A Layman's Guide to Architectural Styles of Canadian Homes

Here's a layman's guide to some common architectural styles found in houses across Canada:

1. Colonial Revival: This style draws inspiration from traditional British and American colonial architecture. Common features include symmetrical façades, rectangular shapes, central entrances, and double-hung windows. The houses often have pitched roofs, decorative columns, and may incorporate elements such as dormer windows and porticos.

2. Victorian: Victorian architecture is characterized by ornate details and rich embellishments. Houses in this style feature intricate woodwork, decorative trim, and elaborate facades. They may have asymmetrical designs, steep roofs, bay windows, and ornamental porches. Sub-styles within Victorian architecture include Queen Anne, Second Empire, and Gothic Revival.

3. Craftsman: The Craftsman style emphasizes simplicity, natural materials, and craftsmanship. Houses in this style typically feature low-pitched roofs with wide eaves, exposed wooden beams, and a front porch with square columns. They often have a combination of stone, wood, and shingle siding, and showcase handcrafted details.

4. Tudor Revival: Inspired by English Tudor architecture, this style is characterized by half-timbering, steeply pitched roofs, and prominent chimneys. Houses in this style often have decorative brickwork, casement windows, and arched doorways. The overall appearance is picturesque and evokes a sense of medieval charm.

5. Modernist: Modernist architecture focuses on simplicity, clean lines, and functionality. Houses in this style typically have flat or low-pitched roofs, open floor plans, large windows, and a minimalist aesthetic. They prioritize natural light, open spaces, and a connection to the surrounding environment.

6. Ranch: The Ranch style is known for its single-story, low-profile design and a focus on casual, indoor-outdoor living. Houses in this style have long, horizontal layouts, often with a U or L shape. They typically feature attached garages, large windows, sliding glass doors, and a blend of natural materials such as wood and brick.

7. Contemporary: Contemporary architecture emphasizes innovative design, experimentation, and a forward-thinking approach. Contemporary houses can vary greatly in appearance, but they often feature clean lines, large windows, and a mix of materials such as concrete, glass, and steel. They embrace new technologies and sustainable design principles.

8. Canadiana: The Canadiana style takes inspiration from Canada's rural and agricultural heritage. These houses typically have steeply pitched roofs, dormer windows, and a symmetrical façade. They often feature wood siding, shutters, and a welcoming front porch. The Canadiana style reflects a rustic and charming aesthetic.

Remember, architectural styles can vary in different regions of Canada, and houses may exhibit a mix of influences or unique interpretations. It's also common to find hybrid styles or houses with elements from multiple architectural traditions. This guide provides a general overview, and it's always best to consult with professionals or local experts for specific architectural styles in your area.

 

Double Dipping should be Illegal and Broker Fees Capped at 5%

For those that don't know, Double Dipping refers to a real estate broker practice where they end up representing both the home owner selling a property, and the home buyer who is seeking to purchase the same property. Normally they only get 5% of the sale value, but double dipping on the commission gives them 10%.

It really should be illegal.

And it is super unethical.

Why?

#1. Because it ends up favouring the home owner and unfairly raising the price of the property (and consequently contributing to housing bubbles).

#2. Because the broker ends up wanting a higher price so they can collect 10% of the total value (instead of the usual 5%), they're going to be biased towards hiding anything wrong with the property.

Eg. Hiding whether the property is on a flood plain, has a history of mold problems, and the roof is leaking. The double dipping broker, who wants the house to sell for more, isn't going to want to mention anything that is wrong with the house that the home buyers really should be aware of before making a purchase.

#3. Normally what you are supposed to do is have one broker representing the buyer and one broker representing the seller, and they're meant to be separate and each of them have a fiduciary duty to represent their client's interests, but when the broker represents both they are invariably biased towards the homeowner and will ignore the seller's best interests in order to get a higher sale price.

So in the example cited above, let's say someone owns a house that is on a flood plain (thanks to clay stratification), and the roof is leaking and the house has a history of mold problems... If the real estate broker is unethical and double dipping, they're not going to want to mention these three problems to any potential home buyers.

#4. Real estate brokers who are double dipping actively encourage bidding wars, knowing that if a property goes for a lot more they get 10% of that. This in turn adds to the real estate bubble, and ultimately hurts the buyer.

