!? With proper planning, patience and a good attitude, moving can go from being a gruelling experience to a fun adventure to your new house. And Women’s Post is here to help you out with these easy tips.

The first thing you need to do is to plan how you are going to move your belongings from one residence to another. If you are moving cities, renting a truck and finding a driver is ideal. Don’t forget to compare rates of rentals ahead of times to save on costs. If you have fewer belongings and are moving a short distance, try asking a friend to borrow a car or a truck for the day instead. Don’t forget to be nice and pay for gas!

Once you have figured out how to get your furniture and knick-knacks from one home to another, the next step is to transfer services to your new residence. Call Canada Post and organize a mail forward date to your new home. Also, call your utility provider — Internet, cable, and hydro — to notify them of your move so that you aren’t paying bills for your house’s next tenants. If you are moving out of the city, ensure your Internet provider is offered in your new destination. Being without Internet in a new home is a pain and is easier when taken care of before moving day.

The next step is to make the ultimate packing kit of the century, which must include packing boxes and buckets, packing tape, markers, coloured labels, and scissors (or an x-acto knife). To make your move slightly more green, invest in recyclable containers that can be re-used after the move at your new home. Use dresser drawers as packing space instead of emptying them. It is a space saver in the moving truck and helps reduce the amount of boxes or buckets needed.

When you begin packing, remember to have towels and linens on hand to protect fragile items. Don’t forget to label each box of else you will have to go through every box to find your favourite mug (label: kitchenware). Organize boxes into different areas so that the movers (or your friends) will have an easier time loading belongings into the truck. Using colour-coded labels is an easy way to make sure each box goes to the right area in the house.

On moving day, leave out tools and allen keys to deconstruct furniture. Also have tape and ziplock bags on hand to attach the relevant tools and screws to the piece of furniture — no one wants an Ikea moment (I’m sure it’s fine with only four screws…). Load heavy pieces first while the moving crew has more stamina and then load the lighter boxes when everyone is beginning to grow tired and there is less room in the truck. Finally, purge any unwanted items. Moving is a great way to get rid of any extra crap in your home.

Most importantly — and DO NOT forget this — provide cold refreshments and a thank-you pizza and beer for your friends and movers. It is hot and heavy work, and no one will help you again if you aren’t courteous about their efforts. Other than that, enjoy your new digs and happy unpacking!

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Health & Fitness

Sick of cough syrups? Try the holistic approach to rid a cold

Curing the common cold would be a miracle, but for now, we would all settle for preventing and getting rid of the symptoms it’s associated with. For many people, pumping our bodies with over-the-counter drugs isn’t an ideal option. Finding natural remedies to alleviating symptoms and using a holistic approach may be for you.

Natural medicines have been used as a powerful healing tool for thousands of years. This natural method uses a holistic approach that embraces the body as an interconnected network of symptoms rather than focusing on specific medical issue to be addressed.

The Textbook of Natural Medicine, written by Joseph E. Pizzorno Jr., one of the world’s leading authorities on science-based natural/integrative medicine, discusses five doctrines that help patients from a holistic standpoint: Do no harm, find the cause, doctors as teachers, treating the whole person, and preventative medicine.

Pizzorno suggestions that doctors recognize the cause of illnesses and that they can be linked to individual choices or lifestyles, such as nutrition and mental health. Treating the whole person rather than simply stifling symptoms is vital to a holistic approach. This includes the physical aspect of the body, as well as the diet, genetic factors, the environment, and other causes. Natural medicines can tackle various areas of the body at once and can help prevent illness.

Read below for suggestions on combatting the common cold using natural medicines:

Mint-leaves-2007

Peppermint

Peppermint is a combination of spearmint and water mint that creates a hybrid plant with medicinal properties. It can help treat the common cold, indigestion, fever, and headaches. The essential oils from the peppermint can relieve respiratory issues and make it easier to breath. A good option is to inhale the vapours to directly access the breathing pathways.

