Build a Greenhouse for Early Spring Planting

With spring just around the corner, many homeowners have gardening on their minds. The seed catalogues are well worn from repeated flipping of pages. Seeds have been ordered, and some early bedding plants have been started. Many of us are itching to get outside and start seeding the garden, but it is too early. The days are warming but the nights remain too cold to allow seedlings to survive.

One way out of this dilemma is to build your own portable greenhouse. A simple greenhouse can consists of some wooden frames that are bolted together and assembled in the garden. The greenhouse can be easily dismantled and folded flat for storage. It can be built to any size specifications, depending on your needs. Many home-depot stores sell some preassembled DIY kit that can be put together easily in one afternoon at very reasonable prices.

The floorless greenhouse allows light and heat to enter, but prevents some of the heat from escaping. Thus, the temperature inside the greenhouse increases during the day. The soil over which the greenhouse is placed stores some of this heat. During the night, when the outside temperature is cold, the heat gradually escapes from the soil but the greenhouse holds enough of this heat to prevent frost from damaging the plants inside.

The system works well if the air temperature is not too cold, though additional frost protection can be achieved by using internal and external curtains.

The greenhouse can be set over the garden area in the early spring (March). For best results, the garden should be located in an area that receives full sunlight. As the air temperature builds up inside, any snow covering will melt and the ground will begin to warm. By mid to late March it is often possible to seed directly into the soil "floor" of the greenhouse. Only plants that tolerate a cool growing season, can be seeded early. Warm-season crops such as require much more warmth that this greenhouse can provide.

As the days become warmer, too much heat may build up inside the greenhouse. It is very important not to let this happen, or you might lose your crop. The simplest solution is to leave the greenhouse door partly open to provide ventilation. When the days become quite hot, remove the greenhouse. In September it can be taken out again and placed over the garden patch to extend the growing season.

 

Protecting Your Privacy While Your Home is On the Market

Many people will likely spend considerable time browsing your home while it is on the market. If you are living in the home while it is for sale, your personal things will be on show too, and potential buyers might look through drawers and other items that are inside your home. Your privacy and security may become an issue when showing your home, so it is important to consider all your options before you welcome someone into your home.

For many individuals, protecting their privacy is very important, while others are simply concerned that buyers will make assumptions about them and judge them, rather than simply judging their home. However, the importance of protecting your privacy is the same, and that goes for anything personal, from financial information, such as cheque books, to bank statements and personal letters.

Protect your documents
Keep in mind that a potential buyer may open cabinets or drawers—this is not considered snooping. Buyers can innocently tug on a drawer to inspect its construction or depth and find important documents that you might not intend for anyone to see.

Don't leave mail where anybody can find it
Many sellers make the mistake of leaving piles of opened mail neatly stacked on the kitchen counter or somewhere else in the home. By leaving your correspondence out on the table, a potential buyer can find out about your credit card debt, whether you have filed for bankruptcy, and other private information that you probably don't want the buyer to be aware of. Not only is this an invasion of your privacy, but it can also change the offers that you receive from buyers. If you have a stack of mail from a collection agency, the buyer will know you are desperate to make a sale and will likely propose far under the list price.

Remove personal effects from your walls
From diplomas and religious artifacts to wedding certificates and personal photos, don't provide buyers with any personal information about yourself or your family. De-personalizing is also an important move to make when staging your home for sale anyway, so you can actually accomplish two things by removing the personal effects from your home.

Don't leave your computer up and running during showings
Gaining personal information from your computer takes only minutes for a professional hacker or thief, so be proactive and turn your computer off before potential buyers arrive.

Before you put your home on the market, empty out drawers, stage closets, and pack up anything personal, including medications. Disassociate yourself with your home—remind yourself that it is a house—a product to be sold on an open market that is bound to see plenty of new faces throughout the term of the selling process.

Consider renting a locker at your local bank and storing away your jewelry and other valuable items. It is better to be safe than sorry.

How to Avoid Buyer's Remorse

Buyer's remorse is an emotional response that many homebuyers experience during the course of a real estate transaction. The response can take various forms such as feelings of regret, fear, depression or anxiety. Many doubtful questions may arise: Did I buy the right house? What if I lose my job? What if home prices drop? Did I overpay? Is this really the neighbourhood I want to live in? Can I really afford the mortgage payments?

There are hundreds of questions that will run through your mind during the period leading up to closing: the day you actually become the owner of the home. Most of the questions will be simple ones that are easily answered, but sometimes doubts creep in, making you uncertain if you want to proceed with the purchase.

When you decide to buy a new home, you're forced to step outside your current comfort zone and confront the unknown. Your mind may try to compensate psychologically for feelings of uncertainty by mentally undoing the event. In other words, you may try to talk yourself out of buying your dream home. Add feelings of uncertainty to the fear of making a long-term commitment, and it's easy to understand why homebuyers can suffer from bouts of anxiety.

Here are some tips that can help you battle home buyer’s remorse:

1. Prepare yourself
The best way to cope with buyer’s remorse and minimize its destructiveness is to make sure that you are well-informed. You should find out as much as you can about the home buying process, local home prices and home mortgages.