In Ontario double dipping is currently legal and unregulated.

If any politicians are reading this and they want to get more votes for their political party, listen well.

Make double dipping illegal and cap individual broker fees at 5%.

Then... Make it retroactive for the last 5 years and force real estate brokers who sold any houses using double dipping to issue a refund for 5% of the value of all properties they sold during that time period, giving the money back to the home buyers who got ripped off.

Politically this will lead to lots of votes for the political party who hammers this home. All the home buyers will definitely think about voting for the party that gives them an extra $50,000 or more if the house was worth $1,000,000 or more. And even if the property was $500,000, they're not going to complain about getting an extra $25,000.

That amount of money getting pumped back towards home owners will boost the economy, punish the unethical brokers, and help to soften Ontario's real estate bubble which could burst if too many things happen that hurts the market.

Who will complain?

Only the rotten real estate brokers who were doing something unethical and something that really should have been illegal in the first place. The ethical brokers won't complain. Only unethical ones will complain.

This is really something that should have been made illegal a long time ago.

Having separate brokers for the seller and buyer is a necessity, just like having separate lawyers in a divorce. Without that separation the middle man will always favour the person which is going to end up giving them more money, and that bias will lead to them hiding things.

Moral of the Story:

Buyer Beware. Double Dipping Real Estate Brokers are way worse than used car dealers. They're absolute snakes.

They make politicians look decent in comparison.

Our New House - Renting Vs Buying during a Housing Bubble

 Back in April of this year my wife, my son and I moved into a new house. It isn't our dream home, but it has a great backyard, a large front yard, lots of space, great amenities nearby, conveniently close to work...

I gotta admit I love this house.

However there is 1 big problem. It is a rental.

We are renting a house for almost $4000 per month, and while that is a good chunk of change, we see it as a transition between where we are now and buying a house later on.

It would be nice to buy a house (in Toronto), but let's face it the housing prices right now are ridiculous (in Toronto), and I really don't want to buy a house (in Toronto) because I am worried the housing market (in Toronto) will implode any moment.

See the problem?

Toronto's housing prices have become so overheated and ballooned into a giant housing bubble where even if we can afford to buy a house, I wouldn't want to because what if the housing bubble implodes?

We could end up buying a house, it implodes, and we lose the house and every dollar put into it through no fault of our own.

And mark my words, a housing bubble implosion is coming. It even has a name:

THE BABYBOOMER SELLING SPREE!

Or something like that. Something Babyboomer in the name. The Great Babyboomer Bubble?

Yeah. I like that. Let's use that. The Great Babyboomer Bubble.

So here's what is going to happen.

During the next 10-20 years a lot of babyboomers are going to start dying off due to old age (or possibly COVID because 10% of them didn't get vaccinated) or moving into elderly homes and selling their old homes, and this in turn will cause a surplus of houses being put on the market.

At some point this surplus of houses will reach a tipping point, at which point the housing bubble will implode. Housing prices will drop significantly within months.

This will then trigger a second wave of sell offs... from foreign investors. And from domestic investors too, but most of the housing investments is from foreigners.

Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal have seen huge ballooning in housing prices thanks to foreign investors who buy houses, rent them out, and then watch the housing prices skyrocket - so they're making money two ways: Money from the rental, money from their investment going up in value.

But what happens when the market goes in the opposite direction?

Buying a house suddenly gets cheaper, which means people renting can finally afford to buy a house, but they're going to wait until the market bottoms out before doing so.

The investors meanwhile are trying to sell their houses in a hurry before the market bottoms out, which means they need to SELL NOW. Right away. So they drop their prices in hopes of getting a faster sale.

But when many investors (and babyboomers) sell their houses all at once it results in too many houses becoming available at the same time. The babyboomers will be the catelyst, but the foreign investors dumping their properties back on the market is what will cause a downward spiral in housing prices.

When it finally bottoms out... That is when my wife and I will finally decide to buy a house (in Toronto).

Or the other alternative is that we buy a house outside of Toronto, somewhere that the prices are more reasonable.

You would have to be really dumb to buy a house in Toronto right now.

