Fireplace makeover

Baby it’s cold outside! So what’s better than a fireplace!? I apologize for the bad
pun but seriously, fireplaces are amazing in the winter time. It’s just an objectively
great feature to have in your home… unless it’s ugly. Unfortunately, it is very
possible that your fireplace might be ugly or maybe it just doesn’t go with your
aesthetic. Let’s face it, fireplaces often show the decade the house was built more
than any other piece of architecture, and sometimes… those decades sense
of interior style are garbage.

Decals! You can legitimately use decals. You’re going to have to put in a lot of
thought to make sure that the design your going for, goes on right but if done
right decals on tile could look amazing. Besides the mental energy it’s a pretty
simple project. It’s also a super cheap way of doing a high impact upgrade to
your fireplace.

Another DIY upgrade you can make to your fireplace that should be simple and
relatively cheap is painting it! You can paint just about any surface, not sure that
you should (don’t paint marble or granite, I’ll disown you), but you can! Tile, just
takes a little bit of forethought, a little bit of primer, and some acrylic paint and
you’ll have a brand new look. You can paint brick. You can do a wash over the
brick in any color you please to give the room a modern trendy look.
Continuing the color onto the walls, up to the ceiling can also add height to the
room! So that’s a really cool treatment that could enhance your entire space.
Uneven or stacked stone would probably look wired but you can knock yourself
out trying.

One other thing you can do to brick is dye it! This isn’t quite as easy as painting
but it looks more natural, like it was the bricks original color. You can go from a
classic brick red color to something softer like grey or vice versa.

Don’t have a fireplace? That’s to bad. You can check out our article on installing
your own fireplace. However, if you’re just looking for the aesthetic you can also
get a fireplace façade! Pick up a faux fireplace and make it interesting. Fill it to
the brim with logs or books or other interesting things. Go wild! It’s not a
permanent part of the house anyways.

Saving Money on Firepits

Do you like firepits? I do… I mean I don’t like being outside but if I’m already out there I might as well be
comfortable and sitting at a firepit. One thing about firepits though, they can be a great big time and
money hole. Seriously while you’re working on the firepit you might as well set your money on fire
while you’re at it. So, how can you get that beautiful firepit without it turning into a money pit?

First, if you’re trying to save money you should probably DIY the entire project. This isn’t the type of
project where at the end you’ll look at your bank account and find out you spent more money than
the quote you got to get it built out for you. Getting a firepit built will almost definitely cost more than
doing it yourself. You can even get firepit kits for around 200 dollars. Go ahead and build out a patio
while you're at it, it’s just an outside floor. I believe in you, watch a YouTube video, you can figure
\ it out.

Second tip, make a wood burning pit and not a gas burning pit. You’ll a thousand percent have to
hire several people to make a gas burning pit work safely (please, don’t burn down your
neighborhood). Also, a gas pit will add on to your utility bills… and why would you want that? If you
must have a gas burning pit make it close to your house. This will cut down on the plumbing bill
of running a gas line to your designated location. The further you get from the house, the more it
will cost.

Finally, keep the customizations down to a minimum. Built in seating will cost you and they cost a lot.
If you don’t mind using chairs then you’re solid. Besides, a lot of built-in seating is
uncomfortable. Also, unless you’re an artist and are making all of your own tiles (which is still
expensive) try to keep the unnecessary customizations down to a minimum. Getting super fancy
with a firepit could very quickly cost you upwards of thousands of dollars.

You’ve been sufficiently warned. Go build a firepit. Go outside (if you must). Have fun.

A/C Breakdown Fixes

Y’all, it’s hot outside. Thank god for climate control. There’s nothing much better than A/C in 90 plus degree weather, in the gross humidity of GA. But what are you to do when your climate control stops working? You could… suffer or you could fix it, but how? And when I ask how I mostly mean how much will it cost you and is there anything you can do to circumvent some of these costs?

FIX ONE: Did You Reset It?

