Building our dream homes is among our goals in life. It’s exciting to finally move in, plan the interiors using the inspirations we’ve compiled several years on our desktops and phones. However, many don’t think beyond the first year of beautifying it and settling down. While building and decorating it, we should also be conscious of the coming years.
Maintaining a house requires a lot of resources and takes up your time. After some years, the metal starts to corrode, paint starts to flake, and wood could either break or be bored into by termites. Eventually, parts of the house would need repairs. What’s even more bothersome is that things at home don’t break down at the same time, so you have to constantly call the repairman to do work.
Unless you’re rich enough to have handymen employed to serve you throughout the year, you will have to either do your repairs or take some time off to arrange and oversee workers who will not be familiar with your house.
So while you’re still building your home, take note of these few pointers to slow down the degradation of your house and make your life easier.
Add protection to your gutter and drainage.
Exposed water drainage could get clogged with leaves, dust, and other debris. These have to be regularly cleaned. Otherwise, water could overflow and ruin your backyard or even the interior of your home if the drainage leaks inside.
To save yourself the hassle of cleaning it often, get a metal gutter protection that could last for several years.
Use long-lasting materials.
If you think you’re saving by buying cheaper materials, compute for ten years. In the long run, it wastes both money and time since you have to constantly replace cheap materials that would easily break. Expensive doesn’t necessarily translate to good quality either. The key is to find the most cost-efficient options. For example, if one type of steel pole is more expensive because of its finish or the maker’s brand but will have the same lifespan as another kind of steel pole, you could go for the cheaper pole.
If you’re using wood, have your home regularly treated against termites.
Termites could be insidious. They start with the core of the wood, so when you see the holes, the wood could already be hollowed-out. Although paint could deter termite attack for some time, it’s not enough if you want your wooden posts and furniture protected for a long time. Hardwood is not easy to attack, but after several decades and with moisture accumulation, termites could eventually get into it. There are types of softwood that termites don’t attack. You could also opt to work with these kinds of lumber.
Put off major repairs for as long as you can, then schedule a renovation.
If you don’t mind that the door to your guest room would be off its hinges for some months or that a windowpane at the kitchen has to be temporarily boarded up, then try to schedule a one-time over-all repair or renovation of your home. For maintenance purposes, you could schedule a general check-up of your home every year every five to ten years, depending on your kind of construction materials.
You can save on costs and time if you do this as the materials that would be purchased would already be used for all parts of your home that would need some patching up or replacement. If you do it individually, you might be tempted to throw excess materials like cement or wood. Since work would also be done as a whole, labor costs of the workers would also be paid as one project.
Get a regular cleaner.
Dirt could destroy things fast. Coupled with moisture, it could stick onto surfaces difficult to remove after some time. It could also get into equipment that could cause it to malfunction. Locks that use keys could rust if not used regularly. That’s why they have to be cleaned and oiled.
If you have a garden and you can’t maintain it regularly, you also need to have a gardener who will do the regular trimming and weeding. Homes with abundant foliage around them are more prone to insect infestation if not regularly cleaned.
People now are excited to make their homes ‘smart’. But much as it would help you conveniently manage your appliances, the extent of what a smart home could do in terms of keeping your home free from damages is temperature control. A smart home system could set the house temperatures at comfortable levels to avoid moisture from building up in damp corners. But other aspects of maintenance still need to be manually overseen, so the smart way to go about it is to shield your home from fast deterioration right from the start, while it is still being planned.
