As the holidays approach we begin to plan how we’re going to decorate our homes. It’s fun to bring out old decorations with wonderful memories, especially those wonderful handmade decorations our children made when they were young. This year is an opportunity to move towards green decorating with more natural materials, i.e. those you can collect while walking on the beach or hiking up a mountain.

Part of the fun is using your imagination, so I’ll just share some ideas here to get you dreaming about a new way of decorating. What’s important is to enjoy creating the decorations, figuring out how to display them and enjoying seeing them around your house through the holiday season. READ MORE

Hardwood flooring is very popular. Maybe you grew up with beautiful hardwood floors, as they were more common years ago. You’d like to install hardwood floors in your home but you’re not sure what choices you have, how to make the decision and most important, what you can afford?

This article provides an overview of your choices and tips on the various types of hardwood flooring available. Take time to learn what flooring is best in which environments, i.e. basements have higher humidity, relative costs and buying tips. READ MORE

Wood decks are traditional but take lots of work to maintain. Fortunately there are many new deck materials that require far less maintenance. These materials may cost more initially but when you look at the total cost over 20 or more years, you’ll find that you’ll save money from lower maintenance and repair costs.

Some people may claim that decks and other home features require no maintenance but that’s simply not true. Maybe you don’t have to stain and/or seal a deck made of composite materials but it will still need an occasional cleaning. READ MORE

Among Time Magazine’s top 50 inventions for 2009, 5 of them focused on home improvements and 4 of these were related to improving energy efficiency.

From the short abstracts provided by Time, at least one ($10 Million Lightbulb) has been entered into a contest for the most efficient replacement for today’s incandescent lightbulb demonstrating that many inventions are driven by government standards … or contests.

Times Magazines 50 Best Inventions of 2009 READ MORE

We take our indoor air quality for granted. We don’t really see indoor air the way we see smog outdoors, so we simply assume the air inside our homes is clean. The reality is the air inside our homes is seldom as clean than the air right outside our front door.

As building codes change to focus on greater energy efficiency, we are reducing the exchange of air flow from inside our home with fresh air from outside our homes. With the drop in air exchange, we need to learn more about the unhealthy things polluting our indoor air. We also need to learn what we can/should do to keep our indoor air cleaner and healthier, i.e. changing furnace filters regularly. Hopefully we’re starting to pay attention to indoor air quality as asthma and other respiratory problems rise. READ MORE

Builders often don’t install gutters on new homes as some owners want them and others don’t. Gutters are meant to catch and direct the rain that falls on your roof … away from your home’s foundation. That’s because your roof represents a sizable area and rain water flowing naturally will dump an excessive amount of water right below the edge of the roof.

If too much water sits and soaks into the ground next to your foundation, you are likely to have problems at some point when the water finds small gaps into your home. Here are answers to the most common questions home owners ask about gutters. READ MORE

Decks give you more living space. Decks also add value to your home on resale. In fact, a deck may be considered a required feature depending on your home’s size and location. I once considered converting a deck to a finished family room and the appraiser told me for the size of the house, a deck was required while a family room was not. We kept the deck.

You have many choices today for deck materials, from traditional wood to composites that require less maintenance. If you already have a deck you love, this article will give you recommendations for cleaning and sealing your deck to insure many more years of use. If you are considering adding a deck to your home, there is a companion article, Deck Building Basics, with an overview of things to consider when planning your deck and picking materials. READ MORE

Front doors play an important role in a home’s curb appeal. Whether plain or elegant, every door begins with a basic door at the center. From here you can upgrade a door’s style and add features like the sidelights and curved transom glass shown here. Regardless of which features you add (or don’t), you will also add trim to the door on the outside and inside of your home, providing one more way to dress up your home’s entrance.

When ordering any exterior door, there is certain information you need to provide beginning with which way the door swings when you open it, i.e. to identify which side of the door will have the hinges. Exterior doors are always measured from the outside, i.e. as if you are standing outside the house and knocking on the door. READ MORE

If you own a home, you probably didn’t pay much attention to the home buyer tax credit for First Time Home Buyers.

Now there’s a new tax credit you may be eligible for. The bill passed in November 2009 creates new tax credits for many home owners, to try and get the cycle of buying and selling real estate moving again. That’s because the construction and real estate industries have a big affect on the economy!

The new bill is called the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009. The new tax credit is worth of up to $6,500 for qualified move-up or repeat home buyers … which means existing home owners! If you purchase a principal residence after November 6, 2009 and on/before April 30, 2010 (or purchased by June 30, 2010 with a binding sales contract signed by April 30, 2010), you may be eligible for this tax credit. READ MORE

Reduce, reuse, recycle! These words are hard to get away from today as more attention is being paid to protecting the environment. Recycling and “going green” are popular topics which everyone is talking about and for a good reason. Recycling helps prevent waste and therefore helps prevent damage to our environment.

Did You Know?

Here is one simple example of how recycling can make our environment better. It’s scary that we don’t already understand the impact of these lifestyle choices. Going green and recycling are really more about a shift in mindset rather than radical lifestyle changes.

If we are able to recycle just 1 ton of paper (think about our newspapers), then we will save 17 mature trees … and that is pretty obvious. What we don’t understand is that we’ll also save  7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil and 4,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity. That is enough energy to power the average American home for five months! READ MORE