welcome guests. eschew pests.
(Photo: by Floralis Garden Design. Photography by Laura Negri.)
Your home’s interior comfort shouldn’t play side kick to fabulous façade and vice versa!
If you caught the recent post about weatherstripping you will know what a huge impact it has on restricting air flow and pests from even slight openings around your home’s door and window frames. A showstopping entrance is not immune to ineffective sealing, and your home’s interior comfort shouldn’t play side kick to fabulous façade. Summer is a good time to address your home’s interior buy checking the exterior first. Checking around the exterior offers not only an opportunity for aesthetic updates but also any compromises in siding that require a repair before fall and winter weather conditions exacerbate existing issues. And a good summertime washing of your home’s siding is a perfect time to check for these while also giving its appearance a boost!
When I Tried This
“Side Dish” introduces the first segment of “When I tried this”', a hands-on account of a previously posted maintenance recommendation.
“Side-Dish” came about for sheer economic reasons. Nearly two decades since my home had been professionally painted it had accumulated a brownish cast over its light grey exterior and a layer of green mildew had surfaced on various other parts of the siding. Not having budgeted for another professional paint job, I opted to ignore that my home was beginning to show the kind of neglect that would make it a suitable a stand in for a Psycho film remake. Despite this, ignoring the issue won that internal argument until a friend visited my home for the very first time who instantly said upon entering “Wow -you’d never think it looked this nice inside your home from the outside.”
It was an unsettling epiphany - ignoring some much-needed home maintenance wasn’t the secret I’d convinced myself it was.
A short time following my very honest friend’s visit I pushed up my sleeves and started washing the house with very little idea of what I was doing. It had occurred to me, soapy bucket of water in hand, that I had never seen any of my neighbors wash their house with soap and water before and became instantly self-conscious. To my dismay, hiring a team of professional painters to whisk out paint sprayers and be done with it in a few hours with my only input being “Looks great!” was financially viable. So instead, I washed my home with a hose and a bucket of diluted Murphy’s Oil Soap -I figured I’d splurge on the cleaning solution and purchased wood soap for my wood siding at $6.49 for a 16 oz a bottle only to learn later that Dawn costs at $2.99. and is actually the better option for the task. Live and learn.
With minimal elbow grease and a soft bristled brush, the green film disappeared and bright, light grey emerged. The change was significant. The change was instant. The change was cheap. What was especially great was that in that one afternoon I had changed the appearance of my home myself. Until then, I had actually believed that everything regarding the maintenance of my home required paying a professional thousands of dollars. I also pondered that if I loved my house -why had I let it lapse to the degree that it looked like I did?
After some additional online studies, I discovered you should be washing your house (with soap!) each year to prevent exactly the same green moldy stains that I had had and that Dawn dish soap is a better choice because it’s less prone than other cleansers to leave a residue- resulting in attracting insects and more dirt!
Who knew that $3 soap and a couple of hours could make such an impact. If you have not done so yet this year, wash your home’s exterior. You will be amazed a the difference it will make.
-Handy Darling