Green Home Improvements | Home Improvement Tips

Last year I replaced most of my home’s old aluminum rain gutters with vinyl rain gutters (some people call them “plastic gutters”). My previous seamless aluminum gutters were at the end of their life, falling off my house and bent beyond usefulness after years of being dented and dinged by ladders, falling branches and even a baseball or two. I considered replacing my aluminum gutters with aluminum again, but after I weighed the pros and cons of aluminum vs vinyl rain gutters I decided to try something new.

You’ll see a lot of negative things on the internet about vinyl gutters, but my real-world experience didn’t match what was being said about them. I found more than one aluminum gutter installer (not exactly the most objective reviewer) complaining about how vinyl gutters only last a few years before getting brittle, regularly turn yellow in the sunlight and are generally much less hardier than aluminum gutters. I’ve had my vinyl gutters up for over a year now through one of the most icy and snowy New Jersey winters in memory and through one of the longest drought and hottest temperature summers we’ve ever experienced. It’s only been a year, but so far my white vinyl gutters have performed perfectly (they bend a little when water freezes into ice, but they bend back when the ice melts) and still look as though they were installed yesterday.

I chose to install my own vinyl gutters simply because I had some spare time on my hands last summer and all the quotes I received for new seamless aluminum gutters were $300 – $400 more expensive than if I simply did it myself. I should mention right here that my home is a ranch-style house, so I really only needed to be about ten feet up on a ladder for my gutter installs. If I had a two or three story home I probably would have paid for an installer simply because I don’t know if I’d be comfortable working that high up on a ladder for extended periods of time. I used my ladder stabilizer for most of the project and it kept me feeling pretty secure and safe while I was working on my gutters.

Removing Old Aluminum Gutters

The first step for me was removing my old aluminum gutters. They were long seamless strips of aluminum and they weren’t as easy to remove as I thought they would be, simply because they were nailed and screwed up in a dozen different ways over the years.

First, you’ll want to remove the downspouts from your home. Some of my downspouts actually fell right out of my gutters when I wiggled them, but some had been screwed or even nailed into place. Since I wasn’t going to be reusing any of my aluminum gutters or downspouts, I decided to take a “demolition” sort of approach to getting them down and quickly broke out the reciprocating saw with a metal cutting blade. I carefully cut screws and sections of downspouts where needed and the work was pretty quick.

Next, I started concentrating on two to three foot sections of aluminum gutter. I’d quickly survey the section, make a cut with my reciprocating saw, and then go about removing the screws, nails and brackets that were holding it up. Some sections were just held up with the traditional gutter nails and brackets, but some were tied to my fascia boards with all sorts of screws. This was an obvious attempt by the previous homeowner to keep the gutter from sagging or leaking at some point in the distant past.

By the way, you want to be careful when you’re working on ladders, using a saw and especially when you’re working with old, sharp, metal edges. Wear thick leather gloves and eye protection and take your time. I was especially careful about dropping nails and screws into the flower beds below my gutters because I didn’t really want my wife or kids to be digging or reaching into a flower bed and end up with a rusty nail in their hands.

Inspecting the Fascia

The gutter fascia boards are the boards that usually run along our home, directly under (and sitting an inch or two back) from the bottom edge of your roofline. For most homes, these fascia boards are what rain gutters are attached to with either screws or nails. After you remove your gutters you’ll want to inspect your fascia boards to see if they’re ready for new gutters.

First, make sure the boards are solid and secure. Tap, shake and otherwise test them out. If you see any water rot, holes, signs of bugs or anything else that doesn’t look right you may want to actually remove and replace the boards yourself. These days a lot of homes have vinyl wrapped or aluminum faced boards, but older homes simply used painted boards.

I’m not sure why, but the fascia boards on the back of my house were completely unpainted but, thankfully, in pretty good shape. I’m guessing that at some point someone replaced them and just didn’t bother painting them. That’s not a good plan, really. A good coat or two of exterior paint will greatly help keep out any damaging moisture or bugs over the years.

