A Simple Guide for Selecting a Mini Greenhouse

Posted on April 11, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

If you enjoy gardening and are looking for a way to boost the growth of your plants then you should consider buying a mini greenhouse. Not only are mini greenhouses a great way to harness the sun’s rays in the spring and summer, but they can also offer protection from cold during the fall and winter months. If you’ve ever researched greenhouse kits then you know that the options are nearly unlimited, particularly if you choose to build your own. With so many different options how do you determine the best structure for your individual situation? The following article will provide some simple pointers that will help you choose the best greenhouse for you and your plants.

The first thing you should consider when shopping for greenhouses is the amount of space you have to place the structure, since this will likely determine the size structure you purchase. After all, there is simply no sense in looking at large free-standing structures if you only have a small area to devote your mini greenhouse. Regardless of how much space you have, it’s important to locate your greenhouse in an area that receives uninterrupted sunlight throughout the day. This means that you will want to avoid placing it directly next to your home or near a tree that will provide afternoon shade. The whole point of buying a greenhouse is take advantage of the sun’s rays, so placing your structure in a shaded environment doesn’t make much sense.

Once you determine how large of a structure you can purchase, you need to decide how sophisticated you want to get in terms of features and climate control. Although most people will opt for a simple structure such as a 4 tier mini greenhouse, there are others that will want it all, including adjustable shelves, irrigation and even basic climate control. For a more complete idea of what’s out there it’s a good idea to head online and search through the sites of the major hobby greenhouse vendors.

Posted in Gardening, Outdoors | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Ease and Usefulness of Magic Blinds

Posted on April 11, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

Using the sun as the main source of light in the home or office is an efficient and smart decision. However, sometimes the sun’s rays and intensity can be too much for one to handle. It can cause strain to the eyes, which can lead to headaches. At certain times of the day, it is just simply too bright to manage. Magic blinds are the perfect solution to the problem because they are easy to install, simple to use, and a breeze to keep clean. The atmosphere is a room that makes use of these blinds is upbeat, crisp, and classy and go well with many types of furniture and décor items from glass coffee tables to a red rug.

Another concept to consider is the temperature inside. Blocking out the sun not only reduces the amount of light that enters, but it also affects the temperature. Darker environments welcome a cooler feel in the air, and of course, the room can get to be too warm if it receives a lot of sunlight. Not only does this ensure the comfort of anyone around, but it will decrease the amount of utility bills, by not having to use the air conditioner or heater so much. In addition to this idea, items directly inside any window need to be observed. This is because colors may fade on fabric covered items, and electronic equipment can be damaged by the rays of the sun.

The most significant part of the blinds is the slats themselves. They can be controlled by strings or another apparatus, and can be made up of several different materials. Fabric, PVC, and metal are a few examples. It is imperative to keep these blinds clean and in a straightened fashion. This ensures that the blinds won’t get tangled, broken or unattractive in any way. As long as the product is taken care of, they will turn into a wonderful investment.

Posted in Home Accessories | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No-Effort Ways To Cut Your Utility Bills

Posted on April 11, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

It seems like figuring out new ways to save money is becoming everyone’s part time job. When you’re reviewing your household expenses to find places to cut costs, saving on utility bills is a key way to start saving. Saving on electricity, water, gas and oil are not as hard as you might think. With some basic efforts, you can save as much as ten percent or more on your next month’s bill.

One way to save on electricity, for example, is to just remember to turn off things when not in use. Leaving lights on in a room when you leave is habitual for most people. But start reminding yourself to flick off the switch. That goes for electronics, computers, and other appliances.

You can switch to energy saving devices. Using compact fluorescent light bulbs, for example, is an easy step. The prices have come way down, and they last longer too. These saves you money over the long run. If you’re planning to replace any appliances, you can save by purchasing Energy Star rated appliances. Information about energy use is on the label for each, and you can sometimes get state or federal rebate money for your purchase.

Think of ways to make your current use more efficient. One good idea is to make sure you only run full loads of laundry in the washing machine or dishes in the dishwasher. Half loads use nearly as much electricity as full loads. You can also adjust your home’s temperature, lowering the temperature in winter and raising it in the summer, so that the heating or cooling systems kick in less frequently. Other ideas include taking shorter showers (so you need less water heated), checking your refrigerator and freezer settings to make sure they’re optimal, and getting your windows and doors caulked to keep leakage to a minimum.

