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Ways to Perk Up a Stretch of an Ordinary Asphalt Driveway

by Trish



An asphalt driveway provides a hardy surface where you can roll down your vehicle with great ease. It also makes for a great path to traverse on the way to your home’s front door. Unfortunately, with daily exposure to wear and tear, it can eventually turn into the least glamorous part of your property’s ground.


But, with a few key changes coupled with a little elbow greasing on your part, it’s possible to revive its appearance without spending a fortune. So if you’re ready, here are some suggestions to bring the life back to your boring asphalt driveway.

Fix and clean it up

A cluttered asphalt driveway is an eyesore that can create a dismal first impression to your guests. So to make sure that you don’t send the wrong message, start fixing and cleaning your driveway. Remove grime, stains, dirt and mold that have settled on its surface and sides by giving it a good scrub and wash. Also remove vegetation that may have grown on cracks or gaps. Once you have cleaned the mess, fill in potholes and cracks and don’t forget to reseal your driveway. These simple weekend tasks will definitely freshen up the appearance of your piece of road.

Doll up its edges

An asphalt driveway always look ragged around the edges. So for an inexpensive quick fix that will give your personal stretch of road a major facelift, add a neat row of concrete pavers, bricks or Belgian block stones to each of its side. These things will definitely combat the cookie-cutter look of your asphalt driveway by giving it a good frame and at the same time will provide you with a clear visual aid while you back out or pull in.

Border it with lights

Make your driveway safer to drive through even after the sun goes down by installing low-voltage lighting along its borders. This addition will make a pretty landscaping effect and will also improve visibility, thereby reducing the possibility of your guests accidentally driving onto your lawn.

Add a touch of life

Improve the look of your driveway the natural way by planting greens and blooms to the sides. Carefully placed plantings will provide interest to the space and will also increase the privacy of your home. This technique is ideal to use if you have a long driveway that lacks design features. Just make sure that you don’t plant too close to utility lines to avoid problems later on.

Integrate an apron

Another great way to transform your dark patch of tarmac is to tear up a section of it a few inches above the curb and fill it with concrete cobbles or decorative bricks. This simple addition is easy to tackle, but it can do a whole lot in adding an old world charm and texture to an otherwise boring asphalt driveway.

This piece of home improvement advice was written by one of the regular contributors of Ace Driveways, a company that specializes in block paving, wall and patio construction and turfing. They are also known as one of the best companies to provide great solutions for driveways Scotland folks can rely on.

Filed Under: Home Improvement Tagged With: asphalt, clean, driveway, edges, fix, gaps, glamorous, life, lights, perk up, reseal, tear, vehicle, wear

Renovation Tips That Will Increase The Value Of Your House

by Trish

Selling or renting out your house may not always be easy, especially if it is old. Other than the attachment that you have to it, the house may be too worn out to catch a buyer’s attention. Old houses are harder to sell, since most people assume that they are not as stable as they were. If you are looking to sell your house, you need to make sure that it is in the right condition to be sold. This will help you to sell it for a higher value that it would have sold for, before being refurbished.

Should I renovate my house?

Renovation is a must! One of the most important factors to consider when you make the decision to sell your house is how to make it attractive to potential clients. A customer will only take a product that they feel is better than the last one they saw.

Your home therefore, needs to stand out from others on sale so that people literally keep lining up for it! With this in mind, the following tips will help you find out how to change the outlook of your home to make it look modern and appealing. It will also play a big role in making the value of your home go up.

  • Thorough repairs

If you want people to be attracted to the house you are putting on sale make sure they can tell that the items in your home are new. Fix every sink, faucet, cabinet, surface, counter or any of the spots you know have been broken down for years. When potential buyers come to see the house, they will scrutinize every part of the house to make sure they are not getting less than what they are paying for.

Use affordable, new and modern appliances or parts that will draw people’s attention and make them have more faith in the new house. If they see new parts and well done remodeling, they will definitely be enticed into buying or renting the house. It will also help you have more selling points to use to convince them.

  • Create more rooms

The best way to sell your home for a higher price is to emphasize the amount of square feet that you are selling by creating another room. This may be expensive though if you reinvent a room you stand the chance of selling the house for a higher asking price that you would have. It simply means that you may be able to recover more money than what you will use to create the room.

The cheapest way to do so is by using space that already exists. For instance, you could convert the attic into a self-contained bedroom in order to fetch more money for your home. This is cheaper since you will not need to build an entire room rather you will only be making installations and changes to an already existing space in your house. You can also convert a garage into a guest room if there are enough parking spaces outside. This will also give you the option of renting it out or selling it as a separate entity.