I didn’t have to replace any of my fascia, I did have to add a day on to my gutter replacement project and give my boards two solid coats of paint. This was a bit tedious, but I’m hoping it prevents me from having to replace the boards anytime in the foreseeable future.

While you’re inspecting your fascia you’ll also want to make sure that your shingles and roof line are straight and still working as they should. Ideally, roofing shingles should overhang the end of your fascia boards by about 1 inch or so. This overhang helps to make sure that the water running down your roof doesn’t run down your fascia boards, but rather, falls directly into your gutters where it can then flow down through your downspouts and away from your home’s foundation.

If you have spots of roofing shingles that don’t overhang properly then you may want to try installing a specially designed drip edge under your shingles. These drip edges are usually made of vinyl or aluminum and they help extend the edge of your roof an inch or so out from under your shingle and allow the rainwater to fall straight into the gutter. You can buy them online or pick them up at most large home improvement stores. They are simple things and relatively inexpensive, but they can save you thousands of dollars in roof repairs and leaks. To install them you generally just push the wider edge up underneath your bottom shingle, making sure the shorter edge gives you a proper overhang. Then you just nail them down to your roof just as you might any shingle.

Planning Your Vinyl Gutters

Once the old gutters are removed and your fascia boards and roof line are cleaned up you’ll want to plan out how you’re going to install your vinyl gutters. There are a couple different types of vinyl gutter systems as well as different ways to actually attach your gutters to your home.

Some vinyl gutter systems connect together with epoxies or a PVC sealant and glue while some simply connect with a clicking mechanism and rubber gaskets at the joints. My local hardware store carried both types, but I eventually chose to go with the snap-together system simply for ease. And whether you’re ordering online or getting your gutter system from your local hardware store, you’ll want to be sure that they have all the pieces in the system you need. There are “standard” sizes for a lot of aluminum gutter parts, but most vinyl gutter systems are pretty proprietary the pieces from one system definitely won’t match up or work with the pieces of another system (in most cases).

You’ll also obviously need to make some measurements and plan out what pieces you’ll need. Most vinyl gutter systems seem to favor the standard 10 foot length so plan accordingly.

Sloping Your Gutters

For short runs (20 – 30 feet) you can generally slope your gutters down in one direction and use one downspout. For longer runs (about 30 feet or more) you’ll probably want to plan for two downspouts, one at each side of your run, with the highest point being in the middle of the run, furthest away from both downspouts.

A lot of things have been written about how to properly slope your gutters. Local building codes sometimes cover it, roofing contractors insist their rules are correct and every gutter installation website in the world has a different set of rules. I’ve seen some sites that suggest a gutter slope of 1/2 inch for every 10 feet and some that suggest 1 inch of slope for every 2 feet (this means that a 30 foot run of gutter would end more than a foot lower than the start…that’s just silly).

Here’s the general thing you want to remember: you want to slope your gutters, but not too much. Too much slope will make your water rush down the gutters too fast and may lead to water actually leaking over the side. If you have zero slope then, yes, you will begin to have water pooling in your gutters. Pooling water means you’ll start building up debris and, more than likely, start having overflow issues and may have some nasty smells and things growing in your gutters after a while.

The key is this: you need to have slight slope that’s consistent and goes all the way down to the downspout. While almost ANY consistent slope will suffice, I would say that lowering your gutters about 1/4 to 1/2 inch every 10 feet or so will probably provide you with plenty of slope to get that rainwater down your gutter without overloading or splashing water right out of them. With a gradual slope like that you also shouldn’t have any standing water unless something gets lodged or stuck in your gutters.