Hence why my wife and I are renting. When the housing prices finally collapse (and they will, just look at the chart below to see how big the Toronto housing bubble has become in the last 15 years) we can expect the average house price in Toronto to drop to approx. $400,000, give or take a few.

So remember when the Great Babyboomer Bubble bursts and you own a house, please think of me... And how I warned you not to buy right now.

And for all of you homeowners who are thinking of selling... Yes, you should sell NOW while the prices are still high.

Hurricane Resistant Houses

Imagine building a house in a region that gets frequent hurricanes, usually once every year or two.

Shouldn't you be building the house in a manner that it is resistant to hurricanes? Thus saving you money in the long term on costly home insurance premiums?

Or...

Imagine your house gets destroyed by a hurricane in 2022. Okay, you rebuild using the insurance money, but you basically just rebuild the same house. Two years later in 2024 your house gets destroyed again. Did you not learn from the first time that the design obviously wasn't working???

Using smarter architectural design we can actually fix this problem. If all houses in the hurricane prone Gulf Coast were built to a new standard the people living there wouldn't have this problem.

You start by designing the house to have round corners, so that the wind bends and moves around the house, instead of ripping pieces off of it.

You attach the roof in a more durable way, so the roof doesn't just rip off during the first windstorm.

You anchor the entire structure into the ground, so that a really strong wind cannot just lift your whole house off the foundations and throw it.

We have the technology to make houses in the Gulf Coast hurricane resistant. Why aren't more people building such houses? Yes, it is more expensive, but you ultimately save money from insurance premiums and from not having all your belongings destroyed/lost again and again.

How many times does your house have to be destroyed before you learn from your mistakes?

 

Toronto Home Rentals - Finding what you want is Difficult

So my wife and I have been very happy living in Leaside for the past many years, but we're now looking for a new place for us, our son, and my mother-in-law.

There is a big catch however. We ideally want to rent a house that has a bedroom on the first floor so that my mother-in-law won't have to climb the stairs.

This also means we need a full bathroom on the first floor so that my mother-in-law doesn't need to climb the stairs to reach the bathroom.

However finding a house that is for rent... In the area we are looking for... With a minimum of 3 bedrooms... With at least 1 bedroom + 1 full bathroom on the ground floor... With room for 2 cars in the driveway or garage...

Well, it is proving to be difficult.

Plus coupled with the fact that landlords are sometimes, unfortunately, racist. We have encountered this particular problem twice already where landlords are coming up with excuses not to rent to us. Not because of money reasons, my wife is a lawyer, I am gainfully employed as a personal trainer whenever COVID is not interfering with my work, and my mother-in-law is retired and has a hefty pension plan from the Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP). So we definitely have the money, but landlords are a sketchy bunch when it comes to renting to African-Canadians.

As a Caucasian I admit this is my first time encountering this problem. I am admittedly used to just asking to rent a place and people just automatically saying "Yes, sure you can rent it!" Most of the places I have rented in the past didn't even ask for a credit check. (Yes, you read that correctly. White people are not used to having credit checks when we ask to rent an apartment or a house. People just usually take us on our word that we can afford the place. I fully recognize that I have been benefiting from white privilege for decades.)

There also seems to be a lack of availability in the East York region of Toronto that we are looking in, so we don't really have a lot of options.

We can...

1. Look elsewhere. We might have more luck in a different neighbourhood.
   
2. Wait and keep looking for new places to come on the market in the desired neighbourhood.
3. Do both 1 and 2.
   

Really those are our only options right now.

I have to assume that somewhere out there is a landlord who isn't racist with a house that fits our needs.

The parking issue alone is annoying. Not every home even comes with a lane way or garage and some streets just use "on street parking", which unfortunately gets into legalities of where homeowners can actually park their cars without fear of being towed.

The other big issue happening right now is...

COVID.

Which makes viewing homes a little bit trickier, but COVID has also thrown a wrench into the works with respect to house prices and also home rental prices.

What we have noticed is that the prices for renting a house keep coming down, which should really make landlords eager to find a renter - regardless of the colour of their skin! But apparently racist landlords would rather earn less money than rent to someone who is African-Canadian or to an interracial couple.

Ten Years on 'My Search for a Home'

I started this blog on June 14th 2010.

