Making Those Spring Repairs To Your Home

Now that spring has finally arrived people are now slowly taking worrisome peaks around the outside of their homes, scared of what they will find. What do they find? All kinds of things and none of them are good.

With the long drawn out winter that we just experienced there are more chance that something has gone wrong on the outside of your home. Some of the things you already know about, you knew about them before the winter and decided to wait, some of them you found out about in the winter and some you just noticed for the first time this spring. Which ever it is they need to be repaired and usually they need a professional to do the repairs.

One thing that usually happens is that you hire someone to come and do an exterior or interior repair and they end up finding more things that are wrong, things that you didn't know where a problem; 1. because you didn't know to look for them, 2. because they were hidden from your inspections that are usually from the ground and are only a quick look.

The amount of things that can be wrong are lengthy;

• Damaged or plugged eavetroughs. The plugged eavetrough are usually the precursor to the damaged eavetrough. Cleaning them out will help prevent the damage or destruction of them later.
• Facia damage. Some times facia can be damaged from high winds, can be damaged if eavetrough are ripped off the house from snow and ice, sometime wood facia become meals for animals trying to get into your attic.
• Soffit damage. Wind can damage soffits, water can rot wood soffits and animals can eat through them to get into your attic to survive the winter.
• Siding. Wind, water and animals can damage siding. Also time and UV light are hard on siding, taking the paint off and exposing it to rot, rotents and bugs.
• Caulking. Caulking can be damaged or can fail after a long winter, this can allow water penetration around windows, chimneys, doors, siding corners and many other places.
• Shingles. Winter can be particularly hard on shingled roofs, snow and ice buildup and high winds can remove shingles or wear them thin. A lot of time you don't even know they are missing until the snow has melted off the roof. High steep roofs, roofs with water proofing under the shingles will resist water penetration but if not repaired will leak eventually.
• Foundation problems. Nobody really knows how dry their basement is until they have a big melt followed by a bigger rain storm, this is when you find out if your foundations waterproofing works, if the water runs away from the house or the window wells allow too much water around the foundation.
• Sump Pump. Most people have no idea how well their sump pump works, they only know when it stops working. Then of course its to late.
• Decks. Decks are something that take a lot of abuse throughout the winter, they usually have no roof or protection over top of them and they sit off the ground allowing the snow and wind to blow right underneath them. This can cause damage to the foundations and to the wood tops as well, damage and rot that you don't see until all the snow is removed.

Its human nature that once the weather starts to finally warm up people start calling around looking for people to come out and make these repairs, the earlier you call the better chance you will have to finding a good contractor to do the work and also getting scheduled in before they are completely booked for the entire spring and summer season.

The biggest mistake you can make is choose your contractor on price alone, remember you get what you pay for. Good quality contractors are not cheap, but their work is second to none and comes with a warranty, its worth paying that little extra.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.

Homeowner Renovations Not A Good Idea

Just because you think you can do it doesn't mean that you should!

I've visited potential clients that when I walked into their home to quote a renovation only to find out that the job has already started, not by another contractor but by the homeowner themselves.

Usually it's the demolition that they have started, they started taking down the walls that they wanted removed to create the new space that they've been dreaming about. What stops them is either a friend or neighbour commenting that what their doing is dangerous or their spouse starts to get worried about the drywall that is cracking in other parts of the house.

I was once in a house that people had removed the bearing wall a year ago to make the kitchen and the dining room one big space. They wanted a quote to fix the cracks in the ceiling, once I asked how long the cracks had been there and then inspected the attic I realized that they had removed the main support wall that held up the roof.

Basically the roof was now slowly pushing down causing the drywall to crack, eventually the roof would collapse into the house, usually in the winter when there would be a large snow load.

The quote to repair the house with a beam, support posts and repairing and replacing the drywall was probably more then what they originally spent to open the rooms up in the first place.

The moral of the story is that just because you think you can renovate your own home doesn't mean that you actually should.

I see homeowner renovations that end up costing people more in the long run because they needed repairs after the fact and because usually the renovation didn't turn out the way they wanted it too.

Save yourself time and money and call a professional for your next renovation.

One other thing that has come to our attention is that homeowner renovations are starting to affect the resale of homes in the area. Because people have home inspectors they are finding flaws with the renovation work done once they've established that it was homeowner done renovations and that the renovation had flaws. This is causing people not only money in the value of their home but also potential buyers who are scared away from homes because they really don't know what the potential problems are that could be in the walls that will cause problems in the future.

Make your life easier hire a proper renovation contractor that is insured and understands what is needed to complete the renovation, you won't regret it.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.