There are a couple ways to measure out and mark your slope on your fascia boards before you go hanging gutters. The easiest way is probably with a chalk line and a rule, where you put the chalk line at the highest point, measure down to the lowest point (dropping that 1/2 inch every 10 feet) and then marking it with chalk. If you are sure your fascia boards are straight and level you could also simply use a ruler and measure down from the top or up from the bottom of the board, putting your marks 1/2 inch lower for every 10 feet you move towards the downspout.

Installing Vinyl Gutters

I had my vinyl gutter pieces on the ground and I had my fascia boards all painted and marked with my slope. You’ll probably want to follow the specific instructions that came with your vinyl gutter system, but here are the steps I followed to install my own vinyl gutters once most everything was planned out.

Most vinyl gutter systems are set up so that you can actually hang the gutter brackets and then lie in the gutter itself, though some systems have the gutter brackets as attachments on the actual gutter. Either way, you’re going to want to start by attaching your first gutter bracket at the highest point of your gutters. The back of my house has a 70 foot run, so I ended up attaching two high brackets at the middle of the run. It was pretty simple: I just climbed up, aligned my brackets with my measured marks and used a cordless drill to drive in the wood screws. Viola! My gutters we officially being installed.

I then took the liberty of taking a 10 foot section of vinyl gutter and snapping it into the two brackets. It sagged, obviously, but vinyl is so light that the two brackets held it securely. My brand of vinyl gutters wanted me to put brackets in every 2 – 3 feet (more brackets if I got a lot of ice or snow in my area) and I generally followed their rule.

Once I came to the end of a 10 foot section of gutter it was time to install a plastic slip joint with seal onto the end. The slip joints are tight, so they aren’t the easiest things to put on when you’re standing on a ladder, but the alternative was to put the entire 70 feet of gutter together on the ground (which would have been easier) but then trying to get 70 feet of gutter up 12 feet into the air would have been impossible without three more people and three more ladders.

I learned that if I wore leather gloves (so I didn’t pinch my fingers) and basically muscled the joints together they would, eventually, click together tightly. I didn’t have any sort of official lubricant, but near the end I got smart and used a finger dipped in olive oil to lubricate the seals and they fit together a little easier. Now I had a piece of gutter with one slip joint on the end. I then moved along, installing one or two more brackets, each one slightly lower than the last. Once I had a few more gutter brackets screwed in I’d rest another 10 foot section of vinyl gutter and muscle that into the other side of the gutter slip joint.

After each new section of gutter was installed and clicked into the brackets I ran a quick water test to make sure the slope was even and working. To do this I simply used my garden hose and squirted a solid stream of water up on the middle of my roof for a minute or so and waited . I then watched the water roll down my roof, over the end of the shingles and into my new gutter. As long as the water kept flowing fairly consistently and eventually flowed out the end, I was happy. Don’t discount this testing process: during one of my gutter tests I found that I had actually measured about a quarter inch too high and though it wasn’t immediate visible when I looked at the gutter, it was clear that I had a slight dip for pooling water. I re-measured and reinstalled the gutter bracket at the proper level and every worked out.

I continued in this fashion until I reached the end of my house where I needed to cut a 10 foot section of vinyl gutter a little short, install a downspout drop gutter piece and then add on a small piece of gutter and end the whole thing with an end cap. One word of caution: plan careful and put your downspouts a good 6 – 10 inches in from the corner of your home. You’ll want to do this so that you have plenty of room to install downspout brackets to hold your downspouts against your home.

Cutting vinyl gutters is easy: you can just use a reciprocating saw, a simple handsaw or even some snippers (though your cut might not be as even with those).

Installing Vinyl Gutter Guards

I found that some of the regular metal mesh gutter guards I was using didn’t fit my vinyl gutters, so I had to purchase specially designed vinyl gutter guards that were made to fit perfectly. Oddly, the vinyl gutter guards that I could find all came in 4 foot sections, while all the vinyl gutters themselves only came in 10 foot sections.

