Home improvement
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The concept of home improvement, home renovation or remodeling is the process of renovating, making improvements or making additions to one's home. Home improvement can consist of projects that upgrade an existing home interior (such as electrical and plumbing), exterior (masonry, concrete, siding, roofing) or other improvements to the property (i.e. garden work or garage maintenance/additions). Home improvement projects can be carried out for a number of different reasons; personal preference and comfort, maintenance or repair work, making a home bigger by adding rooms/spaces, as a means of saving energy, or to improve safety.
Types of home improvement
While "home improvement" often refers to building projects that alter the structure of an existing home, it can also include improvements to lawns, gardens, and outdoor structures, such as gazebos and garages. It also encompasses maintenance, repair, and general servicing tasks. Home improvement projects generally have one or more of the following goals:[citation needed]
Comfort
- Upgrading HVAC).
- Upgrading rooms with luxuries, such as adding gourmet features to a kitchen or a hot tub spa to a bathroom.
- Increasing the capacity of electricalsystems.
- Waterproofing basements.
- Soundproofing rooms, especially bedrooms and baths.
Maintenance and repair
Maintenance projects can include:
- Roof tear-off and replacement.
- Replacement or new construction windows.
- foundation and chimney.
- Repainting rooms, walls or fences
- Repairing electricalsystems
- Wall papers
- Furniture polish
- Plumbing, home interior and exterior works
- Shower maintenance
Additional space
Additional living space may be added by:
- Turning marginal areas into livable spaces such as turning basements into recrooms, home theaters, or home offices – or attics into spare bedrooms.
- Extending one's house with rooms added to the side of one's home or, sometimes, extra levels to the original roof. Such a new unit of construction is called an "add-on".[1]
Saving energy
Homeowners may reduce utility costs with:
- replacement windows, and lighting.
- geothermal exchange heat pumps (see autonomous building).
Safety, emergency management, security and privacy
The need to be safer or for better privacy or emergency management can be fulfilled with diversified measures which can be improved, maintained or added. Secret compartments and passages can also be conceived for privacy and security.
- Interventions for fire alarm systems, or passive fire protection (including some wildfire managementstrategies).
- Technical solutions to increase protection from ).
- Interventions and additions to increase gas leaks or home exposure to environmental health concerns.
- Physical security measures:
- window shutters), locks;
- video surveillance.
- Safes and vaults.
- Spaces for emergency evacuation, like emergency exits and rarer escape tunnels.
- Spaces which provide protection in the event of different fallout shelters), etc.
- Home renovations or additions used to increase curtains or much more advanced, such as some structural surveillance counter-measures. They may overlap with physical securitymeasures.
- Public utility outage preparedness, like backup generators for providing power during power outages .
Home improvement industry
Home or
Professional home improvement is ancient and goes back to the beginning of recorded civilization. One example is Sergius Orata, who in the 1st century B.C. is said by the writer Vitruvius (in his famous book De architectura) to have invented the hypocaust. The hypocaust is an underfloor heating system that was used throughout the Roman Empire in villas of the wealthy. He is said to have become wealthy himself by buying villas at a low price, adding spas and his newly invented hypocaust, and reselling them at higher prices.[5]
Renovation contractors
Perhaps the most important or visible professionals in the renovation industry are renovation contractors or skilled trades. These are the
While there is a fairly large ‘grey market’ of unlicensed companies, there are those that have membership in a reputable association and/or are accredited by a professional organization. Homeowners are recommended to perform checks such as verifying license and insurance and checking business references prior to hiring a contractor to work on their house.
Because interior renovation will touch the change of the internal structure of the house, ceiling construction, circuit configuration and partition walls, etc., such work related to the structure of the house, of course, also includes renovation of wallpaper posting, furniture settings, lighting, etc. It is worth noting The thing is, the decoration construction team must be approved by the established interior design company to guarantee.[6]
Aggregators
Aggregators are companies that bundle home improvement service offers and act as intermediary agency between service providers and customers.
In popular culture
Home improvement was popularized on television in 1979 with the premiere of
Movies that poked fun at the difficulties involved include:
See also
- Home repair
- Housekeeping
- Maintenance, repair and operations
References
- ^ "Add-on". English Oxford Living Dictionary (US). Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on February 21, 2017. Retrieved February 20, 2017.
- ^ Use a Programmable Thermostat, Common Sense, to Reduce Energy Bills Archived July 19, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, Brett Freeman, oldhouseweb.com
- ^ "Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2007" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on August 7, 2014. Retrieved April 10, 2014.
- ^ "Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation - Société canadienne d'hypothèques et de logement". Archived from the original on October 23, 2007. Retrieved October 23, 2007.
- ^ "Canada Homeowners Community - Example of Low-Cost Advices used by Canadian Homeowners (Community) for Home Improvement that boost the sale of your Home". Canada Homeowners Community. January 12, 2020.
- ^ fuli, Interior design. ""What is interior renovation"". fuli Interior design. Archived from the original on October 6, 2022. Retrieved July 22, 2022.
- ^ Cerone, Daniel (September 17, 1991). "Tim Allen's Power Tools : Television: The comic who had Disney and cable executives abuzz parlayed his luck to develop 'Home Improvement". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 22, 2015. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
Further reading
- Richard Harris, Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914-1960. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
- Michael W. Litchfield (2012). Chip Harley (ed.). Renovation (4th, Completely revised and updated. ed.). Newtown, Conn.: ISBN 978-1600854927.