How to Prepare Your Home for Freezing Weather

When really cold weather hits, your home is in a state of vulnerability. Things freeze. Certain materials warp. And we like to run fires to keep warm, which puts our home in further danger (ironic, right?).

You should take the time to protect your house before cold weather really settles in. Preparation is key in just about every other aspect of life, so it’s no different here with owning a home. Take into consideration the following tasks if you want to make sure you’re securing your home the best you can while also saving money!

Make sure your windows are sealed.

If you want your home operating in peak condition and saving the most energy possible, you definitely want to make sure all of your windows are still sealed properly. If you’ve recently installed new windows, this shouldn’t be a problem. But if they’re beginning to age or are old already, it’s definitely worth your while to grab some caulk and seal up faulty window seals.

Inspect your HVAC system.
Before the cold hits, be sure to at least change your filters. Now, you could go the extra step by having an HVAC contractor look at your system. Some contractors even offer an annual maintenance agreement. You just want to make sure that your heat is going to work exactly when you need it to.

Check on drainage.
Check to make sure the area around your foundation hasn’t settled too much, which could create areas for water to pool up. If you do happen to find a low spot, just fill it in with some soil. You should also check areas around your downspouts and ensure that water is getting moved away from the home. Basically, you want to avoid water settling and saturating your soil around the foundation of your house; it’ll cause real problems if it freezes and then thaws during winter.

Clean out your gutters.
When your trees are stripped bare and have no leaves left, it’s a good time to get to cleaning your gutters. If your gutters happen to back up, they’ll overflow and run down your siding, which can deteriorate the exterior of your home. Similarly, overflowing gutters can speed up the deterioration of your foundation, introduce water infiltration in the basement, and even cause water to settle under your porch and sidewalks. You don’t want any of this if it can be avoided by simply cleaning your gutters.

Basic Principles for Interior Decoration

The beautiful interior decoration doesn’t only enhance aesthetic properties of home but it also plays major part in bringing best of the functionality the place has to offer. These are three main elements that are needed to be taken into the account if you want your home decoration to show the characteristics you want it to. These three elements are function, mood and personality.

Let’s discuss these three principles in a bit of detail.

Function

Design’s Function in a room or any interior space is the characteristic that defines place’s ability to provide better usability. For example, a focal point has a significant value for the room. With a focal point in mind, the homeowners tend to create balance in everything placed in the room. This way, everything present in the interior space strives to contribute not only from the design perspective but also from functionality point of view.

Another example is of furniture. Just because it provides arrangement to accommodate visitors and guests, we can’t stuff too much of furniture in the room. That wouldn’t only be a disaster from decoration viewpoint but the seating arrangement would also be highly uncomfortable.

Mood

Mood has significant role in an interior design. It’s the mood that defines your choice in designing the interior space. What color to pick, what pattern to choose, what theme should be there; all these factors are associated with the mood. In other words, mood in an interior design is entirely dependent on your choice of selection.

Another factor that also contributes in building the mood of an interior design is inspiration. You like to implement a design means you are inspired by a design which you want to replicate, completely or at some extent. Perhaps, it is one of the factors that have made it easy for home improvement industry to make successful guesses in order to produce the products that are mutually liked by homeowners. For instance, faux stone is a popular alternate to real stone and it is not being used by majority of home owners, especially the ones who would not pay for the real stone due to high cost.

Personality

Personality or character of a design is associated with the style that helps in defining the room’s function. It mainly includes accessorizing the interior space. According to general concept, the accessories present in the room should enhance room design by getting mixed into the room’s design pattern. Artwork and decorative mirrors are the accessories that bring personality in a room. Furthermore, personality is also concerned with the personal taste of main inhabitants. For example, you like books and you want a separate place in your room to be prominent. This taste of yours is going to inspire you for the specific kind of design pattern you want to develop in your room, and the book stack is going to make perfect addition in the room.