For me the guards just sort of slipped into the top of the gutters. They didn’t really click or snap in, and while they do seem to stop a lot of debris from getting into my gutters, I found that after a long winter of ice and freezing that a few of my gutter guards have been sort of lifted and displaced from my gutters. This spring I went up on the ladder and found that my gutters were generally pretty clean, but that I did have to push a few of the vinyl gutter guards down and reposition them.

Installing Vinyl Downspouts

Installing the vinyl downspouts was even easier, though again, some planning might be required. I had to use a downspout elbow to move the downspout close enough to my home to begin attaching brackets. If you attach your brackets well you can usually work it out so your downspout or elbow doesn’t “slip” down and out of your gutter over time. If you’re not able to do that, I’ve seen people drive small screws into the sides of downspouts to tie pieces together tightly.

When you’re at the ground and running your downspouts away from your home you’ll want to do your best to channel the water at least three or four feet away from your home’s foundation (or the foundation of your neighbor’s house) if you can. Remember that downspouts, like gutters, have to also slope downward at all times.

How To Paint Vinyl Gutters

I personally like white gutters, especially on my home that also has white painted trim, but some people like other colors of gutters. Some vinyl gutter systems can be special ordered in different colors but if you want a non-standard color or you’re looking for something specific then you may want to take the time out to actually paint your vinyl gutters.

Yes, you can paint most vinyl gutter pieces and yes, they will hold the paint pretty well from what I’ve seen. They can, obviously, have the paint scratch off them if something harsh hits them, but you’d be surprised how long a good coat of paint will last on vinyl gutters. Before you go all out with this, you may want to actually run some test colors on a piece of vinyl gutter and decide if the paint color (and the paint type) is working the way you had hoped. Here are the general steps:

1. Remove and Clean: If your vinyl gutters are already on your house, then you’ll want to remove them and clean them up a bit by scrubbing them down with a soft brush and light detergent. Rinse them well and let them dry.

2. Prepare for Painting: If you’re using new vinyl gutters that haven’t been hung or you’re using old vinyl gutters that have now been cleaned you can sort of “pre-treat” them for painting. Most manufacturers recommend simply wiping down your gutters with some denatured alcohol, though some painting sites also recommend using a liquid sanding solution. The basic idea is to remove some of the “glossy” surface coating on the vinyl gutters so that the paint will stick better.

3. Painting Your Gutters: Once everything is clean and dry, it’s finally time to apply some paint to those vinyl gutters! You’ll want to use a good exterior latex paint, and you may want to try some of the newer paints that are specially designed to adhere to plastics and vinyls. Only paint the outside of your gutters. There really isn’t much of a point of painting the inside of your gutters. You won’t see the results and the water could wear the paint in such a way that it could actually clog your gutters or downspouts at some point. Some people prefer spray paints, some prefer brush painting. It’s your choice, but whatever method you use, you may want to allow plenty of time for the paint to dry. You’ll want to try this project during a weekend when you’re expected to have a few sunny, dry days and not when there is a high chance of rain in the forecast.

That’s pretty much it! It took me a good full two days to take down about 100 feet of aluminum gutter and then install about 100 feet of vinyl gutters, and that includes the four vinyl downspouts I also put in. I probably could have moved a lot faster if I had some help, but my schedule was limited so I had to do this project when no one else was available. After a year of having my vinyl gutters on my house, I couldn’t be happier with their performance or the way they still look bright and white with no discoloration. I’ve had no clogs and no heavy debris build up so far. I did clean out my gutters a little bit earlier this summer, but that mostly consisted of me just taking off a gutter cover and hosing out some small piles of leaves and twig build up. So far, my vinyl gutters are proving to be much more resilient and attractive than my old aluminum gutters and downspouts!

Sometimes when you’re working on a home improvement project you need to throw away the rules and get a little creative. I recently had to do this when I was refinishing my basement and had to frame out a room while still allowing easy access to a drain clean out. I could have just slapped up a closet door, but that would have looked a little weird in the middle of a wall in my basement office, so I decided to try something a little more fun: I made a removable drywall panel and disguised it as a permanent wall.