It has been 10 years since then, and the blog is nearing the 200 blog posts mark.

When I first started this blog I was living in downtown Toronto and feeling rather unhappy with the size of my small apartment.

Now I am married, living in the neighbourhood of Leaside, and my wife and I have a son together. We are also discussing getting a new place in January 2021.

My wife has even been pushing me to become a real estate agent or broker. She feels that I am a "people person" and would be good at it. I am not so sure that I would be good at it because I don't believe in "pushing people" into buying something that they might not want. Maybe that is just my impression of real estate agents/brokers are sometimes pushy people, but I don't want to be that type of person.

I even consulted with a friend at Royal LePage on the subject of me becoming a real estate broker and he was against the idea, saying it is very difficult to get into the business and highly competitive.

Still despite his objection I haven't given up on the idea of that becoming a possibility. My Aunt Edna was a real estate broker in Sudbury for many decades, and she was hardly a people person. Talkative yes, but she had a problematic personality. So if she could do it then it is entirely possible I might take the leap and get into this.

If I did become a real estate broker it would mean I would need to clean up this website and turn it into a more business oriented machine to help me sell homes. Or maybe I could specialize in selling condos.

Being a real estate agent might also allow me the spare time to work on my writing career (if you like fantasy books check me out on Amazon).

For the past 11 years my main occupation has been teaching archery in Toronto. Supplementing that has been my writing and advertising businesses. But I am getting older and I have a hunch I won't be able to teach archery forever. In many respects archery

So what do you think folks?

Should I try to become a real estate agent or broker? Leave a comment below on whether you think I should at least try and see what happens.

Why you should Schedule an Electrical Inspection

Schedule an Electrical Inspection for Peace of Mind

Having safe electrical equipment and wiring around your home is not something you want to take lightly. If things aren’t right, you could not only be at risk for a personal injury from electrical contact, but you could be risking a fire as well. If there are electrical problems that are causing fire or shock hazards, you will want to know about them so they can be fixed before you find out the hard way that you had a problem.

If you are not absolutely certain that everything in your home is up to code, you might want to schedule an electrical inspection or home inspection. Companies like Mister Sparky have qualified electricians who can come and check out your entire electrical system. If any problems are identified, you will also have a source for getting things fixed. 

Or better yet, get a home inspection and you will get your roof, walls, foundation, wiring, plumbing and everything else inspected too.

Depending on what is deficient after the inspection, you may just need simple things done like installing some new outlets. In other cases, the job may be more extensive. Whatever the problem is, having knowledgeable electricians at your disposal will enable you to get everything in safe working order and up to code.

The electrical code is rather lengthy and can be complicated for people who are not trained in the electrical field. As a result, doing an evaluation is not something you should attempt to do yourself, unless you are an electrician.

There may be times when you need to upgrade your electrical panel. If you live in an older home and your panel has never been upgraded, it is highly likely that it needs to be. Most older homes were built when people did not rely on electricity to the extent they do today. To illustrate, just take a look around the rooms in your home and identify the items that you use on a daily basis that run with electricity. Then think about how many of those items did not exist a generation or two ago. If you have the same electrical panel that was in place then, there should be little doubt that you need an upgrade.

Another time when your panel may need to be upgraded is when you are making additions like building another room. You clearly do not want to overload your existing system. An upgrade is the smartest and safest thing you can do.

Because you can’t actually see electricity, it can be a bit difficult for untrained people to understand. For this reason, you should have your home evaluated by a professional so you can have the peace of mind in knowing that everything is okay.

Hey Toronto, don't forget to Winterize your Plumbing

Winterizing Your Home in the Toronto Area

Wintertime means ice skating and hockey for most Canadians. And whether you plan to go become a snowbird in Arizona or stay in the Toronto area, it is a good idea to consider winterizing your home and yard so that you can enjoy the winter months without having to do any outdoor maintenance.

Here are some of the most popular ways to set your home and yard up for the cold season:

Look into plumbing maintenance: If you do have a problem with your pipes, chances are that it will happen in the Wintertime- when temperature extremes put the most stress on your pipes. One way to try and head this off is to work with a local plumbing partner- someone who can arrange to do maintenance on a regular or seasonal basis. In addition to focusing on water pipe repair in Toronto, most plumbing professionals are able to check all of your pipes and water systems and tell you where there are any weak spots. One way that they can do this is by doing a pressure test that will show if there are any weak spots in your plumbing system. If there are, they can normally predict about how long your system will be able to continue without repair.