Peppermint tea also acts as an antiviral medicine and helps to fight immune infection while soothing the throat. The tea contains high levels of polyphenols, which are micronutrients that help to strengthen the system and fight infection.

Echinacea_3

Echinacea

Echinacea is a popular herb for the common cold and grows throughout North America. According to the Textbook of Natural Medicines, the herb is a useful immune system booster because it increase the ability of macrophages to destroy diseased cells. Macrophages are a particular type of white blood cell that destroys bacteria that infects the immune system. Echinacea helps macrophages recognize the foreign bodies in the blood and alerts other parts of the network within the immune system to destroy unwanted bacterial matter. It is also a safe product for children.

Garlic_Press_and_Garlic

Garlic

Garlic’s properties include antibacterial components that can help alleviate certain cold symptoms. Garlic is shown to fight against the toughest type of bacteria — Gram-Negative. Gram-Negative bacteria has an outer membrane that makes them more stubborn than their counterpart, Gram-Positive. Luckily, Garlic attacks both equally.

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Cayenne Pepper

Cayenne Pepper is actually a tropical fruit that can grow up to three feet high. It is produced in South America and helps with sore throats and sinus congestion. Cayenne Pepper is a powerful medicinal that can also be used as an aid for mouth and throat soreness during chemotherapy.

VitaminC

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is an important medicine in the onset of a cold, but it has a limited role to stop a cold that has already engulfed the immune system. A study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics says that vitamin C can lower the change of a cold by eight per cent in adults and 13 per cent in children, which makes it a great preventative vitamin for children who are constantly around illness during the winter months at a daycare or school.

Taking the time to understand how and why natural products and medicines can help prevent illness can lead to a stronger connection and understanding of the human body. The added plus of the holistic method is a healthy and wholesome life without over-the-counter medications. Here’s hoping your January is free of the common cold!

 

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Archives

The smell of home

By Diane Baker Mason

They say the closest memory-related sense is scent. It is not a sight or sound that triggers nostalgia, but a smell: the odor of mom’s baking bread, or of the hayloft in your cousin’s barn, or of the pine-tree-shaped air freshener that hung from the rearview in your Grandpa’s Chevy. Not the taste of the bread, not the feel of the hay, not the roar of the engine. It’s the smell of these things that takes you home.
Home is on my mind lately, since I am considering moving. One of my boys has moved out, and the other is soon to do so. I have fallen in love with the Beaches in east Toronto, and although I can’t realistically afford to move there, reality has never stopped me in the past, so move I intend to do. Therefore, I have had to take a hard, mean, look at my own condo apartment, which has deteriorated over the last three years to disaster area status. I tend to be away on weekends; my sons were not. Nor were their friends. And I had long ago given up on trying to cajole/nag/train them into doing even basic tidying (which I don’t like to do either). So my condo not only looked awful — it smelled awful, too.
I hired a trio of disaster-area cleanup experts and together with my remaining son, we stripped the condo of debris, and applied paint-stripper-quality cleaning fluids to all surfaces. Even the guinea pig got a “Total Home Makeover,” with a bleach-and-scouring pad treatment of his cage bottom, and cedar shavings. Instant memories of my pet hamsters, from when I was twelve years old: suddenly, with the smell of the cedar, I could feel those tiny soft bodies wriggling in my much-smaller hands.
Despite the cleaning, my apartment still doesn’t feel like home. Maybe it’s because I never saw it as home, but as a place I bought in a panic, to give myself and my then-barely-teenage sons a place to live. I don’t love it the way I loved my other houses or even the bachelorette flat I rented when I left my marriage eight years ago. And despite its professional cleansing (and my remaining son’s sudden, almost-religious conversion to Tidy Clean Person, something for which I’m hugely grateful), I still don’t get that “welcome home” feeling when I walk in the door.
Part of the problem is that the cleaning hasn’t kept the smells at bay. If smells could make a sound, my apartment would be a cacophony. First of all, there is our rancid dog. Licorice is a Lab mutt, and she loves the water (unless it comes in bath format). In the mornings, she prances through the Humber River; in the afternoons, she fords the streams winding through High Park; on weekends she is either swimming in Lake Ontario or sitting (yes, sitting) for hours at a time in the shallows at Bass Lake, hypnotized by the minnows. The problem with all this water is that it leaves bacteria on her underfur, which dies, which decays, which causes my dog to stink like a week’s worth of rotting garbage. I’ve had people get off the elevator to avoid sharing it with her. Baths and deodorant powders help for only a day or so. The only cure is winter, when all that water freezes over.
So there’s the smell of dog. There’s the smell of our musty old furniture. There’s the smell of my son’s cooking (he loves curries and fried corned beef). There are my son’s friends and their beer and cigarillos. There’s the guinea pig’s cage (a mountain of cedar shavings won’t cover the fact that it’s still a guinea pig cage). The place just doesn’t smell like me.
Hopefully there will be an animal-loving, beer-swilling, curry-eating tribe of Visigoths interested in buying a three-bedroom two-bath condo in a park-like setting, to whom it will smell just like the place they grew up. As for me and my bacteria-soaked dog, we’ve got our sights on someplace new. And she’ll either have to learn not to smell like dead fish, or I’ll have to learn to associate that smell with home. I guess anything’s possible.