It's a good idea to study a sample purchase agreement before you buy. Read the contract carefully to make sure that you understand it, and that it says what you think it should. If you have any questions about the purchase agreement, talk to your agent or real estate attorney.

2. Choose the right agent
In order to make sure that the purchase transaction goes smoothly, it is important that you choose the right agent to represent your interests. The right agent will be someone whose experience, knowledge and personality are trustworthy and will allow you to feel comfortable with the whole transaction. Try to find an agent who is familiar and knowledgeable about the neighbourhood and community that you plan to move into.

3. Make sure the property meets your needs
Get out that list of wants and needs you made back when you first started the home shopping process. Does the home you selected include the important features that you want? Provided that you saw a number of homes and thoroughly evaluated what each home had to offer, it’s likely that the house you’re about to buy is the best choice for you.

4. Is the price right?
Feeling certain about the price you are paying for a home is one of the most important factors that can reduce uncertainty and increase your comfort level. If your agent didn't prepare a comparative market analysis for you on the home you are buying, have him or her prepare one for you now.

5. Consider the resale value
As you look at houses in a particular area, think about what all of the houses have in common. Most neighbourhoods are usually built at the same time by the same construction company and will have similar floor plans and similar amenities (excluding possible owner upgrades). Before you consider buying the house with the most upgrades, consider whether or not you want to tackle a remodel. Don’t just consider the cost of the remodel, but also think about the amount of time and headache you can handle. No remodel goes smoothly! If a house with a newer kitchen costs $20,000 more than a house with an older kitchen, and you do not have the time to renovate, it may still be worth buying the house with the new kitchen.

6. Ask questions
No one knows the home better than the seller of the property. If you can find out the seller's motivation for selling, you might be able to negotiate a better deal on the house. Try to find out the last time service was performed on the roof, furnace, plumbing and water heating system. Asking the right questions upfront can end up saving you a lot of money in the long run.

7. Get a home inspection
Save yourself a lot of time in future litigation and renovation by bringing in a licensed, professional home inspector to inspect the home before you buy. If any major problems are found, it will steer you away from a bad decision and/or it will help you negotiate a better price at the negotiating table.

8. Review your finances
You may want to review your finances to confirm that you can afford to make the purchase. Your feelings of remorse are probably unfounded, so the more rational things you can do to put your decision into the proper perspective, the better.

9. Discuss your concerns with your agent
Your agent has seen plenty of cases of home buyer’s remorse, and he or she can help put your fears and doubts into perspective.

Remorse is a common feeling during the home-buying process. Following the above tips will help you make an educated decision and reduce any remorse you may have.

Time for Spring Cleaning

Spring cleaning is an old tradition rooted in many cultures. It is the process of thoroughly cleaning a house from top to bottom once the weather has lost its winter chill.

Spring cleaning origins date back to prehistory and represent the time when it was easiest to conduct a good cleaning of living spaces. Extra light allowed people additional time to truly see the messy state of their caves, huts, or teepees. Warmer weather also meant that people could get things thoroughly dry. In agrarian societies, spring cleaning usually coincided with the beginning of planting. Spring was an ideal time to organize seeds and get the home ready for the busy months ahead. As well, there are several suggested origins for spring cleaning based on religious practices. For many of us the warmer weather inspires us to want to take the time to get the house in order after the winter months.

In the past, inadequate heating in homes and small living spaces often meant that certain types of cleaning had to wait for spring. Before modern dryers, washing drapes or comforters was complicated by cold weather and tight living quarters. Those in cold climates had no other choice but to wait for warm weather to hang laundry outdoors to dry.

Today, the thought of taking a weekend or even a day to turn our houses upside down seems a near impossibility. Who has the time? Besides, our modern, centrally heated and cooled, climate-controlled homes don’t get oily, sooty, or smoky, and our washing machines and vacuum cleaners help keep the dirt from sneaking in. Despite this, a thorough cleaning of your house offers many health advantages that you should not ignore. During the cold days of winter, the quality of indoor air can be two to five times worse than outdoor air. Those seemingly harmless dust bunnies locked in our air-tight homes - and the daily use of many chemical cleaning products  - contain airborne toxins that can aggravate respiratory and other health problems.

Revitalize your hibernating home with these simple suggestions:

1. Work from the top down, inside to outside, to avoid getting what you just cleaned dirty again.
2. Do one room, even one area of one room, at a time to avoid unfinished jobs. The satisfaction of seeing one room sparkle will make the hard work feel like it's worth the effort.
3. When tidying, reduce trips around the house by temporarily depositing items in one spot en route to but not at their final destination.
4. Do two things at once. While the laundry is going, scrub the shower stall.
5. Make small repairs. If you're not handy, hire someone.
6. Invest in good rubber or vinyl gloves to protect your skin and nails.
7. Dust before vacuuming or cleaning the floor. Try feather or lambswool dusters, especially extendable ones for reaching above window and door casings and into corners. Household rags are invaluable for jobs requiring a damp cloth – natural fibres work best.
8. Buy mops with a squeeze mechanism and a decent-size heavy-duty pail – one with a measuring scale helps get soap-to-water ratios correct.
9. Use a Swiffer for light dusting, or your favourite broom or vacuum attachment to clean hardwood floors. Then damp-mop with a mild cleaner such as Murphy Oil Soap.