How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, is a great idea. The book’s goal is providing homeowners with simplified drawings and diagrams of home systems, including written explanations of how each system works. For common problems, simple fixes are proposed that anyone can accomplish. Drawings are informative. Written explanations are typically integrated within the drawings or succinctly itemized without unnecessary “writer’s” fluff. Continue reading Review: How Your House Works
Category Archives: Home Maintenance
Review: Home Improvements for the Busy & Broke
Home Improvement Projects for the Busy & Broke: How To Get Your $h!t Together and Live Like An Adult, is a book geared towards the young professional finally living in that first apartment or house. If you don’t mind the occasional swearing for emphasis, the text is entertaining and edgy. A writing style undoubtedly appealing to millennials who read sentences between texts and tweets. Chapters begin with the basics of how to live like an adult: Stop partying every night, get motivated, make your bed and clean your room. Advice my teenagers hear daily, usually at high volume. Apparently many kids don’t. Continue reading Review: Home Improvements for the Busy & Broke
Mold Resistant Home Design
Can Homeowners & Pros Prevent Mold?
Homeowners often wonder if mold can be entirely eliminated from their home. Sadly, the answer is no. Don’t panic, mold naturally occurs in every environment. Humans have evolved to coexist with small amounts of this tiny microbe. Many foods humans love, including cheese and soy sauce, contain mold. Antibiotics like penicillin, which transformed modern medicine, are derived from mold. Continue reading Mold Resistant Home Design
Does Wine Trap Fruit Flies?
My wife swears it wasn’t her. Yet we lived in relative bliss before she brought home bags of produce from the farm. Within days our kitchen was infested with fruit flies. I mean hundreds of the little buggers. Whatever the cause, we suddenly had a perfect experiment to answer the burning question: Does wine trap fruit flies? Continue reading Does Wine Trap Fruit Flies?
Fall Home Maintenance Checklist
Maybe I’m just a neurotic architect. Or maybe seasonal change encourages existential reflection for everyone. Whatever the reason, as the leaves turn I’m acutely aware of a dependence on home for shelter and survival. Which means fall is a great time for a home maintenance check. I relish the thought of discovering small problems when easily fixable. And I laugh out loud when fixing them. Because a nasty winter catastrophe is avoided. Thought I’d share a list of maintenance items I diligently check. Just in case you feel the same about fall. Continue reading Fall Home Maintenance Checklist