Guest Post - How to Match Your Home Style and Your Garage

Your garage door can account for as much as 40% of your home’s exterior, so finding one that matches your home’s style is essential. Luckily, you can boost curb appeal and increase home value with these simple tips for creating a cohesive aesthetic.

Contrast With Glass

If your home’s style is more modern or falls into the farmhouse category, consider adding sleek, contemporary glass doors. Consider ones with frames to match your home’s exterior accents, the roof, or your other window frames.

Glass panels might also suit a modern minimalist aesthetic because they blur the lines between interior and exterior spaces. Frosted glass will maintain privacy while adding a bit of light to an otherwise shadowy area. 

Consider Lines and Materials

Does your home feature vertical columns or long, horizontal lines? Have your garage door follow suit by choosing one with clean lines, rectangular windows, or thick frames. In many cases, the horizontal or vertical planks in wood or faux wood doors will lend themselves well to your home’s style.

Of course, if your house is mostly wood already, you might want to choose a different material for the garage doors. For instance, if you own a log cabin, darker aluminum or even fiberglass might add some visual interest to your home’s light wooden exterior.

Match the Shutters and Trim

When all else fails, choose a garage door that matches your shutters and trim. This simple yet effective trick will ensure a cohesive exterior style. If these elements are too bold and bright, you can always go with a lighter shade.

On the other hand, if you want to go bold and your shutters and trim are white, you might want to restrain yourself. White is the most popular color for garage doors and exudes clean, classic vibes. Plus, selling a home with a white garage door will likely be easier than selling one with a bright pink or orange one.

Choosing Function Over Style

Ultimately, your garage door’s functionality matters more than its style. After all, installing new doors is a big investment, so you want them to last a long time.

Therefore, it’s important to consider everything from the weather to your current lifestyle when choosing a garage door. These details will help you narrow down your options and pick the best style for you and your home.

Author bio: Rose Morrison is the managing editor of Renovated, where she offers advice on home renovation, maintenance, and organization.

How To Have a More Reliable Internet

The importance of internet access and speed cannot be overstated. The internet facilitates business, both for large corporations and individual workers, and provides news and entertainment in our personal lives. A slow connection or a signal that routinely drops interrupts that access, which is why knowing how to have a more reliable internet is a critical piece of knowledge in our modern age.

Know Your Data Cap

Your allotted data every month is represented by your data cap, and it can range anywhere from a few hundred megabytes to a few hundred gigabytes. Using up this data is determined by how much you use the internet; even leaving a page open without clicking on anything uses up your data. Once your data usage reaches a certain threshold, your internet speed will drastically slow down.

Extending Your Cap

If you routinely experience slowdown or are aware that you go over your monthly limit, then you need to contact your Internet Service Provider. Your internet bill may cost more every month, but that is one possible solution to speeding up your internet.

Directly Interface With Your Modem

Your router is your home’s direct line to the internet. Typically, you plug in your modem to the router, which you then either plug in your computers to the router via a physical connection, such as Ethernet or through Wi-Fi. You can eliminate your router altogether and plug your computer directly into your modem.

Wired Connections

While there are troubles that appear when using an Ethernet cable, it is still the most reliable way to access the internet. A direct-wired connection will give you speeds that are much faster and a connection that is much more stable than what is possible with a wireless connection.

Resituate Your Router

As mentioned, your router plugs into your modem; the modem then grants the router internet access, which can offer access to multiple devices, either through a wired connection or wireless. If your only available option is to use a wireless connection, then you need to consider the placement of your router.

Disrupted Connection

A Wi-Fi connection, while less reliable, offers more convenience than a physical cable, but the wireless signal can have trouble getting through the walls of your home. That is why you need to carefully consider where you will place your router to have more reliable internet. Find a spot where it does not have to travel far or through solid walls to get to your device.

Identify the Issue

Multiple factors go into increasing internet speed and reliability. Know where your system’s shortcomings are and what needs to be improved. Without troubleshooting the problem, you may end up paying for extra data you do not need or replacing a perfectly good router.

