Maintaining Your Gutters

What’s That Smell?

Make sure your gutters are kept clean can be a daunting chore that should be done at least once a year if not twice.  Leaves falling off in autumn can easily land in your gutters and clog them up and create a monstrosity of problems once the rain and snow accumulates up there possibly damaging your gutters for good forcing you to purchase new ones.  Also, leaves and sticks can become slimy and smelly if left up there soaking in water for over a week.  Besides just knowing that you have to clean them out there are some questions that you probably have still.  When is the best season to do it? What’s the easiest way to do it? These are just two of the questions that any new homeowner may have when it comes to cleaning out gutters.

Fall Cleanup

Obviously, cleaning out your gutters may not make much sense if you do it in the middle of summer when more than likely all the leaves are still on the trees.  If you only plan on cleaning out your gutters once a year then your best bet is to do it at the end of fall in November.  Although, it’s easy to tell if all the leaves are off the trees that are near you by just looking up.  It’s probably not a bad idea to do it twice a year, and have the second time that you clean out the gutters be near the end of summer especially if you’ve been a victim of any nasty thunderstorms that have occurred throughout the season.  Those storms can carry debris you had no idea could make it up that high, but it is possible.

Can I Grab This With My Hands?

There are plenty of tactics to flush out all the leaves and debris that’s possibly clogging out your gutters though.  The most popular choice is the simple old-fashioned tactic of throwing on some rubber gloves and digging right in.  After you’ve gotten ahold of all that debris though, try throwing it on concrete or on a tarp so it doesn’t ruin your lawn.  Make sure you don’t get any muck on any windows you have too because you’d just be creating another chore to do. If you happen to accidently damage your windows though, just contact Wallside Windows, and an expert will be out in no time to aid you on the next steps you should take.

Gutter cleanup probably isn’t your most favorite thing in the world to do, but after you’ve taken the proper steps to make sure they are clean, you’ll be thankful because you won’t have to deal with this chore for another year.

The Perfect Backyard Barbecue

The Essentials of the Backyard Barbecue

The greatest things of summer include three things: awesome weather, spectacular food and outstanding people.  If done right, these three things converge nicely while having the perfect backyard barbecue.  The factors that go into planning a barbecue go a long way.  There’s much more to plan than one thinks.  Who’s cooking and bringing what specific food? How many total people are coming? What’s the weather supposed to be like on Saturday? These are only a few of the many questions you’ll be answering if you want to stay organized until you get to relax during that barbecue.

Who’s Hungry?

Hosting a barbecue doesn’t mean you have to make all the food for everybody although this is what many first timers think.  When you send the initial invite out to everybody, tell them it’s a potluck!  This way you’re not responsible for all the food, but just the main dish.  For example, just be in charge of hamburgers and hotdogs, and let all the guests bring the side dishes and desserts.  This takes some of the pressure off of you while providing the guests with a wide variety of food choices.

Play Ball!

The next helpful hint when throwing a barbecue is to have some outdoor yard games handy to play once all the guests are settled in.  If you don’t have many games, ask certain guests to bring specific yard games to play like volleyball, baseball or horseshoes.  Just be careful when you’re playing because you don’t want to break a window you just had installed by an expert at Wallside Windows.  All in all, outdoor activities will bring everybody together, and have fun while socializing at the same time.  You could also create your own game by combining other outdoor activities or perhaps using materials from around your house.

It Looks Like Rain

Not every barbecue goes as planned.  Something always goes wrong whether the food gets messed up, guests argue with each other, or there’s not enough beverages to go around.  The thing that usually goes wrong is the weather though.  You have to invite everybody a week or two in advance so, there’s no way of telling if it will rain during your barbecue or not.  Hopefully, if it does rain, you had your windows installed by Wallside Windows to keep all the rain and wind out of the house.  This way everyone can make themselves comfortable in your house until the rain passes over.

With these helpful hints,  your next backyard barbecue should be a success.  Remember, everything won’t go as planned, but it’s up to you to make the most of it.  Just have fun, and everybody will have a great time!

Keep Rodents Away From Your House

They Come From Out of Nowhere

Those pesky rodents can easily ruin ones appetite or make someone shriek until they’ve moved out into another house or apartment, but there are some natural, and not so natural ways to make sure that rodents stay out of your living area for good by just following a few easy steps.  Although, it seems that these rodents come from the sky and are sent to make your life difficult, they always make their way in somehow whether it’s chewing a hole in the crawl space, or even taking a bite out of the bottom of the garage door.  It’s something you can prevent from here on out.

Branches Set the Road for Rodents

It may not seem believable, but some rodents make their way into your house from long big tree branches that hang over your house.  To us it’s hard to climb a tree and hang off a branch, but those little mice scale the tree and tree branches right to your gutter, and they can easily reach your attic or an open window from there.  So, it’s up to you to find a ladder and trim those branches that hang over or near your house to keep the mice from reaching the side or top of your house.  You don’t want your windows ruined by mice trying to chew their way through inside.  Especially if they were installed by the window experts at Wallside Windows.

