Now painting your home is one of the cheapest ways that you can add value to your home, both money wise and respectability wise. If you are looking to sell a home, you will want to make sure that it is freshly painted on the inside and on the outside. If you are building a new home then you want to make sure that the walls are also freshly primed and painted. Notice I threw the prime in there, in most cases you are going to want to use a type of primer anyway, because you will see that many stains and other stuff will bleed through regular paint, but with a coat of primer over it stains and other crap will usually not bleed through. Also, before I go on, I am not a professional painter, I do not paint for living, but I have had a lot of experience painting houses, apartments, condos, you name it, so I will be going over the steps that I take to paint a house, you can agree or disagree with me I really don’t care.

Where To Begin When Painting Your Home

The tools, you will have to have the tools to do so. Some may use more than others, some less, but if you are doing this as a major or minor home improvement project then you are going to want to have all of the necessary painting tools to get the job done and look as professional as possible. Lets go over a short list of what are some of the common paint tools that you are going to need to accomplish painting a whole house.

List of painting tools

- Paint Brushes

- Rollers

- Sponge

- Pans for the rollers

- 5 gallon bucket and 1 quart bucket

- roller brush extension poles

- paint spray gun (optional but makes the job go by faster)

- sanding block

- razor blade or utility knife

- caulking

- ladder

- drop clothes to protect the floor from getting paint on it

- masks

- 5 in 1 painters tool (very handy)

- painters tape

Of course there are some more options and many more painting tools that will make your job easier but these are just a few that you should have when you are undergoing your home improvement project. Let me say though if you have a huge house and you are on a time limit renting a paint spray gun is the way to go, it is a lot faster and more efficient than using a roller or brush.

Do I need to use primer when painting a home?

I do. For many reasons, as stated before primer is not something that is supposed be easy on the eyes and look good, it is supposed to protect and cover whatever it is you are about to paint, such as wood or metal. If you are going to paint some freshly installed drywall and you have all of the cracks filled in with compound already, I would use a latex type primer to paint the drywall. There are many different types of primer that are out there and they all have their own individual uses. For instance if you just bought a home and wanted to resell it but wanted to paint the inside first and notice some tough stains on the wall, and every time that you paint over them the stains just bleed back through, you will want to use a stain blocking primer such as Kilz, which is what I use. Once you have the walls properly painted, then it is time to pick the type of paint that you want to use.

What types of paint for homes are there?

This can be basically broken down into 2 categories, and it is very simple, water based and oil based. I almost never use oil based paint, if I do it is not for painting the inside of a home, you can, and they sell oil based products for this but I do not use it for this purpose, I will get into some of the uses for oil based paints at a later time. The latex, or water based paint works best for me. It is very easy to clean up, and not that messy at all, it also mixes very easy.

For you walls in spaces such as the living room, dining rooms and bedrooms, I go with flat paint. The reason that I use flat paint is that it doesn’t reflect that much light, and if you are trying to watch Television, you really do not want to see reflections on the wall.

Now for spaces such as the kitchen, I use either a gloss or a semigloss. This will give the walls a bit of a reflection, from the names gloss will reflect a lot more than semi-gloss will.

If you want a paint that is a little more durable than flat for your living room walls, you may want to try a type of eggshell paint or even satin paint, although they do reflect a little bit of light not as much as the glosses do.

Tips For Painting Walls

Just painting is not going to solve all of your problems. If you have small cracks in the wall you will have to fill it in with caulking or wall compound, if you have a hole in the wall, you will have to learn how to patch drywall holes.

Make sure that you mix the paint well before you start painting. Many paints contain additives and pigments, and the weight of everything in there is different, this is why it will have to be mixed up well before use.

Temperature will effect how paint behaves, the warmer it is the more it will run, the colder the more it will stick together and usually the more you will have to mix it.

Wear a mask or make sure that you have adequate ventilation when you painting your home, and this is essential for when you are priming the walls as wall primer is much more strong than wall paint. You may even want to look into getting a respirator.

So what exactly are environmentally friendly homes, also known and referred to as “green” homes. Green homes are homes that are designed to be friendly to our environment, and there are actually tons of things that you can do to make your home more green. With the threat of global warming more and more eco friendly houses are being built these days, especially in the United States, Germany and Japan. In fact all of these countries are currently rewarding those home owners with a tax credit for building green homes, so not only will you be helping out the planet by keeping the environment in mind when building a home, you will be getting some money back also.

