What used to be a work triangle of stove, refrigerator and sink, is now becoming a work quadrangle of stove, refrigerator, sink and laptop. Kitchens have to remain safe and efficient while incorporating the advent of the laptop-loving chef. Laptop-loving chefs may find themselves inconveniently walking back and forth to read an online recipe, watching batter fly off a spatula onto a monitor screen while following a celebrity chef video, and shaking out crumbs and spices from their keyboards as they search for substitutions for exotic spices.

If you’re remodeling your kitchen and have found that your laptop is quickly becoming an indispensable part of your cooking routine, look over your floor plans and make sure your laptop puts an extra angle in your kitchen path that connects storage, preparation and cooking, and cleaning. In a properly designed kitchen, there should be no unsafe crossing of paths during meal preparation and cleanup. You laptop should be wisely incorporated into the no-crossing zone.

A laptop should not sit directly on a counter where food preparation is taking place. One solution is to add a separate counter-height station that is only steps away from the sauce that needs stirring and the batter that needs mixing – yet far enough to avoid any accidental spills. Shelves underneath the pedestal provide extra storage and quick access to kitchen wares, cookbooks, or even a wine rack for quick splashes of flavor. Surrounding elevated support for surround sound speakers can fill your kitchen with music streamed right from your laptop (that you can enjoy with your glass of wine).

Elevation is a convenient solution to a space dilemma in smaller kitchens. Add a pedestal on your counter that is similar to the pedestals that hold open cookbooks. Take a look at convenient monitor stands with flexible arms and slide-out keyboard shelving. You can always have a laptop pedestal custom built. If you still have a landline kitchen phone hanging on your wall or sitting in the corner, consider modernizing the area to hold your laptop as well as a charger station for cell phones, i-pods and e-book readers.

Two important challenges for a quadrangle design are ventilation and electrical wiring. Your laptop must not be up against a wall, and it must have proper ventilation so it will not overheat. Wires must be safely tucked away, yet easy to access, especially if you cherish the mobility of a laptop. You must also make sure that your laptop is out-of-reach from the splattering grease of fried foods. To keep your keyboard clean, you can cover it with one of the many keyboard covers that are on the market.

Technology will become more portable, wire-free and advanced, and it certainly isn’t going to disappear anytime soon – especially in the kitchen of a laptop-loving chef. If you’re designing a new kitchen or remodeling an out-of-date look, make your triangle a quadrangle and use your laptop to cook to your heart’s content.

Elegant hardwood flooring that normally costs an arm and a leg to have installed professionally is something that can be done by the average home owner if they purchase their products from the right manufacturer. According to Chicago General Contractors – Global Designs Limited, several companies in the construction industry manufacture snap and lock flooring systems that either resembles natural hardwood, or that use actual hardwood surfaces with cushioned sub surfaces to create an authentic appeal to the finished product. These snap lock systems are very easy to assemble and put into place. It is very similar to finishing a puzzle, the biggest difference being that the pieces are all shaped the same.

In addition to snap and lock flooring systems, manufacturers of vinyl flooring surfaces have incorporated exotic new designs that can resemble several different types of flooring material, hardwood, granite or ceramic tile representations are all available. These vinyl flooring tiles are also available in do-it-yourself kits commonly referred to as peel and stick solutions. While these are very easy to install, they can also be somewhat tricky to place in position depending on the type of adhesive that was used by the manufacturer on the sticky underside of the tile.

Reducing waste starts in the planning process. Maximizing the efficient use of space goes a long way to reduce construction waste. Review your plans to see where it’s possible to rearrange rather than remodel and take advantage of under-used rooms. Try to upgrade or put a new facade on fixtures rather than replacing them. You can also lessen your environmental impact by reducing packaging. Spend a little time researching companies that use eco-friendly packaging, or request packaging material that is reusable or recyclable.