Plumbing maintenance that you can do yourself around the home should probably include draining all of your garden hoses, coiling them up, and storing them indoors in a shed or the garage. Draining any fountain not made of stone or natural materials is also a good idea because they will last longer.

Go High Tech On Heat Loss:

Another popular type of maintenance over the past several years has been to take the latest infrared sensors and make a heat map of your home so that a contractor can can take defined heat loss areas and fix them. The present technology is strong enough that it can show a couple of degree temperature difference, making it easy to find out where your house is leaking warm air from the outside.

The savings that you achieve by having your house examined and then repair may be substantial if it works out that you had a major leak without knowing about it.

One area that can put you ahead when it comes to heat loss is choosing the right insulation strategy in your home. Many older homes were not insulated as well as they could be. On the other hand, even if your home is newer and already has insulation in the walls and floor and ceiling, you can still save money in the long run by adding another layer of insulation. If you have centralized heating, it is also a good idea to ensure that all of your duct pipes are wrapped with insulation.

Ensure Your Heat Sources Are Adequate:

Over the years, you have likely grown close to your furnace and fireplace- and know how efficiently they actually perform for you. At the same time, Autumn is a really good time to have a professional come in and check them out to see if they can't get more efficiency out of them. At a base level, you may find that your furnace filter hasn't been changed as often as it could- something that can take away from its output. You can also have them test the output in each room to ensure that the air forced into every room is warm enough to actually heat it up. In addition to wrapping the duct pipes, it can pay off to ensure that the main pipes that lead into the the furnace itself are also winterized.

When it comes to fireplaces, many homes have purchased heat exchangers or inserts that increase the amount of hot air that is generated when you have a fire. If you don't have one, you might look at your options- they can save you money. Getting your chimney cleaned is antoher great winterization idea because it means another season of safe fires in your home.

Raccoon Removal Service for Homes

The video below is of a mousetrap that humanely catches mice. But what if you could build a larger scale version that catches raccoons?



Raccoons are a serious problem in many parts of Toronto, often due to a lack of natural predators that eat raccoons. The closest thing to predators in Toronto is traffic, as testified by the sheer number of raccoons that get hit and killed on Toronto streets every year.

Like the impromptu memorial for a dead raccoon that popped up within hours and went viral in July 2015. Proof that Torontonians truly care about its wildlife, even if they did it a bit jokingly (I think the cigarette in the raccoons paw was a bit of an overkill). Shown below:

A friend of mine who lives near York University even feeds her raccoons. She lives near a ravine so she has tonnes of raccoons in the neighbourhood. Even within her home she is a bit of an animal fanatic, having a rabbit, cats, mice, and pet spiders. The raccoons to her are just one more thing worth feeding.

I should note however that feeding wild animals can be dangerous. If they lose their sense of fear of humans, they are no longer afraid of humans and can become either dangerous or a nuisance.

Toronto's raccoons for example have, for the most part retained some of their fear of humans, but others are quite brazen and friendly - but friendly doesn't mean they are not dangerous if provoked.

If you own a home and you are having a problem with raccoons being a nuisance (and possibly even attacking your dog or cat or children) then you need to have those animals removed.

Many people in Toronto believe that raccoons should be simply be killed, that this is the simplest / quickest / most permanent solution to the raccoon problem in Toronto. Some people attempt to do this by leaving rat poison, anti-freeze or dishwasher detergent in places where the raccoons frequent and the raccoons eat/drink the poisonous materials and later die.

However deadly traps and poisons are banned in Toronto. As is shooting them with firearms.

"Current Ministry of Natural Resources guidelines state that using body gripping traps or placing poison could result in criminal charges and/or provincial charges with fines up $5,000.'

• The firing of guns in Toronto is illegal.
• Placing poison out to kill animals could result in criminal charges."

It is important to note that raccoons are wildlife, and as such are protected. They can only be trapped humanely and then transported (preferably outside of the city). Vermin on the other hand (mice, rats, cockroaches, wasps, insects, etc) can be killed outright.