I had a few different options when I was planning out the framing of my basement office. I originally thought about just framing the wall straight all the way across the foundation wall and then putting some sort of cabinet over the drain pipe, but due to the way the drain branched up into the floor above it, I was actually unable to run the framing along the top of the joists all the way along the room. So I opted for the next best thing: a straight wall with a slight deviation.

This was the first room I ever actually framed out on my own and I had never used steel framing, so I was a little apprehensive about trying anything too tricky. I went with a basic squared out design which would allow me just hang cut drywall in small panels. For most of the room I just attached the drywall to the steel studs like I would in any other framing project: I just lined up the drywall and drove in drywall screws.

But for the front access panel I had to do something a little different. I wanted it to look like a regular wall and I needed it to stay in place, but I needed the option to remove in the very rare event that I’d have to unclog my home’s drain. This became apparent to me when I thought I had to find the source of a puddle in my basement. Here’s how I did it:

1. Cut The Drywall: I wanted to use drywall for my removable panel so that it would match the rest of the room. I ran the two side panels flush with the studs, so a solid single panel would cover everything and leave only very small gaps on the side (which I later hid). So for the front panel I cut a piece of drywall out and trimmed it here and there so that it fit over the studs and side walls perfectly.

2. Paint: I painted the drywall panel just as I painted the rest of the room. I used one coat of primer and then two coats of latex paint.

3. Attaching the Wall Panel: Now came the fun part – how to best attach the wall panel? I tried two methods.

First, I used rare earth magnets. I did this because I had steel framing which the magnets could stick to and they were the strongest, smallest magnets I could find in a few day of shopping around. I picked mine up at Lowe’s, I believe. I probably could have gotten clever with the magnet attachment, but I stick with “simple” for this and used a liberal squirt of Liquid Nails construction adhesive on each magnet. I made sure they would line up with the frame when they were attached, stuck them to the back of the drywall panel with Liquid Nails and then use some painter’s tape to hold them in place for 24 hours until the adhesive dried.

The magnets worked pretty well, except for one drawback: they are thick. Like, 3/4 of an inch thick. That, unfortunately, pushed my entire wall panel out from the frame and made the gap at the edges just slightly too wide to be easily hidden. So I flipped over the wall panel and carved the magnets off the back of the wall panel with a drywall knife and tried again.

I moved from magnets to Velcro, but not just any Velcro. I used the official industrial strength Velcro which is designed to hold a lot more weight and and is almost a completely different product from the regular clothing grade Velcro. Yes, it still makes that ripping noise when you pull it apart. Again, I relied on my Liquid Nails construction adhesive and used that behind the sticky backing of the Velcro strips (the sticky backing alone just wasn’t up for the task). Lining up the Velcro spots was a little more tricky that using magnets, but it wasn’t impossible.

Once the construction adhesive dried I pushed the wall panel against the steel studs and it stuck perfectly! It should be noted that the Velcro itself was not actually holding up the bulk of the wall panel on its own. Drywall is heavy and it is actually the cement floor of my basement that is holding most of the weight. The Velcro keeps the wall standing upright, but it is resting on the ground.

I only used six two-inch strips of Velcro on my framing to hold the two foot wide wall panel up, though if I were going to hold up a full piece of drywall I would definitely use more or even fashion some sort of metal clip at the top of the wall (above the drop ceiling line). The wall is fairly secure, but not exactly structurally sound. Were we to have an earthquake I’m not entirely sure if this wall would hold up. I planned to brace the wall with a filing cabinet as well and earthquakes are rare in New Jersey, so I wasn’t too worried about what would happen in such a situation.