With these ideas, you’ll see savings right away, and you’re sure to come up with more of your own to save on utility bills.

Posted in Home Accessories | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Portable Air Conditioners – Benefits and Downsides

Posted on April 11, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

One of the many options for adding cooling to the modern home is provided by portable air conditioners. This article will attempt to uncover some of the basic benefits and downsides of such units. In short, they are cheap and easy to install, however, they are less effective than some of the other options available.

Ease of Installing
Some modern ways of cooling down your home require extensive work when it comes to installing. Often consumers have no choice but to hire the services of companies like “AC Repair Atlanta” to do the installing for them. A portable air conditioner does not require professional assistance, as installing it is very simple. There are only two things that needs to be done. One, is to plug in the unit, using a standard electrical outlet. The second thing is to run an exhaust hose to a window. After completing these two steps your unit will be fully operational.

Low Cost
Since you need no professional assistance setting up the unit, you will save money on installation costs. The units themselves are also rather cheap to purchase. Finally, the ongoing cost of having a portable air conditioner is low, as the unit will consume less electricity than systems designed to cool down entire homes.

Less Effective
The main downside to portable air conditioners is related to the last point. Yes, it will use less electricity than a system cooling down an entire home, but this is because it offers less effective cooling. You will only be able to cool down a single room at a time, and the temperature you can expect is not as low as with some other systems. Expect cooling more effective than a fan, but not much more than that.

Portable air conditioners are thus for consumers who require moderate, cheap, and easy to install cooling in their homes, and not a elaborate, expensive, and highly effective cooling system.

Posted in Home Improvement | Leave a comment

Prefabricated Doesn’t Just Mean Cheap Anymore

Posted on April 11, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

In the United States, a ‘prefabricated structure‘ has traditionally meant a mobile home that is located in a trailer park, which is rarely a residential area in which people actually prefer to live. Nevertheless, trailers and trailer parks are still very common in the United States simply for the fact that they are the cheapest way to live in many parts of the country. In many rural areas a trailer is the most common structure that you will find on a piece of land.

While trailers won’t disappear anytime soon, it’s becoming obvious that the construction methods used in prefabricated buildings does not have to be limited to the cheapest buildings out there. Instead of only using efficient methods, i.e. production line assembly of home components, in the service of creating a house that is meant simply to be as cheap as possible, architects are beginning to see that the same methods can be used for much higher quality or even luxury standard housing. And their customers are starting to understand this as well.

It’s very easy to find builders who specialize in prefabricated structures, and a quick search around the Internet gives you a visual proof of just how far prefab structures have come in the last couple of decades. Using a little (or a lot) of imagination and taking assembly-line methodologies as a starting point, home designers have come up with an incredible array of housing options. These designs are now marketed to people who could purchase or build a conventional home, but who might be open to living in a house that is easier on the environment in terms of the amount of materials that go into it, as well as the efficiency of the construction techniques that are used to build it. These homes are generally much easier on your utility bill too.

And as always, using these prefab building methods they can expect to pay a lot less for their home- always attractive even if one can pay more. For anyone considering building or buying a second home or maybe putting a retirement home on that empty lot that’s been in the family for decades, taking a hard look at where prefabricated structures are today is a great idea. You might be surprised at how well economy and great design can coexist in a house.

Posted in Home Improvement | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Home Improvement Tips to Sell That House!

Posted on April 11, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

Selling your home in today’s tough economic housing climate can be a very challenging task. However, there are a few improvements you can do to your home to increase the value and receive a higher asking price. Some of these tips are quite easy to incorporate, and some may require a little more elbow grease; however, instituting these home improvements should yield some great returns.

Whenever you are selling your home, curb appeal is vital in grabbing their attention. A plain boring house may not even warrant prospective buyers getting out of their cars. Many people will not be able to visualize what a home would look like with a little landscaping. This is why it is important to make your house look as good as you possibly can from the curb. Make sure to generously water your lawn while it is on the market. Keep the lawn nicely trimmed. Create some borders around shrubbery and down sidewalks. Plant flowers and mulch the inside of the borders. You will be surprised how this can transform the front of your home.