I know. Look, I know what you’re thinking It’s not like your laptop, or a game system it’s an A/C. Yes, it’s not a common electronic, but it is an electronic. I know air conditioner units are this big block of thing sitting in a closet or your basement, that you don’t identify as being at all like your computer but there are indeed computerized parts in there. So, turning it on and off will help? Maybe, won’t hurt. Doing this… will take some work. I’m not going to be able to explain it to you but luckily Google exists. Look at your air conditioning unit, figure out what model it is, look it up.

FIX TWO: Replace the Filter

Yes, I’m saying the obvious things, but have you them? When you’re A/C is working it’s cycling air pulling in the warm air, cooling it, sending it back out.  Which means the airs running through the filter, picking up dirt and dust particles. Eventually the dirt will clog the filter completely and hinder the flow of air through the system.  This may happen before or after the label on the filter pack said it would (before). The moral here is, check your filters if your air unit isn’t working correctly. Even if your filter isn’t so dirty that it has developed a life of its own, maybe you don’t want it to get that dirty and you should change it before it gets there.

FIX THREE: Get on the Condensation Line!

Hah, this one wasn’t so obvious! And the subtitle didn’t make much sense, let’s move on. The condensation line is the small pipe that sticks out of your house by you’re A/C unit that drips. It’s getting rid of the moisture and condensation that your A/C collects from the air in the line of duty. This can get clogged. This can cause a variety of problems, but they will all lead to you’re A/C losing functionality, AND WE CAN’T HAVE THAT! So, you need to get that cleaned out. There are easy instructions on how to do that around the internet.

None of those worked… well, it’s time to call for help. We’ve done just about everything to get it working by ourselves. You can rest assured that your not calling and spending money on a nothing problem you could have fixed yourself.  Now, you need help. Don’t fiddle around with the insides of the actual unit, a HVAC technicians’ job is a lot of work and pretty specialized. At this point it’s time to leave it to the professionals.



Delana Cotton servers the north east Atlanta region that includes Dacula, Winder, Lawrenceville, Buford, Snellville, Conyers and surrounding areas. Delana treats every transaction as if she were you, the buyer or seller. If you have a real estate transaction on the horizon, meet Delana for a no pressure chat over coffee.

Reduce the Cost of Remodeling

Maybe you just moved into your new place and it’s a bit of a fixer-upper. Maybe you’ve decided that your just tired of the way your house looks and are ready for a change. Maybe a lot of things happened, I don’t know your life. Maybe all those maybes mean it's time to remodel. Maybe remodeling means you need to find money to pay for the remodeling and you don’t know where that money will come from? How much is it going to cost? A lot. Probably more than you think, you know like everything cost more than you think it’s going to or should. Especially if you live in an old house. Old houses like to surprise you, sometimes it’s a beautiful hardwood floor under the carpet (why did people do that?), or maybe it’s truly horrifying underlying problems that you didn’t know about but have to take care of now… either of those things could happen. So, here’s a few ways to save money while remodeling:

1.      Just Paint It

I know you're tired of your cabinets, your baseboards, other innumerable features of your house. Just take a second, really look at them. Do you like the style of them? The placement? You could just paint them. If it is a paintable material, it’s possible that giving it a new color and just sprucing up what’s already there could make the old stuff like new.

2.      Go Bargain Hunting

DO IT! If you like shopping then this is just fun. Clip coupons, get online and use Craigslist, Facebook has a marketplace now. Some retailers get things in bulk and are trying to get rid of the excess or send them to Discount material stores. Warehouse sales are totally a thing. Slightly damaged things are sold at a discount and usually it's just some surface injury that’s not all that noticeable or you can cover up. Get out there!

3.      Get Creative with Materials

Hey, that thing you don’t want it that room… would you like it in a different context in another room? Keep that, remove it carefully, reuse it. Look for recycled materials that you might be able to repurpose into something else. DIY some stuff! Make sure it’s structurally sound, but yeah get crafty with it.

4.      Try Not to Relocate Certain rooms

Look, do you need to move the bathroom to the other end of the house? If the answer is yes than fine, do what you need to do. Just remember plumbing is a thing and you’re going to need to move pipes and maybe rewire if you move the floorplan around too much. Even moving them around the room is going to be extra work and more money, you gonna want to hire a professional for any plumbing or electrical work.