How to Clean Your House in Preparation for Selling It

We partnered with a cleaning company for this post. The opinions in the post are honest. All reviews and opinions expressed in this post are based on our personal views. We are excited because we know you will love it.

Cleaning your home before you move may look like a huge task, but if you break it down into steps, it is much easier. There are two great ways to do this: break it down by type of job, or divide it by room. For instance, you could wash all the windows at once, clean all the floors and baseboards, and clean out all the clutter, or take it room by room. Learn more about their cleaning services.

Clear out the Clutter

The first step to cleaning your home is to clear out the clutter. For example, in the kitchen most people have a spot where they just drop everything-their mail, empty jars, pens, and miscellaneous items. Give away or throw out items that are not needed. Kitchen counters can also look crowded with too many appliances. Only one or two appliances should be left visible on the counter, such as a coffee maker or small microwave. Other appliances should be boxed up or placed in a cupboard out of sight. The kitchen is one of the most important rooms in the house, and when you are selling your home, this room needs to look very spacious and inviting. Another space that is important to clean is the garage or workshop. When trying to sell your home, you want to make this space look as large as possible. You can take extra items to the thrift store or put them in temporary storage with a friend.

Wipe Surfaces

No one wants to see dirt and dust in a potential home, so all surfaces need to be cleaned. The more obvious places to clean include the floors, counters, and bathtubs, but do not forget windowsills, top of the refrigerator, bookshelves, baseboards, and light fixtures. Also, the large appliances in the kitchen should be wiped and polished (especially if they are stainless steel). The windows also need to be washed, especially any glass sliding doors or front doors with glass.

Care for the Yard

Some companies, like Olivia Cooley Group, know that the outside of the home is just as important as the inside when you are trying to sell your home. Leaves should be cleaned up, grass mowed, sticks and yard debris cleaned up, steps swept off, and bushes trimmed nicely. Consider cleaning up large children’s toys or extra lawn equipment for the nicest presentation.

To put the finishing touches on cleaning your home, be sure all the lights are working, doors and latches functioning, and all windows have screens in them. Personal family decorations should be taken down, with only a few simple pictures and decorations left. Curtains and blinds should be open to allow light into the room. These are great steps to make your home look beautiful.

How to Make Sure Your Roof Is Prepared for Spring Rainstorms

Your roofing is among the most costly elements of your house, and spring storms pose one of the greatest risks to them. From the wind tearing off a few shingles to the big branch dropping and poking a hole in your roofing, these storms will do significant damage to your roofing.

Although there is no solution to stopping this yearly onslaught of extreme weather, here are three simple and economical tips you could do to help shield your home from damage.

Trim Overhanging Branches

As you know, storms can become very turbulent in the spring months, and these moving winds can impose a severe effect on the trees surrounding your house. It is effortless for trees to drop their branches during these windstorms, particularly if some of these branches died in the cold season or if they have just gained their energy back.

Taking your time to check the trees and cut any branches that could be troublesome or unsafe if they dropped during a spring storm could also be one of the best choices you might make.

Clean Your Gutters

Your gutters' key task is to bring rainwater that falls on your roofing to a safe spot on the surface that doesn't harm your house. If your gutters are blocked up with debris as the storm hits, water will remain on your roofing and spill down the outside of your house, which can cause significant and costly damage.

After clearing your gutters of any residual autumn and winter waste, you should inspect them for holes or other harm indications that could prevent them from doing their job effectively or contact a roofing expert for roof repair.

Get an Inspection

Another step towards protecting your roofing is performing roof inspection. Before the storms begin, you should get an expert roofer to check your roofing and ensure it is in excellent condition. If they can help you discover and repair a small issue before the storms start to hit your roof, you'll save money and the hassle.

An experienced roofer will check your flashing. These are the metal parts that cover the joints of your roofing around the chimney and vents. They are more likely to be unplugged than other roof materials. Checking these sections and reassembling or removing any broken or loose flashing should help keep them safe in strong winds.

While you cannot keep spring storms out, you can protect your house by following the above tips. When your roofing is damaged during these extreme weather conditions, contact us.