| In This Issue – Preparing for Spring, Basement Remodeling, Scary Sales Tactics |
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Weatherize Your Home: Get ready for spring |
 Spring will be here again before you know it, and you’ll need to get your house ready for warmer temperatures, melting snow and lots of rain! After a season of cold, snow and being closed off from the elements, everything in a house can be affected from the air quality to the windows and roof. Go through your house now and see what needs fixing and maintenance before the warm weather gets here.
Exterior Spring Preparations
One of the first things you can do to prepare for spring rain and melting winter snow is cleaning out the gutters and downspouts. If they are clean then the water can pass through them properly and away from your home. Clogged gutters can cause water to fall off close to your house and into the soil surrounding your foundation. This water can end up flooding your basement. A downspout is only as good as its distance from your house. Getting a downspout extension can flow the draining water away from your foundation.
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Scary Waterproofing Sales Tactics: Don't fall for them |
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 While researching about waterproofing contractors over the internet, customers are bound to find, mostly in home improvement forums, a number of complaints about questionable sales tactics used by some waterproofing contractors. Customers usually complain about the same practices, used over and over, by some companies.
There is the awful "mold scare" tactic, the gross misrepresentation of the amount and urgency of repairs, the bashing of competitors to keep homeowners from getting additional estimates. To force a quick closing there is the very popular but extremely dishonest technique of jacking up the price and, when the homeowner refuses the proposal, offer overly generous "discounts" (as high as 50% sometimes), "but only if you close the deal right now."
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Basement Layout: What goes where |
 How do you arrange a room that takes up an entire floor, has poor lighting, and is usually cold and dreary? Where do you even start? There are many ways to approach your basement layout, but you should focus on a layout that adds convenience, organization and function to your home.
Define the Space
First and foremost you must determine what you'll be using the basement for. Do you want a play area for your kids? Do you need a craft area, guest room or home office? Define the areas before you decide where they should be located in the room. Also, some things in your basement can't be changed or would be costly to change, such as a metal beam. As doityourself.com says, your basement layout will have to work around these aspects.
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Wood Sub Flooring makes for Rotten Basement Remodeling |
 Too often, general contractors who complete a basement finishing will design a house with the same plans that were used for the rest of the home. To accomplish this, they design basement ceilings and floors with drywall, creating a large white box in the basement. While not especially creative, it does give area a uniform look- it looks just like a room upstairs but without big windows. Of course, in a basement, a drywall ceiling will make access to pipes, wiring, ducts, and other utility lines difficult and will be ruined in a plumbing leak....
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