4: Attaching Molding: Even with the Velcro in place and holding up the wall panel, there was a 1/2 gap all the way down both sides of the wall. The fix for this was easy: I painted some corner molding and, once again, used construction adhesive to glue the molding on both sides of the removable drywall panel. If I were putting up several wall panels all in a row on a flush wall I could have simply used chair molding run vertically and attached on one side of each drywall panel. My molding had to cover gaps at a corner, so I used corner molding. For an added touch I also attached baseboard molding and 1/4 inch round molding to the bottom of the wall panel. This greatly helped in creating the illusion that it was a permanent wall.

Now that my entire basement office is mostly complete, I’ve pretty much forgotten that the wall is removable at all, which is exactly what you want a removable wall to be: so plain looking that it doesn’t raise suspicion or look out of the ordinary.

This was a fun project and one which reminded me that home improvement is one step away from the Do-It-Yourself and “maker” mindset which is becoming more popular as resources such as knowledge, tools and material become cheaper in our country. Though this project didn’t include any electronics or soldering or gadget hacking, it did take a few different ideas from different DIY fields and combine them into something that met my needs and served a practical purpose. I’ve combined similar ideas when I built a gutter cleaner with a chipper vac, built my own soil and rock sifter and when I showed you how you can make your own replacement air filters.

Okay, what is the photo on the right? Is it a photo from Africa’s Serengeti National Park? It is the remains of a foolish attempt to grow a lawn in the Arizona Desert? Maybe it’s a farm that specializes in growing hay?

Sadly, it is none of those things. It is, unfortunately, my back yard. I live in New Jersey where we’ve been suffering from a heck of a drought for the past three months. In March we had double the amount of rainfall we normally get, but for April, May and June we’ve actually had only about 50% of the rain we normally get, so a lot of yards around my area look just like my back yard: mostly brown and nearly dead due to a lack of water.

I know that my grass is brown from a lack of rain and water restrictions in my town prevent me from doing much about it.

Is My Brown Grass Dead?

Yes, my grass is brown and actually a bit crunchy to walk across (never a good sign). The question of whether or not my grass is completely dead is still an open one. You can find out if brown grass has completely died or not by digging or pulling up a small clump of grass and basically using your fingers to tear it apart at the base where the stems meet the roots.

You’re going to be looking for anything green or soft. If you find any part of the grass plant that’s still soft or living then your lawn still has a chance to come back with a lot of water or rain. If you pull apart your grass plants and find some slightly spongy white material then your grass is still alive, but won’t last much longer. And of course if you pull apart your grass plant and find nothing but dried and crumbling brown stalks.

Will Dead Brown Grass Grow Back?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: If your grass is “mostly” dead but you can still find some green or some softer white tissue in the plant body when you pull it apart then all may not be lost. Add water (but do not add fertilizer or anything else) if you can. As a general rule of thumb, most lawns need about an inch of water a week to survive. That’s actually a lot more water than you might think.

If you want to find out how much water you’re getting on your lawn you can try this trick: Place an empty cat food or tuna can (both are about an inch high) in the center of your lawn where you normally run your sprinkler. Now run your sprinkler and every 20 minutes or so go out and check to see how much water you are really putting on your lawn. Every sprinkler is going to be different, so run this test for each type you might use. If you fill up half a can during an hour-long watering session then you know that you need to water your lawn with that sprinkler for two hours a week just to keep your grass looking green. Natural rain will, obviously, also count towards that total.

My Brown Grass is Dead. How do I Grow New Grass?

Ouch. If your lawn is really dead then you’re going to have to do some work. Whether your grass died from a lack of water or some sort of malnutrition or even a lawn disease, your first step is going to be to remove as much of the old grass as you can. You’ll want to use a garden rake initially to pull out as much dead material as you can. If your lawn was diseased you probably won’t want to put that dead material in any sort of a compost pile. You’ll want to throw it away.

Once most of the dead grass plants are removed you can use a shovel to skim off a thin layer of soil, taking out as much of the remaining grass plant that you can. Try not to remove any more topsoil than you need to. At this point you may want to have your soil tested at a gardening center or plant nursery. Your soil might be missing valuable nutrients that you should add.

