How to Protect Your Plants During a Summer

Particularly in summer, with extreme hot conditions plants suffer dry and needs special attention or care. However, extreme hard conditions may not last long but makes plants dead or dry. From such harsh heat, try to follow the below tips to protect your plants.

• In summer, your potted plants are more likely to lose water. In order to prevent the evaporation of water from the pot, try to keep potted plants nearer to the thicker trees or cover the pot with thick layer of chopped hey/straw. Straw will prevent the soil from drying up and helps to keep the soil moisture. From this, roots doesn't get damaged.
• You can also put coconut fiber on the top of the soil in the potted plant. This fibre keeps soil moisture in the pot.
• Another method to protect your plants is covering pots with netted shade sails.
• Never keep your potted plants on the radiated surfaces like cement, tiles, granite. These surfaces will sear the plants.
• Water the ground or surrounding areas of the potted plant. By doing this, your plants don't get dried.
• Roots get distressed in the high heat. So always water the plant in early mornings or at night. This prevents evaporation.
• Use sprinklers to water your plants.
• Stop fertilizing and pruning your plants in summer even though they both are encouraging plants to grow.
• Don't supply or provide more water to your plants. This may stop the plant growth.
• You can also keep your potted plants in a tray full of water. Roots get moisture from this water and stays healthy.

Last but not the least, try to grow the plants according to their nature.

Counter-Top Materials: Choose One That Best Suits Your Needs

Counter-tops add value to your kitchen as well as it is considered an important workplace for households in the kitchen. Many types of counter-tops are available that sometimes you may confuse what to choose. Below are some of the kitchen counter-top materials properties. Look at it.

Ceramic tile: Number of options are available in these materials with variety of colors and patterns. However, the strains or food spills that fell on these tiles can be easily removed. Most use these materials for their bath-rooms. The drawback here is, these materials easily crack and are not durable for many years.

Granite: Granite is best suited for counter-tops but these are expensive. These counter-tops are durable and offer value addition to your home. In these materials, you can get different patterns or plain finish material.

Marble: These materials are less expensive than granite but these carries cracks. These materials has less resistant features to strains and scratches. Therefore, these materials are less efficient than marble.

Laminate: These materials are available at inexpensive rates and requires lower maintenance. One disadvantage is, if this material is exposed to moisture for a long time, it may easily be dissolved and warp into the sub-surface.

Concrete: These counter-tops are mostly used in bath-rooms for contemporary decorating. You can have your personalized design styles in it. However, these materials require regular sealing to prevent from absorbing moisture.

Glass counter-tops: These counter-tops look great but you need to deal with extra care. These are available in rectangular shapes with the required thickness. However, avoid using these counter-tops in homes with kids. You can get strains and scratches easily.

The above are some of the counter-top materials which are commonly used in homes. For more varieties to get, shop around.

Things to Consider Before Renovating Your House

Renovating your house is a good idea if you want to update your house to a latest trends without leaving the community where you are staying. By renovating, you can add many rooms to your house as well as change the entire look of your house with a few modifications. Sometimes renovating involves major things to modify which require huge finances.

However, if you are decided to renovate your house, then you need to consider the below things:

• First, every home owner should assess whether he/she can stand up to the project requirements. For example, to renovate a house, a person should have patience, budget, and time. If these 3 things are not there, then the project will be left in the middle.
• Decide whether you want to stay in the renovated home for a longer period or temporarily. Investing a lot for short term staying is not recommended. If you want to stay for a long time, it is recommended.
• Before you call for a contractor, you should have a basic idea on which part of a house need renovation and the reasons for changing it. By doing so, you can explain clearly to the contractor.
• You must have a clear idea on how much time you want to spend on finishing the renovating project. This will enable the contractor to finish within deadline.
• Hire a professional contractor who is insured, licensed from a reputed trade association for renovating your home.
• Analyze how much amount you want to spend for the project.
• Ask contractor to provide details of project such as what type of materials/products will he be using, and how much amount the project cost. Suppose if contractor's assumption value exceeds your budget then you need to talk with contractor asking about alternate options.
• Finally, you need to prepare a written document for the project mentioning yours and contractor's names.

However, renovating a home is quite noisy, and risky task. So you need to be patient and wait for end-results.

What are the Factors to Consider While Repairing Your Home?