How do I build an Ecofriendly home?

So if you are wanting to build an Eco-friendly home the first thing that you will need to do is get the right materials to do so, starting from the ground up. Building with renewable resources  such as log wood will help ensure that you home is built green from the ground up. When it comes to concrete you can choose to use lightweight concrete. Once you have the frame of the home built you will have to decide on how you are going to insulate it. One thing that I would not recommend, if you want your home to be green that is, is using fiberglass as home insulation. It is the cheapest way to insulate your home but it is also not very good for you health. It can attract mold easily and will leave you with the 7 year itch if it gets on your skin. Not only that, it is just bad stuff, not very Eco-friendly.

What kind of insulation is Earth friendly?

Instead you may want to dry Denim Cotton insulation, which is made from 100% recycled denim, or jeans. The cotton insulation is all organic, so it is not a harm to your health, it does not let off any CFC’s no asbestos, or anything nasty like that. There are also some other good alternatives you can use for insulation to make your home more green such as Sheep Wool for those that are going green and are not in the United States.

I have heard that there are certain types of homes that are actually built from 6 feet under the ground. It is said that this will make the temperature of the home fluctuate less, meaning you will not need to use as much energy to heat or cool your home. I think that the greenest homes that there are, are made from nothing but natural materials such as logs.

Does having energy efficient appliances make your home green?

Making sure that you have energy efficient appliances is also a key to making an Environmentally friendly home. The less energy you use the less we are depleting are natural resources and fuels that make energy. You will be able to tell if you have an energy efficient appliance by seeing if it is an Energy Star rating on it.

If you want to go all out green and really help the environment, and at the same time want to save some money on your power bill then you can make your own electricity. You can do this by installing solar panels on the roof of your home. Solar panels are great for heating the water in your home, or just story the energy from the suns solar rays for later use. Solar panel cells are getting cheaper, smaller and more efficient every single year. In the next decade I really expect these to take off and put the power companies out of business, well not in the next decade but maybe in the next 100 years.

Making your own electricity to make your home green

Another way that you can make your own electricity is the way that the farmers do it, by means of wind power. There are several types of wind mills and wind turbines that require nothing but some wind to get a charge. Wind turbines can be built from the ground up, and are really not that difficult to build if you have the right plans to do so.

The neat thing is that Eco friendly houses are about the same price as a home that is built and does not have the environment in mind. So that is something to think about if you are getting a new home built soon, go green, and join the group of environmentally friendly homes to help keep our Earth green.

Now if you are going to be paying on your home for the next 30 years, then it is a pretty safe bet that you are going to be there for a long time, and that will give you plenty of time to get all of the home improvements done that you will need. But what about backyard home improvements that are aimed toward kids? There are tons of ideas and things that you can put into your backyard, all you really have to do to get some ideas of what you can put in your back yard would be to take a stroll through the park.

If you go to your local home improvement store there they should have play sets that you can set up in your backyard. Some of the things that these play sets may or may not include are monkey bars, a swing or two, and maybe even a slide. Just make sure that whoever is putting the play set together, has experience assembling stuff, the instructions usually make the assembly pretty simple and fail proof, but it is best for someone with a little handyman experience to put it together. You do not want anything put together half ass when it comes to you and your kids.

Now not everyone has the money to go out and buy a childrens swing set or play set as they can be quite expensive. One backyard home improvement project you could build for your kids that is relatively cheap would be a sandbox. Sandboxes can come pre-made or you can make them yourself out of plastic or wood.

Another idea that you may want to consider is building a treehouse for your kids. If you kids are around the age that they are in Kindergarden they will absolutely love it. That is something that they will enjoy throughout the years probably all the way up to when they are in high school. The way you might have to go about getting a tree fort made would be to go through a professional handyman or carpenter that has lots of experience building structures, as tree forts are usually do not come out of the box with assembly instructions.

Those are just some backyard home improvements that you may want to consider for your kids. Of course there are many more these are just some examples to get you started. Remember the size of your back yard and the amount of money that you are able to spend is going to more than likely determine everything when it comes to backyard home improvements for the kids.