Now it’s time to plant your new grass. Your soil should be loosened up by now, but if it isn’t go over it again with a rake once more to make sure the grass seed you put down will grow. There are several methods for planting grass seed from scratch. You could put down the seed on the existing top soil and take it in or you could plant your grass quickly by mixing your grass seed into new soil and then just spreading over your lawn area.

Once you’ve spread your grass seed you have just one more step: add water! Again, aim for an inch (or more) in a single week. You may want to be especially generous with the water if you can during the first few weeks when your new grass is just beginning to establish itself.

How I Killed My Grass

Sure, I tried to water it regularly with a sprinkler for a while. My home has a well-water pump just for watering the lawn and washing the cars and whatnot and I was keeping things pretty green for a while, but then I went away for a few days and didn’t trust leaving an automatic sprinkler hooked up while I was gone. When we returned we started watering regularly again, but by then it was clear that it was just too hot and too sunny for the grass in my backyard to keep healthy. Lately our town has started asking people to cut back on water consumption across the board to deal with this drought, so I’ve decided to sacrifice my back yard for the good of the community.

My back yard gets mostly direct sun for most of the day, which is ultimately what resulted in its ruin. Want to see how devastating direct sunlight can be to grass? Take a look at the photo on the right. In the upper left corner the photo is a tree that shades part of the grass in my yard. There’s a clear line where the green grass meets the brown grass. That’s the line where the tree’s branches and leaves shade the grass. It’s the same type of grass and that area received the same amount of water. My front yard, which is also partially shaded, is doing quite well, thank you.

A random sampling of my yard has shown that I do, indeed, have some truly dead grass out there. Some spots are actually not too bad, though. I may try using some Scotts EZ Seed if I can get it on sale later this season or I might just give it up and wait until next year. I have a lot of other home improvement projects in the works and I’m not sure if I really have the time or energy for another one. If I do go ahead and replant the grass in a large section of my yard I’ll post photos so you can see how much work it really is!

It’s not often that you get a chance to download a free home improvement book, and it’s even more rare that the book actually comes from a county government office. Yet the Department of Community Revitalization of Henrico County, VA has created a free 140 home enhancement guide which you can download from their website.

The Homeowner’s Enhancement Guide can be downloaded as a full .PDF file or you can download individual chapters that are based on your specific house type or interest. They have specific home improvement ideas and suggestions for Ranch homes, Cape Cods, Split Levels, Colonial Revivals and even Bungalows. Included in the full book is a chapter about yard maintenance, new construction home ideas and advice, and a full chapter on how to save money on energy and water usage. Another chapter explains how you can make your home more comfortable for an older generation of people and there is a chapter all about project planning, raising money for home improvements and hiring contractors. The appendices of the book include maintenance checklists for your home, a glossary of home improvement terms and additional resources you can check out.

I live in a Ranch style home and the guide does a great job of explaining the different floor plans as well as the pros and cons that are often found in Ranch homes. There are specific suggestions and photographic examples of ways to increase curb appeal and put on an addition for various styles of Ranch houses. The ideas are broken down by affordability and type of Ranch house.

While there are plenty of home improvement idea books out there, this Homeowner’s Enhancement Guide is actually a pretty class publication with great graphics and floor plans, a true respect for the historical background of different home styles and a real eye for detail when it comes to making enhancement suggestions. The suggestions and ideas for home improvements are not incredibly detailed, but they are varied enough to get your mind thinking about all the possibilities that you have. While the entire guide is obviously written with a focus on the homes that are in Henrico County in Virginia you’ll see that most of the advice and home improvement ideas could be applied to a large percentage of the homes build across the entire country.

Not into downloading a book or printing just the chapters you want? You can buy a printed copy of the book for $10 at a few locations in Henrico County, VA or you can send $15 to: County of Henrico, Department of Community Revitalization, P.O. Box 90775, Henrico, VA 23273.