  • Be strategic

When remodeling, pay as much attention to the outer parts of the home as you would to the inner ones. People will be attracted to your house from what they see outside first. Make sure all the paint is fresh and the environment is clean with attractive elements such as flowers, a patio, side porch or veranda. It is also important to consider outer elements like the doors and windows. These will attract people even before they enter the house and give them an expectation on what they will be getting inside when they buy it.

You can use inswing or outswing doors, bars and door grids, molding, the jamb or stile designs in order to draw attention to the design of your home. Doors can also come in many designs like steel, wood or fiberglass depending on the setting of your house. When it comes to windows, you can use several replacements on your home improvement approach like vinyl wood or aluminum. Windows can also be a sales point because of the colors and designs they come in. Make sure the outer part of the house is just as great, if not better than the inner one.

Emma Parkes shares useful tips on home improvement. She works for Windows and Doors which excels in improving home energy efficiency of their clients. You can get her insightful tweets on Twitter by following her.

 

Filed Under: Home Improvement, Real Estate, Renovating Tagged With: Appliances, attractive, buyers, doors, fix, flowers, landscape, modern, old, paint, patio, renovate, Renting, repair, selling, stand out, value, windows

Trying to fix a digital camera

by The Diva

I have three digital cameras. I really only use one of them as the other two are older models. Actually, now that I think of it I suppose I can say that I have four digital cameras if you count my mobile phone as it has a camera on it that’s 8 megapixels and it really does take quite decent pictures.

Anyway … the other day I was speaking with my sister and we talked about going out one weekend to take photographs around the city. My sister used to be an artist but because of recent health problems she really hasn’t been sketching or painting so I suggested that she might be able to express herself through photograph and she seemed to like that idea.

This past weekend I pulled out one of my older digital cameras – a Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 and I discovered that it had a problem. At first, once I’d put in new batteries, the LED screen would flash on for a moment with the message – “Lens cap still on” – and I’d remove the lens cap and the power would go off on the camera. The lens wouldn’t extend out or move in anyway and the LED screen wouldn’t come on with the lens cap off and it wouldn’t do much with the lens cap on either.

After a lot of research on the internet I finally discovered a a page that suggested that I plug in the cameras AV connection so that the LED screen wouldn’t turn on when I pressed the power button and that that would give more power to the lens motor. I tried it and the lens extended but then the power shut off again and I couldn’t get it to retract! I’d read on several pages to try tapping the lens or gently twisting it to the right to get it retract so I tried that many times and after two days of trying the lens went back in .. but still, the led screen won’t work. Now I’m thinking that it might be one of the retaining rings or the internal battery in the camera.

OR … I just don’t know … maybe I won’t get this camera working again. I’d like to. It took great pictures and it was an expensive camera back when I originally bought it. It would be nice to get some more use out of it or at least to see if my sister might enjoy photography as much as I do.

If anyone has any ideas as to how to fix this cameras lens and led screen problem I’d love to hear your suggestions. I really don’t want to take it to a camera store or back to Sony as that would probably be very expensive.

Filed Under: Electronics, Home and family, Items to Try, Recreation Tagged With: artist, battery, cybershot, digital camera, DSC-H5, express, fix, help, led screen, lens, mobile phone, older models, painting, photography, retract lens, sister, sketch, sony camera, suggest, suggestion

My neighborhood is under construction this week

by The Diva

I’m tired this week. Almost every day there’s noise on the street very early in the morning. Why? Well … there’s construction crews tearing up our sidewalks for some reason. I’m not sure why, but they’re replacing some of the sidewalks that were put in two years ago when some of our neighbors had their waterlines improved.

On Tuesday the sidewalk right in front of our house was torn up with one of those big hammer drills. Our whole house shook like crazy! Luckily it only took about fifteen minutes for them to finish. Then … once they removed the broken concrete they cleared the area and at about 4:30 pm they put in new cement and smoothed it out and moved on to other areas.

Before they left the neighborhood they blocked things off with wooded blockades and put canvas over the wet cement but by 8 pm – only about an hour after the guys had left the area someone walked in all the wet cement in front of my house and apparent all down the street (doing the twist in the cement) mucking it all up. Who does that? So it’s all ruined! So I guess maybe tomorrow I’ll have another hammer drill making noise in front of my house again.

Now the sidewalk in front of my house is only partly useable because of the mucked up footprints in the cement. All the little kids parading by with their cute little personalized lunch boxes are having trouble walking on it. I hope they fix it soon.

Filed Under: Home and family, Home Improvement, Items to Try Tagged With: cement, construction, fix, improvement, mucked up, neighborhood, repair, ruined cement, sidewalk, terrible, walking, waterline

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