Reusing material is the most environmentally friendly way to reduce home improvement leftovers. From an environmental standpoint, it is generally ideal for you to reuse what items you can within your own home. From a charitable standpoint, it is ideal for you to donate items to organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and/or local clubs, churches, schools and/or individuals in need (or want). If you’re budget minded, plan on listing and selling your salvageable material to recoup some of your initial expenses. To make your save-the-environment job easier, designate areas in your garage, basement or outdoors for salvage and separate items by material before you start dismantling your home.

Don’t forget to look at the little reusable items. Hinges, doorknobs, pulls and even electrical wall outlets can be salvaged and reused. Saving big items will save the environment from big waste. In most cases, solid wood flooring, walls, lumber, roof tiles, brick and stone can all be reused. Bricks and stone can be used to pave a new landscaping project, and chemical-free gypsum plaster, wallboard, clean sawdust and cardboard can be used for landscaping and compost piles. Wood can be used for carpentry work that ranges from a new birdhouse to a new floor in someone else’s older home. If you look around the corners of your home, you might find trim and molding and maybe even architectural detail such as mantels and columns that can be saved and reused. And of course, windows, doors, and bathroom and kitchen fixtures can easily find a new home to be reused in.

What can’t be reduced or reused can hopefully be recycled. The investment in recycling hasn’t hit all city and town budgets, but many areas provide curbside pickup or a drop-off location for recyclables. Calling your city waste management department or town clerk can help you find local recycling resources. A salvage yard will take care of scrap metal. Bringing it in yourself can net your pocket a few extra dollars to reduce your remodeling expenses. Construction and waste management companies might be able to direct you to larger companies that turn asphalt shingles or crushed tiles into roads or sawdust and wood scraps into particleboard.

Home improvement renovations will create waste. Minimizing waste will minimize the environmental impact of your project. Renovate with reduce, reuse and recycle in your construction plans. A healthy environment for your future generations will be your reward.

On a piece of paper, you should write down exactly what you want to do improve, add, or change in your house. When you got the major topics down, for each major topic you should create a two to three page description on what exactly you want changed in that room. Don’t simply say “make bathroom nicer”, but describe what exactly you don’t like about your current bathroom and the specific changes you want done. Hiring a professional can be advised here, but leaving it to yourself and letting your creativity run wild is far more enjoyable, and will tie you in my closer to the project. And the more connected you fell with the project, the harder you’ll work at it, and the better overall result will be. Even so you won’t be doing any of the actually modeling (or maybe you want to? Some people to do-it-themselves), you’ll still be a general dictating a troops. And everyone knows that a good general is the most important part of an army.

Once you have created a substantial report on what you want to change in your house, and by how much, put it all together and let it sit a few days. Come back to it in maybe a week, look it over again, see if you still feel just as strongly about it, and if you do then its time for the next step.

Before you hire your residential Orland Park cleaning service, make a detailed list of every deep cleaning job that needs to be done. Floor and ceiling vents, upper window ledges and blind slats, shower door ledges and curtains, closet shelves, grout in bath and floor tiles and dull pipes under the toilet and sink all need to be cleaned. Many cleaning services specialize in preparing a home for sale. These cleaning services are familiar with deep cleaning requirements, and should have the extra supplies that are needed.

Most residential cleaning services have pay scales based on the demands of the job. Have a very detailed list of what needs to be done on hand, and communicate your expectations directly to the cleaning company and the home cleaner.

After your bathroom is stripped and cleaned, add a few fluffy towels and washcloths to the clean, fresh smelling closet. Hang up a luxurious bath and hand towel set. Display a couple of high quality bathrobes. Buy the best brand of soap and toilet paper. Don’t keep cleaning supplies under the sink or in the linen closet. You want them to think about enjoying the bathroom, not cleaning it.

By delegating deep-cleaning tasks to a residential cleaning service, you can quickly adjust your home to be more enticing to potential buyers while organizing your personal belongings for your eventual move. One small investment in a residential cleaning service could lead to a larger and faster sale. Then, while the new home owners are enjoying your old bathroom, you can start beautifying the bathroom in your new home. But you might want to hire the residential cleaning service again to get it clean enough for you.

