Smart Home Investments

If you’re a homeowner, you’ve probably already thought about necessary investments you need to put into your home. There’s a lot that it takes to maintain a livable house – you obviously want to be comfortable, you want your home to be safe, you want to be able to sell it for the most its worth, should the time come – there’s plenty of things to look out for. There might be some specifics you haven’t thought out yet, however, that are commonly overlooked. Let’s talk about some of those.

New Floors/Carpet
You’d be surprised how easy it is to screw up carpet, and how often a home will come with it poorly installed. You’ll notice different shades right next to each other that should have been the same shade. Or you’ll see it wrinkled up against the wall, allowing liquids to get under it. Likewise, I’ve seen kitchen floors in a home for rent/sale be tiled wrong or laid with the wrong measurements in mind, and the owners decided not to do anything about it. So they are literally selling an incomplete floor. Bad kitchen floors are a way to collect more crumbs and attract more ants. There are a lot of other problems that have more to with what kind of flooring you get as well, rather than how it’s installed. What I would recommend: get good floors as soon as possible. If you’re planning to redo the carpet in your house, make sure you know what you want before you buy it, and then make sure you get exactly what you want, and you know how to properly install it. If someone else installs it, make sure they do it exactly to your standards so you don’t have to deal with the same thing later due to poor installation. The same goes for tiling or hardwood floors.

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Foundation Repair
You wouldn’t know it, but when it comes down to foundation problems, too many builders and house owners haven’t paid careful enough attention to know if the house has good or bad foundation. It’s best to find foundation problems, as some of them are life threatening and “leave your home” kind of problems (when your walls start collapsing, you know you’ve waited too long). There’s multiple causes for this, so start looking for signs now! Cracks in the walls and the floor are great and obvious indicators that something is probably wrong with your foundation, so keep an eye out.

Security
While I would agree your life isn’t made up of or fulfilled by your possessions, some of them are obviously important and worth keeping secure. Your life is worth keeping secure as well. Alarm systems aren’t a bad idea if you have a lot of expensive possessions or a unique house that sticks out from the rest in your area as being nicer or even cleaner. Likewise, locking things up in your house isn’t a bad idea. It’s wise to look at safety ratings for home security safes before you buy one though.

Solar Panels
Working closely with a company that specializes in solar panel installment has left me very impressed by how much of a worthwhile investment this really is. While it does cost a lot of money to install, the cost over many years is very little. The way solar panels work is they take the sun’s energy and convert it to AC electricity, which is the kind of electricity that powers your home. Essentially, the tons of money you fork away to a power company each month is diminished because your home is making that energy itself rather than taking it from your local power provider. Expensive investment? Yes. Worthwhile if you can? Absolutely.

By: Cassie Stevens

Cassie Stevens currently lives in Boise, ID with her husband and two dogs. When she is not working her full-time job as a nurse, she enjoys freelance writing with companies like Verengo Solar, or guest posting about weddings, jewelry, and fashion. She enjoys ice skating, dancing, and vacationing around the Northwest.

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