Derick McChesney of SWAT Wildlife

So over the past few decades there has evolved a special ambassador to animals; the modern wildlife removal technician is a licensed wild animal whisperer who safeguards these creatures' lives and the lives of their young families with every house call. He or she protects the animal's rights just as much as he works to seal the house and keep the homeowner or business owner's property safe.

And nobody does this job better than raccoon removal expert, Derick McChesney of SWAT Wildlife.

Last month Life as a Human did a story on Derick that took the form of a very insightful and informative ride along as Derick completed three missions helping home owners and safeguarding raccoons. You can see how he found a nest of baby raccoons in a rental apartment.

See
http://lifeasahuman.com/2016/eco/environment/the-art-science-of-raccoon-removal-in-toronto/

Raccoons often like hiding in high places. Hence the ladder.

Derick also shares wisdom about how to know if animals are living in a house before you buy the property, which you can read on Josie Stern's blog below:

Josie Sterns Toronto real estate blog post, Are Raccoons Living In you Home?

"He [Derick McChesney] states, “roughly 15-20% of homes probably have a mice issue or have once had a wildlife issue. Most of the time the seller will only do the minimum amount of work to get rid of the problem and decline the necessary prevention so they can sell the house and then leave the problem with someone else." Buyers that do unwittingly purchase animal infested properties are in for nightmare renovations that can include new carpets, drywall and total home insulation removal and replacement."

Which includes your attic. Sometimes also your basement, crawl space, garage, space above the garage, etc.

Chicken wire is surprisingly effective at caging raccoons out of attics.

Raccoons often get into houses through the garage. They are basically nature's best burglars. Check out Guru Security's blog post, What raccoons can teach prowlers about your home security? to learn more on this topic.

However if you want to make it more difficult for raccoons to get in and out of your garage, you might want to invest in hiring some garage door installers to install an automatic garage door. It takes only a moment for raccoons to sneak into places they are not meant to be - often in search of food - and the more often they manage to find food means they stick around in the neighbourhood and continue to be a nuisance. Having an automatic garage door that closes when not in use prevents the animals from being afforded the opportunity to do so again and again and again.

More photos of raccoons in Toronto:

I should note that Toronto raccoons don't usually get very big. They're comparatively tiny when compared to the giant raccoons you find in the countryside - some as big as German Shepherds or Chimpanzees. It really depends on how well fed they are. In the countryside they can grow to be quite large.

The one in the photo below is large, but still not as big as the biggest one I have ever seen which was Chimp sized.

Carports Vs Garages

It is cheaper to build a carport instead of a garage, and in Canada it is arguably also more practical.

Why?

Well, have you ever had to shovel snow out of a driveway just to get the garage door open?

Or is your garage so full of stuff that you park in the driveway anyway and don't actually park your car inside the garage?

That is why. Carports give you the advantage of being able to park your car in the driveway, but still have a roof over top of it so you don't have to shovel the snow so much.

Plus carports never have the problem of junk accumulating in your garage, stuff that rightfully belongs either:

In your basement.
In your attic.
In your recycling bins, because lets face it, a lot of the junk people keep in their garage is really just garbage.

Now I understand some people just love having a garage, but parking in a carport is so much easier and you get many of the benefits of having a garage, but without the cost and certain annoying factors that come with garages. Thus to me a carport makes a great deal of sense just for its convenience.

In the USA carports are more popular in the southern states and near army bases, thanks to the 1950s modernist movement which saw many residential communities built near military bases using the modernist designs, which in turn used carports as part of their designs quite often.

The designs shown above are by Mike Kopecky, who grew up near an army base in Texas and now lives in Toronto. He is the designing houses for a retro-modernist community in Leander Texas, but hopes that developers in Toronto may become inspired to try something similar here in Canada. You can read more about his development in Leander in the Globe and Mail.

Below are some different, interesting and innovative designs for carports. I especially liked the ones with the solar panels and plants.

Gardening, Roof Repair + Finished Basement

Gardening

One of the ways to boost the value of your home is to plant a flower garden - especially roses, as roses are very easy to maintain and quite hardy. Rose bushes really just need to be trimmed once in awhile so they look good, and during the autumn you need to mound the dirt up around their bases to protect their roots more, so they can survive the winter easier. That is pretty much it. Some people also sometimes use powder pesticides on their roses to prevent insects from eating them, but it is not a huge necessity.