Attack from the Attic

Your attic seems to be a rodent’s favorite spot to hide from you because it’s the darkest, least visited spot in your house.  They can chew their way to any room in the house from the attic because all they have to do is get into the wall, and no one will be able to see them.  Your job if you want to keep rodents out of the attic is to check there on a regular basis.  Investigate the best you can for holes and fill them along with setting mouse traps that will be sure to catch them off guard until they’re out of the attic for good.

Garage Used For More Than Storage

Next to the attic, the garage is the most key room in the house when it comes to rodent problems.  Although the garage is the most similar room to the attic, they’re much easier to prevent than in the attic.  You’ll know if a rodent snuck into the garage because there will be a hole chewed in the bottom of the door or you’ll find them in the storage boxes in there because rodents love to consider your clutter their home. Aside from those key spots there aren’t many ways that rats or mice should be able to get into your house or apartment.  Make sure doors and windows are installed properly so there aren’t any gaps.  Get rid of those nasty rodents for good!

How to Properly Finish a Basement

Benefits to Finishing a Basement

When it comes to finished basements, the people who have unfinished basements might tell you it’s a hassle because of how much money it costs, or if it floods it’s much more work to clean than if it wasn’t finished.  The truth is if it’s handled correctly a finished basement can raise the value of your house when you sell it along with flooding no longer being an issue.  Below you will see the steps that should be taken to ensure that you won’t have to worry about basement floods any longer while introducing a new room in your house where people can gather and mingle.

Insulation and Framing

It’s important that whether you take on this huge task yourself or if you hire a crew to come and do it for you that they use quality insulation and framing.  Avoid foam insulation as it isn’t as durable as lower R-value.  You’ll need to make sure the studs are a certain distance from one another depending how high the ceiling is in the basement.

What’s a Soffit?

The next time you go into your basement you’ll notice that most of all of the plumbing for your whole house rides along the ceiling and down the walls.  The next step is boxing in those pipes, and putting drywall around them is the best way to insure that you have the basement of your dreams.  Once this structure is complete it’s called a soffit.  Again, measurements are determined by the size of your basement and how many inches from off the floor that the pipes are located.  The Insulation and soffits are the critical steps if you want to avoid floods at all costs.

Those are Nice Windows

One key aspect of a finished basement has to do with the quality of windows that are installed.  If they are old out of date windows it can cause for water to leak through or when snow melts it can leak through as well, which may have been the cause of your flooding in the first place, but with the help of Wallside Windows you can have some of the nicest basement windows that any company can provide.  There are many different choices when looking at basement windows as houses have many different basement formats. The next time someone tells you that it’s not a good idea to finish your basement, ignore them and show them you have the knowledge and the skill to finish your basement by yourself, or you know the right company to hire to take on the challenge.  Either way, your house’s value will rise significantly when you put it on the market.

How to Maintain Healthy Flowers

Tis The Season

When it comes to planting flowers outside there are an array of choices for you and other people you live with to look through.  The color, size, and smell are just a few things to consider when looking through a flower catalog.  After you’ve made your decision it’s important to select the right location to plant the flowers so that you can show them off to your neighbors and anybody that happens to walk by your house, but also make sure they’re located where there’s a decent amount of space for the roots to grow underground in some healthy soil.

When to Water and How Much Sunlight is enough?

It’s important to keep a set schedule of when to water your plants because you don’t want to over do it or under do it.  Also, If the flowers are being kept outside, and it rains it’s significant that you keep track of how much it has rained as well because you might think a sudden shower is enough to keep your flowers fed, but in fact that rain might run right off the soil before it even soaks into the ground.  So, in this instance a nice watering might be in store.  Make sure to close your windows as well.  Especially if they were installed by the experts at Wallside Windows.  There are actually plants in the world that require no sunlight, but these are rare cases.  As for the ones that require sunlight, usually around six hours is enough sunlight to keep your flowers strong and healthy.  A sign that your flowers are getting too much sunlight is if the leaves on your flowers are dried out, and in this instance you would want to shade those flowers for a day or two.

Healthy Soil is Happy Soil

When determining if your soil is healthy or not there are a few key points to consider.  The main point is how dark is your soil?  The darker the soil generally means it’s healthier than light brown soil.  Also, if you are reusing soil from a plant that was already there, pull the plant up from the bottom of the stem and investigate how spread out the roots were underground.  If the plant’s roots are very spread out then it generally means that soil is healthy and rich.  Another key point is the pH level of the plants.  There are testing kits available at any planting and gardening store.

Show Those Flowers Off!

While picking the right flowers and maintaining them are very important, it will also make you feel good once the compliments start rolling in about how nice your flowers look.  What better way to compliment your flowers than to put them right by your window that was installed by Wallside Windows.  After knowing all there is about planting and maintaining flowers, you should be on your way to having the most beautiful garden in the neighborhood.