When you’re preparing your home to be sold, considerable attention needs to be given to the bathroom. Realtors and home stagers frequently agree that the bathroom can be a decision maker in the home buying process. When you’re selling your home, the bathroom should be impeccably clean, restful, roomy, free from countertop clutter and overstuffed closets, and as luxurious as possible.

Although a bathroom is often the smallest room in a house, cleaning the bathroom to increase your home-selling advantage is not a small job. Because of the details involved, and years of unnoticed accumulations, it is cost-effective and time-efficient to hire a residential cleaning service to help prepare your bathroom to be as inviting as possible to home buyer prospects. A quick cleaning can certainly brighten up primary fixtures, but it also brings attention to lesser-cleaned corners, grouts, edges, curves, and shelves. Buyers will unconsciously see their bare feet on the floor, their head over the sink, their bare behind on the toilet seat, and their exposed body in the bath. They want to see their bodies, not leftover reminders of yours.

Residential Cleaning Services Evanston can take care of the cleaning while you take care of stripping your bathroom of your clutter, and your personality. You want the buyer to be able to envision their decorative preferences, and a place for all of their things to be stored. A counter full of makeup and lotions leaves no room to imagine storage for electronics, and a beach theme can hinder visions for a Paris themed room. Arrange temporary portable storage for your everyday bathroom items so you don’t have to worry about cleaning up for last-minute or unannounced visitors. Completely strip your bathroom before you call the residential cleaning services so everything is exposed for cleaning.

Beautify Your Bathroom with a Residential Cleaning Service to Sell Your Home - part I

Scratches are far easier to repair than dents. A little sanding and painting is all it takes. Get some fine-grit sandpaper and sand the scratched area down until you reach bare aluminum. Then take some aluminum-formulated primer and apply it to the area. Let the primer dry. You can then paint the siding with an exterior latex housepaint that matches the rest of the aluminum.

Fixing dents in aluminum siding takes a little more effort. You’ll have to drill, pull, sand, fill, smooth and paint. If you’ve ever done some body work on a dented automobile it might not seem so daunting. For some dents, it might just be easier to put in a new piece of aluminum siding.

If you want to avoid replacing a piece of aluminum siding and would rather just fix the dent, you start with a drill in hand. If you have a dent that roughly takes on a circular form and isn’t all zigzagged about, find the deepest part of the dent then drill in a 1/8th inch hole. If you have an odd-shaped dent, you still need to find the deepest part of the dent, but instead of drilling one hole, drill a row of 1/8th inch holes that are about one inch apart that follow along only the deepest part of the dent.

Once the holes are drilled, for each hole you’re going to take a ¾ inch long self-tapping sheet metal screw and put two washers under each screw head. Then put one of those screws (with the washers on) into each hole you drilled.

Now comes the pulling part. You need some arm strength for this. Get a pair of pliers and pull on each of those screws to raise the dented surface. Once it’s raised, you can remove the screws and washers.

Next, you start working on perfecting the appearance. Sand the area down to bare aluminum then wipe it down with some deglossing liquid. You can find deglossing liquid at most hardware stores, but the next step might require a trip to an auto supply store if your hardware store doesn’t have an auto section.

Once the deglossing liquid is on, take some two-part epoxy automotive filler and fill in the area. There is a plastic spreader that’s usually sold near the automotive filler to be used just for this purpose. Work with fast strokes so it will be smooth before it hardens. When it hardens you can sand down the area some more to get an even surface finish.

After your dented aluminum siding has been pulled, filled and sanded, you can add the finishing touches. Put aluminum primer on the sanded area and the nearby surrounding area. Once the primer dries, you can paint it with a latex exterior housepaint to match your siding.

Deciding whether to repair or replace a piece of dented aluminum siding is largely a personal preference based on skill, strength and accessibility to materials. Scratches, however, are quite simple to repair. It’ll be a while be self-healing aluminum siding comes off the drawing boards and jumps onto your house, so keep your sandpaper and primer handy.