You need remodeling or renovating your home, when it is not sufficient for the growing family, or you want to sell your home to get a better value, or to change the appearance of the home etc. You may have other reasons for remodeling your home.

Remodeling your home is not just about making the home look good, but also about increasing the comforts, and about making the home safer and secure. Before or while repairing or remodeling your home, take into account the following factors:

• The first to consider is whether the space you have is completely used by the contractors or not:
• The total space available in houses today is, generally less compared to the houses that people bought fifty years ago because of various factors such as economy, builder's requirement, and the purchasing power of the person. Therefore, make sure that while remodeling your home, the remodeling company uses all the space that is available in the house. Roofing is also one of the important aspects in remodeling home.

• Enhancement you need in the house: Whatever enhancement you have in the house is worth or not that you are payed for because only right remodeling company will have economic house remodeling. To check this, make sure that along with the enhancements, your house become stronger, looking better, and provides more comfort and allows you to do more things with the house.

• How much amount you are paying for remodeling is required only when you are living in it for a longer period or if you own the land and are completely remodeling the house.

How to Choose Kitchen Tiles While Redesigning Your Home?

In every house, kitchen is a very important place to cook food, dine, wash utensils and chitchat with others. So, it is necessary to be very well decorated, and well designed because householders will get a good impression from the outsiders when they maintain it well.

In order to design and decorate a kitchen, the equipment that are needed should be there and a well planning is needed to implement this. If a kitchen is having all facilities, then it is convenient, easily be maintained and there is no doubt that the person who works in that kitchen will have a positive impact and on the other hand he or she enjoys to work every time in that place without any hesitation. So, this is the reason why you should consider each and every thing when designing your kitchen and also make sure that it has all the necessary items to look good overall.

Whether you are renovating or remodeling your kitchen, the first thing to consider is convenience and maintenance. When kitchen get moisture, dirty they need cleaning. If you choose wooden floor in the kitchen, you are very foolish because you will have to keep it away from moisture all the time and cleaning the dirty. However stained wood floor can be an off-putting task. So, to make it convenient, the floor of the kitchen should be water resistant, skid proof and easy to clean.

Natural stone tiles like marble and granite are the perfect choice for your kitchen because they offer convenience and feasibility. These stone tiles are easy to clean and are water resistant. These tiles will never fade or deteriorate by any type of chemicals or detergents. Even though, your kitchen floor is pooled with water spills, you will have less danger because these stone tiles are less slippery and are skid-proof.

If your priority is in terms of looks, then you can look for many stylish kitchen tiles in porcelain. These are available in different styles and colors. These are easy to clean and maintain. These tiles are also available in wooden textures, marble effects and granite effects.

Not only these tiles are available for kitchen floors but also you can apply these tiles to cover the walls of the kitchen for a classic look. Most of the bordered tiles are available to cover the walls of the kitchen. Not only borders, there are number of designs are available on tiles such as pictures of tea pots, cutlery, and crockery on the kitchen tiles.

An Efficient Roofing Material: Asphalt

Asphalt is a roof shingle alternative to tile, wood, and metal roofs because most residents continue picking asphalt because of its durability, inexpensive and simple to install. There are two types of asphalt shingles are used organic and fiberglass asphalt shingles.

Organic shingles are generally made of waste paper saturated with asphalt to make it waterproof, a layer of adhesive is coated on it and then ceramic granules are then embedded. Organic shingles contain around 40% more asphalt per square than fiberglass shingles. So, this makes them environmentally less friendly despite being organic. These are more prone to fire because of its paper-based making.

Fiberglass shingles have a base layer of glass fibers fortifying the mat. The mat is made from wet, random laid fiberglass bonded with urea-formaldehyde resin. To make this fiber glass shingle mat waterproof then it is coated with asphalt which contains mineral fillers. These shingles resist fire because fiberglass reinforcement was devised as the replacement for asbestos paper reinforcement of roof shingles.

Asphalt shingles are available in assorted grades that offer different life spans, based on your needs. Below are some of the specifications to consider for knowing whether the asphalt is a better roofing material or not.

•     Asphalt shingles are easy and fast to install. You need to pay more for installation and you can finish your dwellings on time.

•     Asphalt shingles are available in different styles, strengths, price. They are affordable compared with all other roofing materials.

•     There are many styles, textures and colors are available in this asphalt material. If you use this material on your roofs, the appearance of your home looks totally changed.