Are Wireless Locks Safe or Not?

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installing wireless locksIn more ways than one, wireless locks offer home owners a lot in the way of convenience. Imagine having the capability to let anyone into your locked house even when you’re miles away. With the advent of wireless locks, the days of leaving a spare key under the rug or some potted plant are long gone.

However, in this day of hackers and cybercriminals, no one can really blame some home owners for not being that sold on the idea of installing wireless locks. However, if an article written by Krissy Rushing for Technology Tell is to be believed, their fears would seem to be unfounded.

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Finding a Location For Your Bathroom Fan

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installing a bathroom fanAs far as the overall maintenance of your bathroom is concerned, proper ventilation is one very important element. By installing a bathroom fan for proper ventilation, you are in effect taking away the stale odours that mark a bathroom that isn’t ventilated well. You can also say goodbye to mildew and mould buildup, both of which could cause problems not only to your home but also your health.

Installing a bathroom fan, however, is not as simple as it sounds. If you thought you can just stick that bathroom fan you bought from the neighbourhood store anywhere inside your bathroom, you are quite mistaken. Picking a location for your bathroom fan can take some time and effort. To get you started on finding a location for your bathroom fan, here are some things you would want to keep in mind.

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Lawns That Require Minimal Maintenance

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lawns that require minimal maintenanceIt’s nice to live in a home with a beautiful lawn, but lawns can be a lot of hard work. Unless the area you’re living in has adequate rainfall all throughout the year, maintaining a lawn and keeping it as green as possible can get really tough, bothersome and eventually, real costly.

If you live in an area with low rainfall or periodic droughts and you still want a lawn, you might want to consider alternative lawns that require minimal maintenance. Here are some of low-maintenance lawn options for you.

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6 Easy Ways to Boost The Efficiency of Your Home

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ways to boost the efficiency of your homeAnyone can make their homes more energy efficient. However, those who are building a new home have the upper hand in this regard, since they are bound by the Building Code of Australia to meet a minimum level of energy efficiency.

Granted, the law requirement could mean additions to the total construction budget, but those additions are generally a pittance compared to the savings such energy efficiency measures will give you.

In any case, whether your house is new or old, there are a number of things that you can do to make it more energy efficient and in effect, a little friendlier to the environment. Here are some of them.

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Why Ventilation Exhaust Fans Are So Important

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why ventilation exhaust fans are so importantMore often than not, we home owners don’t really give much thought about those ubiquitous little fans that spin somewhere near the top of our walls or on our ceilings. They are, however, extremely important not only for the home itself, but also for the health of the people who live there.

Here are some reasons why ventilation exhaust fans are so important, and should be treated as such.

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Tips For Preparing Your Baby’s Room

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preparing your baby's roomCongratulations! In a just a short while, you will be welcoming the newest addition to your family. By now, you should have already prepared his or her room. If you still haven’t, we’d like to share some tips for preparing your baby’s room to help you make sure that your baby’s room will have everything that it needs.

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Interior Lighting: How to Brighten Up The Darkest Areas of Your Home

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interior lightingThere are a lot of reasons why we sometimes feel cranky and so not in the mood even when we are just sitting idly in some corner of our house and in some cases, that dark mood may have something to do with the interior lighting or the lack of interior lighting to be precise.

It has long been established that we humans respond, act and feel better in a home that has plenty of natural light. That is the very reason why we need to let natural light in as much as we can. However, brightening up the dark areas of your home is not just all about finding ways to let natural light in. It also has a lot to do with how a certain room is finished, or its current paint colour scheme.

To help you get started, we’d like to offer some tips that will help you brighten up the darkest areas of your home.

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Quick Home Improvement Ideas for the New Year

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home improvement ideasThe new year brings a fresh start that more often than not inspires new home improvement ideas. Nothing spells “fresh start” better than to get home improvement projects up and rolling . These projects don’t even have to be big ones. They can be quick, simple and should not cost you that much.

Here are some quick home improvement ideas for the new year to get you started:

1. Do some painting

Whether it’s done in a high-traffic area or a barely used room in your house, painting adds a pop of colour and a fresh clean feel to your walls. If you’re painting newbie, don’t hesitate to ask for tips from people working at the paint store, from colours to do to painting techniques that will make the job easier and faster for you.

2. Put up wallpapers

If painting is too much work, then perhaps putting up wallpapers might do the trick for you. Many of the wallpapers available in stores today are very chic, and they certainly would make amazing accent walls. Plus, the choices are simply amazing. You can get wallpapers with texture, wallpapers with retro patterns, metallic wallpapers and many more.

3. Change your drapes

Changing your drapes is one great way to greet the new year. Sure, everyone wants brand new drapes every single time we change them, but there are less expensive ways of changing them. One such way is to recycle your curtains and drapes to another room. The drapes you had in your living room, for instance, could be switched with the ones in your bedroom, and vice versa.

4. Give your cabinets a facelift

When you give your cabinets a facelift, it  does not necessarily mean you have to change a lot of things about them, although that could be an option. Giving it what we call a “spa treatment” will do. Dust the cabinets inside out, then wipe them down with a soft, damp cloth. If your cabinets have nicks and scratches, get a soft cloth and dab those areas with just a tiny bit of wood stain. When the wood stain is dry, wipe lemon oil onto the whole cabinet using a soft, clean cloth. All these will enhance the natural colour of your cabinets and give them a newer feel.

5. Change door handles

Your door handles are perhaps the most worn-out among all the fixtures in your home, and the coming of the new year is the perfect time to replace them. To spice things up, you can actually replace them with handles that are actually different from the last ones. Just make sure that they look perfect for the door and that they don’t end up looking out of place.

6. Organise your home

With the holidays just a few weeks in the past, it’s safe to assume that your home has to deal with a lot of clutter, especially when you have children at home or when you’ve had people come and go for the entire holiday season. The new year would be the best time to organise your home. You can start with just putting things back where they actually belong. If you’re up to it, do some segregation, like keeping the things you still use and deciding which ones you can actually throw or give away. Organising your home may not be as simple or as quick as other home improvement projects, but it’s one of those home improvement ideas that has to be done, whether it’s the new year or not.

Prepare Your Home For Summer

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prepare your home for summerPrepare your home for summer in Australia. If news reports are to be believed, the Land Down Under is heading for a really hot summer. There are even reports saying this summer could be the country’s hottest ever, with at least one or two heatwaves cutting across the southern states.

One of the greatest dangers Australians face with every sweltering summer is that the hot and dry weather provides a perfect condition for bushfires, which almost always rage throughout the country in the summer and damage acres of bushland as well as properties near it.

This summer, which is expected by experts to become record-breaking on so many levels, you need to prepare your home against bushfires, as well as to keep all members of your household from suffering heat strokes and other heat-related health problems. Here are some tips we hope could help you prepare your home for summer.

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Troubleshooting Christmas Lights That Go Out

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troubleshooting Christmas lights that go outThere are many different types of Christmas decorations that you can put up in your home for the holidays, and all of them would certainly bring a lot of joy and cheer to your entire household. However, none of them would have the enchantment and sparkle that only Christmas lights can bring. Wrap them around your tree, or have them installed on that real tree right on your front lawn.

Christmas lights, however, do go out, often without warning. Still, before you go ballistic on the people who made those Christmas lights, you may need to do a little troubleshooting first. For all you know, your Christmas lights went out for reasons than you can easily remedy. Here are some tips for troubleshooting Christmas lights that go out.

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