Removing a stain can be a pain, but it’s certainly not impossible. If your floor doesn’t have a polyurethane treatment, and isn’t a no-wax floor, don’t fret thinking that you have to refinish your entire hardwood floor because of a few stains. Polyurethane floors, and floors that have no-wax treatment, have products manufactured specifically for treating their stains. But if you have a hardwood floor that can take some wax, it just takes a little scrubbing and pretreatment to get the goods looking good again according to Paul from Chicago Hardwood Floor Company. The process is just like treating stains on clothing – but a bit more abrasive.

A steel wool pad that is “grade 2” can help you with light and dark stains that are caused by water and other substances. For a light water stain, simply rub the area with a number 2 grade steel wood pad until the stain is gone. Then apply new wax onto the area. If it’s a dark stain, dip the steel wool pad in mineral spirits first, then rub the stain. After that, dip a cloth in distilled household vinegar and lay it on the spot for about ten minutes. Then take another cloth dipped in mineral spirits and wipe the area down. If the stain has disappeared, you can apply fresh wax.

If vinegar doesn’t work to lighten a dark stain, you can use “oxalic acid crystals” - which is the “oxy” in Oxydol laundry detergent and the numerous “oxy” cleaning products on the market. You can find oxalic acid crystals at a paint or hardware store, or you can substitue Oxydol laundry detergent. Make sure you wear rubber gloves. Take the crystals and mix them with very hot water until the crystals don’t dissolve any more. At that point, you have the proper ratio. Saturate a clean cloth in the solution, then let it sit on the stain for an hour. Then use a damp sponge to sponge the area dry, and quickly blot it dry. Once it has completely dried, you can add fresh wax.

If entertaining left your hardwood floors with alcohol stains, there’s a few tricks you can try. You can rub the area with a cloth that is dipped in a liquid wax that contains cleaner for removing old wax, or you can use a cloth dipped in silver polish that contains whitening. You can also try a cloth dipped in ammonia, but make sure you squeeze it dry first. If the stain can be rubbed through to the finish, apply fresh wax once the area has dried.

If the night of entertaining on your hardwood floor was memorable, and some dancing high heels left black marks on your floor, and marks from furniture being slid out of the way left streaks from black furniture casters, you can get those out with grade 00 steel wood pad. Dampen the pad with mineral spirits, but then squeeze it dry. Lightly rub the area, then apply fresh wax after it has dried.

If you have some oil and grease stains on your kitchen hardwood floor, you can doctor it up with one gauze pad saturated in hydrogen peroxide, and one gauze pad saturated in ammonia. Place the pad with hydrogen peroxide on the stain, then place the one with ammonia over it. Let them sit for at least 15 minutes. If it’s a bad stain, you can repeat the method until you see results. When the stain is gone and the floor is dry, you can put on some fresh wax.

Don’t use these methods to no-wax floors or floors with a polyurethane finish because a new finish might not take to it later. But for many hardwood floors, spot treatment and a little scrubbing can get rid of life’s little stains.

Paul S. - Hardwood Floor Refinishing Chicago

When you are discussing your home improvement specifications with the construction crew, specify that there needs to be adaptations for asthma or allergies. An electrostatic furnace filter should be replaced with a High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter. This will prevent dust circulation. Temporary plastic walls that are manufactured to zip closed will securely seal off the room that is being remodeled. Make sure that exhaust fans are used for “negative pressurizing” - and work to move contaminated construction air from the construction zone to the outside. These steps will likely add to the cost of your home improvement project, but they are necessary if anyone with breathing problems is inside the home.

Even after the construction crew has finished, steps need to be taken to keep the air clean and free from lingering harmful particles. Make sure the house is cleaned with HEPA filter vacuums, and use only cleaning products that are free from “volatile organic compounds” (VOC) – toxic air pollutants.

There are other choices that can be made during the planning of a home improvement project to accommodate allergy and asthma sufferers. Instead of knocking a whole wall, consider a partial knock-down – and try to avoid moving walls. This can save money that can be reallocated to the cost of protecting the breathing-impaired during the construction phase. Choosing solid wood instead of particleboard for kitchen cupboards keeps the toxic formaldehyde of particleboard far away from the sufferer’s breathing passageways. To compensate for extra cost, consider not moving a sink – which entails added plumbing expenses.

