Home maintenance, New Year’s resolutions, and you!

Welcome to the New Year! It’s 2018—a new year for plans, for projects, and for hope. It’s the time for resolutions. So, in that spirit of anticipation of fun to come, let all homeowners resolve to care for and maintain their home like a first-time homeowner.

Helping a house to age well can be intimidating to say the least. But bloggers like Christine Tusher at houzz.com suggest starting with a very do-able list of eleven basic tasks to be accomplished over the course of one year. Most of these tasks require only a few minutes of your time—mostly to check their condition and fix as needed. She suggests keeping tabs on house exteriors such as the crawl space, painted surfaces, wood decks, and paved surfaces, and house interiors such as the windows, furnace and filters, bathroom tubs and toilets. A few other areas of concern like the furnace, chimneys, and fireplaces require annual inspections and maintenance by professionals.

And, then there are things like windows, gutters, and garbage disposals that need the attention of cleaning or caulking to keep them in good working order for season changes. With each task she explains why it needs to be done, how to do it, and when. Most of these are easy to do even for the neophyte homeowner but take note when she recommends the help of professionals. They provide their service for a good reason and for your safety. Okay. So, now you are excited to get the job done but you realize that you only own a hammer. Hmm…do you want to test Abraham Maslow’s saying on your house, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?” Perhaps not. Well, then, assuming you have a tool drawer or box, what should you put in it? Susan Steiglitz offers good advice at houzz.com in her article 20 Tools Every Homeowner Should Have. Check it out.

This is fine for the first-time homeowner. What about all those who are well beyond the basics? Erin Huffstetler offers a two-page pdf file Home Maintenance Checklist organized by season to get you started. It adds to the eleven basic tasks but does not look so daunting so as to discourage before you get started. Two excellent additional resources add in-depth information on the whys, wherefores, and how-tos to prepare for the seasons. Go to Jeremy Anderberg’s Keep Your House in Tip-Top Shape: an incredibly handy home maintenance checklist for a good read and printable checklist by season. Ronda Kaysen takes it all a step further with The Annual Home Maintenance Checklist. It is worth the long look. Don’t miss the list at the end of her article under The Life of Your House. This list details the life expectancy of materials as well as appliances found in most homes. This may answer questions of how long that kitchen sink in Grandma’s house really should last or when you should start saving to replace the dishwasher. Wherever you find yourself in the sphere of home maintenance, may 2018 be adventurous and satisfying as you explore life in your neck of the woods.

CREDIT: peekbrotherspainting.com

Pazroofing.com