Now more than ever, prospective homeowners are looking for a modern bathroom. One of the most popular features that buyers are demanding is a frameless sliding shower door. Installing one of these sliding shower doors will give your bathroom a sleek modern look. You may also consider installing a vessel sink with a faucet. These two features in conjunction may be able to set your home apart from all the others.

Also, paint the walls of your home a nice neutral color. Neutral colors will appeal to a wider base of buyers. Do not make the mistake of painting walls shades of colors Which appeal to you thinking that they will also appeal to the buyer. Repainting walls is where you want to play it safe and stay neutral.

Another extra that many home buyers are looking for is houses that have whole house surge protectors installed. These whole house systems protect the whole house from electric surges instead of just one socket like individual surge protectors do. Any home buyer with a computer or electronics will be glad to see that you’ve already installed one of these systems, and it will definitely be a plus when they look at your home.

Posted in Home Improvement | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Cool Garage Ideas: Get The Most Out Of Your Garage

Posted on April 9, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

Many people need extra room in their houses as they start to out grow them. Often times, they overlook one of the places that can be turned into some useful space and that is the garage. Now not everyone has enough extra space in their garage to put it to real use but you will be amazed at how much room you might be able to make if you just throw out a lot of the boxes and things you don’t really need.  Or, if you use something like a sectional garage to organize your stuff, you can free up a lot of space that way too.

With the use of some cool garage ideas, some men have transformed their garage into a place they can truly call their own: sort of a man cave if you must. As the garage is usually abandoned by the wife of the house, husbands can do with it as they please. This is why they can get away with more in the garage than any other place in the house.

Do you want a pool table or a pinball machine? The garage is the place you can turn into a game room and the wife won’t care. Do you want a decked out sports space where you can watch all your games on a huge TV? If you have room in the garage, it might be the perfect place.

The only problem with using the garage for your hobbies or other things you like to get away to do is that you might have lighting problems and temperature problems. Some inventive garage lighting ideas might be needed as garages are pretty dark as most have no windows. As for the temperature problem, if you live in a place that gets very cold in the winter or hot in the summer you might have a bit of a predicament.  Places that have moderate temperatures year round are best if you want to turn your garage (or part of it) into your own personal man cave.

Posted in Home Accessories | Leave a comment

Making your House in to a Home

Posted on April 8, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

New-build homes tend to be very generic in how they look, and do have a tendency to look all the same… very boxy. There are only a few things that you need to do to transform your new house in to a beautiful individual home, and what’s more, it doesn’t have to cost the earth either.

The first thing you need to do is to break up all the square edges and soften them with some furnishings. Two of the easiest ways to do this are to put curtains up at the windows, and get some larger plants to put in the corners of the rooms and cover up external corners. Don’t be tempted to skip the idea of curtains as more often than not, putting blinds at the window tend to make a room look clinical and does nothing to enhance its homeliness and reduce echoes.

The next thing that you can do to transform your house to home is to buy some knickknacks, when I say knickknacks I mainly mean soft furnishings. There are at least two soft furnishings that you can get for your home that not only look good but also perform a functional task as well, these are doorstops  and draft excluders. Although draft excluders are rarely needed now that we have such well insulated homes, they do help to make a home look softer and more appealing. The same cannot be said about doorstops; many homes that are newly built will have the self closing doors for improved fire protection and definitely necessitate the use of a doorstop. These automatically closing doors can actually become quite annoying but by getting a decorative doorstop you can keep the doors open.

The final piece of furniture that I would advise you to get for your home would be some form of table to eat at. A dining table and chair set can be bought at a very reasonable price and can really transform your house into a home. If you don’t have room for a full on dining set then perhaps you could look at getting a smaller glass table that is far less intrusive. Having a dining table is great for conversation and makes it easier to invite friends over something to eat.

Another area that you should look into improving for a new home is whole house surge protection. Anyone who has a computer or other electronics is familiar with individual surge protectors, but whole house surge protectors protect your entire house from electrical surges, instead of just one socket. They generally run about $300 or so, which is a small price to pay for protecting your whole house from electrical surges.

Posted in Home Accessories, Home Improvement | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Considering the use of LED grow lights?

Posted on April 8, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

How Long Do LED Grow Lights Last?

It can be easily argued that lighting is one of the most important factors when growing a garden, especially indoors. Choosing the correct type of lighting can be critical to the success of your garden. To make things simpler for most gardeners, LED grow lights can be made to function in almost any setting. Plus, using LEDs for your garden uses less electricity, space and generates less heat.