The other benefits of roses is that you have a constant supply of flowers to decorate your home with... which means prospective buyers coming to your home may see a vase of roses on the kitchen table, immediately bolstering their opinion of the place subconsciously.

 And because Valentines is almost two weeks away I thought I should include some tips about roses / vases...

Tips to Keep Your Roses Fresh in the Vase Longer

Many people love to give roses and get roses but after a couple of day the roses start to droop or dry out.  Shortly after that they wither and die and you have to throw them away.  It is such a waste and a sad way for you roses to go.  You try everything you can but you just cannot keep your roses as fresh as possible for as long as possible.  There are some old wives tales that say use sugar in the vase water, clip the ends every couple of days but do these tips really work?  Below are a few tips that may help you keep the roses from your lover a little while longer. (Or prepare a vase for prospective buyers viewing your house.)

#1. Sugar in the vase water really does help.

Sugar can help to keep your roses longer after all.  The theory is that sugar simulates the photosynthesis process and makes the flower rejuvenated.  You can use regular sugar (for a regular sized vase use about 1 teaspoon).  Or you can use leftover soda pop to produce the same effect.  Use the clear soda (Sprite or 7 Up) if you have a clear vase.

#2. Hairspray?

Yes, this works. The hairspray locks the moisture in.  All you have to do is get your hairspray bottle from your bathroom, grab your bouquet of flowers, hold the hairspray about a few inches away from the flowers and spray them well (make sure you get every section of the flower, but do not saturate them). Don't worry about the stems in the water.

#3. A Little Bit of Vodka Never Hurt Anyone

This works similarly to the sugar.  The vodka is meant to prohibit the growth of bacteria which could prematurely weaken the roses.  It may be a good idea to use in conjunction with sugar as sugar can cause bacteria to grow.  You only need a few drops so do not worry there will be plenty left for you to drink later. In theory anti-bacterial mouth wash would also work.

#4. Roofing Tar?

Wait, what? Roofing tar???

This sounds just as crazy as the hairspray idea, but if you want to keep your roses forever, this may be a great choice for you.  The roofing tar coats the entire rose and preserves it forever. A million years from now it will be a fossilized rose.

What happened was local Torontonian Rob Campbell decided to do an experiment when he decided to make black roses by dipping red roses in ToughRoof flat roofing tar. Basically all you would have to do is head to your local roofing guy who deals in flat roofing tar and ask him if he can dip your roses into the leftover roofing tar.  Within 3 minutes you should have a fresh set of a dozen roses that will never parish.  What a great way to celebrate Valentines with your loved one. (Especially if they are a goth and love black roses...)

See also
Valentines Day Black Roses made from roofing tar
How to make Black Roses using Roofing Tar

I am not sure if this would help sell your house, but hey you never know.

Roof Repair

To continue on the vein of the repairing the roof, this is another excellent way of boosting the value of your home. Having a new roof installed (after ripping out the old one), repairing the old roof by adding either new shingles or aluminum can dramatically change the look of your home and give it a fresh look - effectively a face lift for your house.

Check the before and after photos below showing what a great difference having your roof repaired makes on the appearance. To say nothing of better insulation and preventing leaks.

Or in the case of the photo at the top here, getting rid of a serious mold infestation by simply cleaning the roof.

Below - New roof plus solar panels.

Below - A lot less drab looking on the new roof.

The big thing these days is to install roofs that are plastic or aluminum and shaped like tiles or shingles.

Finished Basement

The last thing I want to discuss is the concept of making a finished basement. Not just to prevent flooding by having some basement waterproofing done (see the City of Toronto.ca page about how to prevent basement flooding or visit a website like Royal Basement Waterproofing), but also because when trying to sell your home whether you have a finished basement can be a big selling point. See the before and after photos below to see what I mean.

Having a finished basement means you can have a living room or recreational room down there. Some people even make their own private bar, or put in a swimming pool, lots of options. Like the basement swimming pool below.

At which point you have to say, who wouldn't want a swimming pool in their basement?