*** First published in the Nov. 2005 print edition of Women’s Post

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Home & Garden

Making it right! Useful book tools for home renovations

This past December, as most people were decking the halls for the festive season, we began major basement renovations.

Yes, you read that correctly! Crazy, I know, but we actually didn’t intend for it to happen during the midst of winter and holiday madness. Since it was the first major renovation we did to our home, a series of events, some by design, others mostly accidental, led us to that time and place of no return. As our beloved contractors literally moved in to rock our foundation and lives, keeping it all together with two small children who were confined to a teeny play area in our jam-packed living room was no small feat. Nothing could really fully prepare us for the renovation, but looking back, I learned some valuable lessons, the main one being: before you renovate, do your homework.

This could mean many things. Talking to family members, friends, and neighbours who have gone through similar renovations will offer some invaluable advice and tips. It could also lead to some reputable contacts, professional contractors and designers who won’t lead you astray, mainly because of the referrals, when all the walls come tumbling down. I would also recommend interviewing at least three contractors and other home professionals, as well as gathering a few quotes before making any final decisions about a renovation team. You’d be surprised at how many contractors disappear or don’t ever deliver a quote. Finally, I’d look for answers in books and magazines.

We gathered quite the library of reference materials. Of course I went to Make it Right® sources, foolproof tips and advice from Mr. Mike Holmes himself. A few of our favourites were The Holmes Inspection and Make it Right® Attics and Basements.

In The Holmes Inspection, we learned, albeit after we bought our home, how to identify problems during the inspection process that can prove to be very costly for home owners down the road. Our basement was unfinished when we bought our home and although we didn’t identify any major problems in that state in the four years we lived in our home, the real problems came out during the renovations. We sure could have used Holmes’ inspection checklists as references.

Another favourite was the Black and Decker Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair. It includes 350 projects and 2000 photos for people, like my husband and me, who sometimes need the visual guide to explain complex undertakings. The useful advice and easy-to-follow instructions on almost every home repair and maintenance job from the interior to the exterior of a home make this book essential for all home owners, whether you like to fix things yourself or hire help. And, finally, but by no means the end of my book recommendations for home renovation and repair information, we found Real Simple: 869 New Uses for Old Things, a comfort read for making life easier every day. Finding new uses for old things is not only fun, it’ll also save you a ton of money so you could start the next major house renovation project.

I’ve got my eye on the kitchen. What’s yours? Good luck!

Follow Marisa on Twitter at @MarisaIacobucci.

Follow Women’s Post on Twitter at @WomensPost.

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