The expected lifetime of your garden lighting is also a very important factor in deciding which type of light to use. Generally speaking, most traditional light bulbs will burn for approximately 1,000 hours. LED lights can burn up to 100,000 hours, much longer than most traditional bulbs. However, one must keep in mind that most LED bulbs will only burn for around 25,000 to 50,000 hours.

Although many believe that LED bulbs will burn ‘forever’, make sure to keep in mind these constraints. However, it is also important to understand that LED lights deteriorate in a strikingly different manner than traditional bulbs. Most light bulbs will burn at the same brightness for almost their entire lifetime. When they ‘burn out’, they do it in a dramatic fashion, which usually coincides with the most inconvenient time for replacement. Conversely, when an LED light has burned its 25,000 to 50,000 hours, it has used up around 30 percent of its luminance. This means that your LED bulb is still burning at 70% of its original brightness. Although this is statistically the point where one can tell that the bulb is no longer burning at its original brightness, it is by far not the end of the bulb’s lifetime. This, of course, puts the lifetime of an LED bulb into an entirely new perspective.

If it takes 25-50,000 hours for a bulb to burn down to 70% of its original brightness, then there is obviously much more time left in the bulb. With LED bulbs, you also have the option of pumping more electricity into that particular bulb. This will, of course, negate some of the energy and heat saving benefits that the bulb had before. One must also take into account the chip and other electronics that go into powering a bulb. Although your bulb may last almost ‘forever’, the other electronics involved may not last nearly as long.

Why Choose LED Garden Lighting?

When you choose an LED Grow Light, you use only 25% of the energy you would use with traditional HID lighting. In addition, since there is little to no heat emitted from these lights, you also reduce the amount of money and energy spent on cooling systems. Furthermore, your plants can use almost all of the light emitted by LED lights. This is a stark difference to HID lights. HID lighting emits a lot of light in the infrared spectrum and much of it that cannot be absorbed by most plants. LEDs, on the other hand, emit light that can be used by most plants, with little waste.

With all of the benefits of using LED grow lights, it is easy to see why so many indoor gardeners choose to use them. By bringing their plants indoors, it is easier to control environmental variables and to increase the quality of air inside. Because of the incredibly long lifetime, low energy and heat consumption and other benefits, LED garden lighting is by far the most cost-effective solution for providing your garden with the light it needs.

Posted in Outdoors | Leave a comment

The Importance and Convenience of a Hall Table

Posted on April 8, 2010 by The Home and Garden Guru

Decorating is a very personal and individual thing. A home’s décor should make it’s occupants feel relaxed, at ease and at peace when stepping through the front door.  One important décor detail that will help to bring that peaceful feeling upon entering the home is a convenient and stylish hall table.

The hall table is the first impression one gets upon walking through the front door. It also offers a convenient place to set down items in one’s hands as well as a place to store daily essentials that are needed upon entering or exiting the home. Of course in order to store items the hall table must include drawers or cabinetry.  Not all hall tables include drawers or cabinetry and instead are simply a flat surface top with legs.

Either style is appropriate and it only matters what the homeowner’s preferences and needs are. For the homeowner that prefers to keep umbrellas, keys, purse, briefcase or even dog leashes at hand on the way in or out of the house, then having features such as drawers and cabinet doors is a necessity. If the hall table is merely for decorative purposes, then a minimal look is perfect.

Many homeowners place a large mirror above their hall table so that light is reflected and the space looks larger. The mirror also serves a perfect spot to check one’s look before opening the door to guests or to leave the home. Another great addition to the foyer of a home is a vase of fresh flowers on top of the hall table.  This adds color, fragrance and a little of the outdoors to the front entrance and gives arriving guests a pleasant welcoming. Also, a dish of individually wrapped candies is a fun accent to add to the hall table. Guests can grab a mint or chocolate or two on the way out to freshen breath or for a sweet snack on the drive home.

Finding the right hall table takes time and of course, research. Homeowners should be sure to choose one that goes cohesively with their existing décor and one that represents them and their taste preferences. This is important because it’s the first impression of the home. The Internet offers a vast selection in hall tables in prices ranging from as low as $99 to as high as $500 and up depending on the materials used in it’s creation as well as the size and included features.

Posted in Home Accessories | Tagged , | Leave a comment