Color choice is important, but timing is actually everything when it comes to painting your home’s exterior. If you’re tackling this project as a DIYer, now's the time to get to work.
“Spring is a great time to paint—the weather is optimal and it inspires you to get painting,” Anthony Kulikowski, franchise owner of Five Star Painting, tells us.
How's the weather in your neck of the woods? Here are some tips to help you prepare for success in painting your home’s exterior.
Anthony Kulikowski is a franchise owner of Five Star Painting located in South Bend, Indiana.
As the days grow warmer, it’s simply more conducive to work outdoors, especially when those projects require dry time. But if you’re in a region where April showers also lead to May showers, Kulikowski says it’s fine to do the work in summer, too.
Paint manufacturer Benjamin Moore pegs the perfect temperature for painting at 77ºF, though it notes you’ll be okay working anywhere between 35ºF to 100ºF.
That’s good news if the temperature tends to swing like a pendulum where you live. But even more important than the thermometer reading is the humidity level—it must be low for the paint to cure.
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Eager as you might be to start painting, prep work comes first. With any painting project, you’ve got to start with a clean, dry surface if you want the finish to look good and last. With exterior painting, this means pressure washing your home first to remove dirt, debris, and mildew.
You can purchase or rent a pressure washer to do this task yourself, but extreme caution is advised. If you set it to the wrong pressure or use the wrong cleaning solution, you could end up causing more harm than good to your home’s exterior.
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If you’re looking to update the flooring in your home—whether with a simple area rug or a full swath of hardwood or ceramic tile—don’t do so without first reviewing the potential missteps that may seem minor but can set back a flooring project or even larger home improvement goals if overlooked.
Spring cleanup can be a real mess. If you cut your own ornamental grasses, that’s especially true if it’s a windy day and you’re dealing with taller grasses (e.g., Miscanthus, Panicum) blowing everywhere as they’re cut and fall over.
Are you planning to install a pergola to enhance your outdoor space? Whether it's creating a shady retreat in your backyard or adding an architectural element to your patio, installing a pergola can be a great way to improve your outdoor living. But before you start building, there are some key things to consider to ensure your project is successful.
It’s always a treat when award-winning landscape designer Jay Sifford sends in photos of his fabulous home garden in the mountains of North Carolina. Today, we have an extra-special treat:
The exterior facade of your home is what truly makes its first impression. Homes are often set in the same cookie-cutter designs and palettes, so it’s easy to ignore the exterior and jump straight to the inner walls of your abode.
THE AREA around Philadelphia is well known for its richness of public gardens, including many historic ones. But the region is also home to an impressive roster of distinctive private landscapes from formal 19th century European-style estates to mid-century modern residences and contemporary ones. Now, a new book takes us inside the gates of 21 of them, places filled with ideas for our own gardens maybe, too.
Irvin Etienne is the curator of herbaceous plants and seasonal garden design at Newfields, a 152-acre campus with art galleries, performance spaces, world-class public gardens, and a nature park in Indianapolis. Irvin has been a frequent contributor to Fine Gardening, sharing his horticultural expertise through informative articles like A Bright Idea for Spring Containers, Big and Bold Plants for the Back of the Border, and Bring It In!, a primer on overwintering all kinds of tropical plants. In this episode he delves into the path that brought him to horticulture, the lessons learned from decades of gardening in public, and some of the (many, many) plants that earn their keep in his home garden.
Putting plants together is the most creative and joyful part of making a garden. With colour, shape and texture, you can conjure up a living work of art, something that not only gives you sensory pleasure but also benefits wildlife and the environment. But with so many options available to us, where do we start? I always think back to the plantswoman Beth Chatto and her mantra ‘right plant, right place’ when conceiving a plan, because there is no point in rushing to place your favourite sun-loving flowers in a shady spot at the back of a north-facing house. ‘Plants, like people, have their preferences and don’t like being thrust into the nearest available hole,’ she observed.
Winter is for enjoying time in your home, and summer is for enjoying time in your yard. But shoulder seasons—fall and spring—are for preparation. In spring, we venture outdoors to nurseries and begin looking to fill our gardens with the best flowers and greenery the year has to offer.
Repotting aloe vera becomes necessary for a few reasons, especially when your plant starts to outgrow its pot. It can also be done when you have a baby aloe plant growing alongside the original. Referred to as a pup, this wee little aloe can be separated and repotted in its own container. Aloe plants require repotting anywhere from every three to five years or so. I often will save two or three houseplants to repot at the same time while I have my soil out and the table covered. In this article, I’ll explain how to repot an aloe plant—and a pup if you have one. Aloe was among my first houseplants when I got my first apartment. Having watched aloe vera gel applied to friends’ cuts and burn