Carpets can be an invisible nightmare for serious allergy and asthma sufferers. Consider making plans to eliminate carpets. A combination of Sheetrock with cork liner under a floor will even improve upon the sound proofing capabilities of a carpet. If you’re remodeling a bathroom or kitchen, keep in mind that fans that exhaust air to the outside are healthier choices than fans that recirculate air. Keeping moisture to a minimum by upgrading windows and installing water-impervious flooring is a long-term healthy investment that will improve your budget and the value of your home as well as the health of your home.

Even if you or your household members don’t suffer from allergies or breathing difficulties, a healthy home and a protective home-improvement construction process will benefit the health of everyone – and your healthy home will be a breath of fresh air for everyone that lasts long after your home improvement project is completed.

Foam weatherstripping, sponge weatherstripping and felt weatherstripping only costs a few dollars a roll (technically, a coil). In fact, one roll is less than the cost of a value meal at a fast-food restaurant. Durable vinyl rubber weatherstripping is only slightly more. Skip the drive-thru one day a week and buy a package of cheap weatherstripping. It’s as easy to install as it is to cut and tape wrapping paper for a gift – probably even easier. And you’ll start saving money on your energy bill immediately after its installed.

It’s rare for a window in a newly built home not to have weatherstripping, but the majority of homes standing today didn’t come with the luxury of having weatherstripping pre-installed. Over 10% of your energy bill can be saved just by installing weatherstripping on your windows. Of course, the exact amount of savings will vary based on your style of windows, choice of weatherstripping, and environmental factors. If you’re interested in more accurate averages to help estimate your investment and savings, there are government websites that are overflowing with statistics on household and state energy use.

Once you decide to skip that value meal and finally weatherstrip your windows, you might find yourself gawking at various weatherstripping types. Before you head to the hardware store, measure your windows and your gaps - weatherstripping comes in many different sizes. If that sounds like too much work, start with buying a package of plastic foam tape. It comes with a self-adhesive, and is the easiest and quickest to install – and likely the lowest priced. You will have to replace it in a couple years, but you can then decide whether to upgrade or continue replacing it. Plastic foam tape is meant for windows that aren’t used a lot, and they can’t handle a lot of friction or they’ll wear out. Chances are you won’t be opening your windows in the dead of winter anyhow.

To install plastic foam weatherstripping, just use household scissors to cut a piece of weatherstripping to fit the window side or sash, peel and stick. Just make sure the surface you’re putting it on is free from dirt and oily substances or it won’t stick. And the foam weatherstripping won’t adhere well if you’re trying to put it on during a cold weather, so plan accordingly. If it’s winter and you have to get something up quick, try some felt weatherstripping.

Felt weatherstripping is an old classic standby, and holds up a little better than the foam. Try and get a wool pre-shrunk felt instead of hair felt because it will last longer. You can buy felt weatherstripping lined with thin aluminum stripping for even better protection. To install the felt weatherstripping, you’ll just cut and tack it on instead of sticking it on – thereby eliminating any problems caused by dirt or grease. Of course, you can buy felt weatherstripping that has a self-adhesive just like the foam weatherstripping.

If you can spend just a couple more dollars, vinyl covered rubber strips will last a lot longer and give you more protection, so you’ll start saving more money, sooner. Vinyl rubber weatherstripping also comes with a self-adhesive and has the same easy “cut, peel and stick” installation process.

Any weatherstripping is better than no weatherstripping. Start getting ready for the upcoming seasons and put up some weatherstripping to control the outside breeze. The innocent breeze will soon learn that its welcome through an open window, but it can’t rob you of your money when your window is closed shut. Soon, your house will start feeling comfortable, and you’ll be able to afford dessert after splurging on an extra value meal.

 
Jerry K. from SMB9, inc. - Chicago Vinyl Siding Company.