Home Improvement

If you’ve ever wondered why one wall of your house looks worse than the other three, the answer is usually sunlight. Or the lack of it. Neighbourhoods with heavy tree cover get a particular version of this. The north side of a house can stay damp for weeks after a rain that dried the south …

Deposits almost never disappear over broken things. They disappear over an oven nobody wanted to deal with and a bathroom that needed another twenty minutes. Move-out inspections follow a pattern, though, and once you know the pattern the job gets a lot shorter. Appliances first, always Nothing costs tenants more than the kitchen. The oven …

Here is a test worth taking on a quiet Saturday. Walk to your main water shutoff valve right now, without looking anything up. Could you do it in under a minute? Most people cannot. And the moment they learn where it is tends to be the worst possible moment, standing in an inch of water …

Every year about this time, homeowners across the northern suburbs start asking the same question. The roof made it through another storm season, but is it actually fine, or is it just not leaking yet? Annoyingly, the honest answer is that it depends. The good news is there’s a way to work through it without …

Most home leaks do not start with a burst pipe. They start small. A slow drip behind a wall. A toilet that runs in short bursts. Water moves quietly for weeks, and the first real clue is a stain, a smell, or a bill that jumped. You can get ahead of it. These checks take …

Jackson Township sits in a funny spot, weather wise. You are inland from the beach, but not far. Close enough that the humidity rolls in. Cold enough in winter that the freeze thaw cycle goes to work on anything rigid. For homes with a hard plaster exterior, that combination is the whole story. Here is …

First impressions begin right at the curb. Before anyone steps through your front door, they take in the outside of your home. A tired, dated exterior drags down the whole look, fairly or not. The good news is that curb appeal is very fixable. Some upgrades take a single afternoon. Others keep paying you back …

Chicago winters are brutal on floors. And here’s the twist. It isn’t really the snow. It’s the stuff the city throws down everywhere to melt it. Road salt, de-icer, all of it sticks to boots and paws and rides straight inside. By February? Half the carpets in town are carrying weeks of the stuff right …

South Florida is beautiful, but it’s humid. That humidity doesn’t stop at your front door. It seeps into every room, and the bathroom takes the worst of it. A smart bathroom design plans for that from day one. Why does it matter so much? Warm, damp air is the perfect home for mold. It also …

After a major storm, obvious damage gets addressed. Missing shingles, tree limbs, visible holes. The damage that’s not obvious is often the bigger long-term problem. Lifted Seals Asphalt shingles have a strip of adhesive sealant along the bottom edge that bonds them to the shingle below. High winds break that bond. The shingle lifts up …