Quick Guide To Home Improvement Grants

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:53:40 +0000

With real estate being so hard to sell nowadays many people are content just staying in their original house. For this reason home owners are more open to embarking on home improvement projects to make their house more livable. Yet, they usually encounter a major snag in their endeavors, namely, finding a way to come up with the funds. With home improvement projects ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, many home owners feel that they just cannot afford to fix up their house. Fortunately, with the help of home improvement grants, they no longer need to feel that way.

What is a Remodeling Grant?

This type of financing is a sum of money given by the government for the purposes of fixing up one’s home. They are better than a loan because they do not need to be paid back. Yet, many people think that because a grant is associated with the government, they must go through a drawn-out bureaucratic process in order to get approved. While this may be the case for other types of federal grants, it isn’t so for home improvement grants.

Why is this? It’s because usually home improvement grants are given if:

1) a house is deemed to be inhospitable without renovation,

2) a person needs to renovate because of a disability or

3) a person is aged 62 or older.

A professional inspector is sent out to the house in any of these scenarios to determine if repairs or renovation is needed.

So, the downside to home improvement grants is obvious. A person can’t get one if they want to add luxuries such as a pool to their home. However, there are still many homes in America that require repair work that would cost more than the owners can afford and these grants come in to their own in such circumstances. Common problems that are covered by a home improvement grant include plumbing issues, mold, roofing and insect extermination.

By: Phil Nichol

The Best Home Improvement Shows

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:40:20 +0000

It used to be that the term “Home Improvement Shows” garnered images of Bob Villa, standing in an old house, describing every action as he hammered. While these types of shows were highly informative, they weren’t busting with entertainment appeal: if not for the pounding of the hammer, you might have fallen asleep.

Nowadays it’s different; home improvement shows aren’t only concerned with being educational, they are also concerned with being fun to watch: they want to touch on emotion as much as they want to touch on intellect. For these reasons, the home improvement shows of yore have all but gone away, and the home improvement shows of today are improving television ratings.

The following is our list of the best home improvement shows, shows that hit the entertainment nail on the head.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, ABC: In its third year of Prime Time exposure, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is seeing extreme success. A show that takes the houses of struggling families – families struggling because of health problems, impoverishment, or natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina – and makes them into architectural and designer masterpieces, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition leaves us all wondering what we would do if we had endless money, and a crew of hundreds. On an unselfish front, this show also tugs on our heart strings, leaving us joyful that the burden of a struggling family has been somewhat lessened. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is the only home improvement show that can routinely make us cry.

Design on a Dime, HGTV: All of us want to remodel, redo, redecorate, but not all of us have the resources. For those of us without tens of thousands of dollars to spend on home improvement, Design on a Dime is singing our song. Design on a Dime features a team of designers who take a budget of a thousand dollars and do wonders to a house. This show shows us that a regular old boring room can be turned into one with flair and appeal without spending great amounts of money. Sure, you might not be able to design on literally a dime, but you might be surprised at how frugally you can fix up your house.

Trading Spaces, Discovery Home: Dueling banjos meets home improvement, Trading Spaces is a show that allows two sets of people to redecorate one room in the other’s house. With each set of people having only two days of decorating, and a budget of just a thousand dollars, Trading Spaces is a great show for people who need quick, cheap decorating ideas. Though the show grants each set of people a carpenter and a designer – two things you might not exactly have lying around – it is still a show that sparks creativity in the person who knows they want to improve their house, but isn’t sure how.

Toolbelt Diva, Discovery Home: I am woman hear me roar, or at least hear me pour cement. Toolbelt Diva is a show that teaches us all that home improvement isn’t just for the boys. A do-it-yourself program hosted by Norma Vally, this show is aimed at encouraging women to take the bull by the horns: it grants women power…tools. Enlightening, entertaining, and educational, Toolbelt Diva shows the world that you can engage in home improvement and have a uterus….all at the same time.

Home Improvement, Now in Syndication: Sure, the show Home Improvement – with Tim Allen wrecking havoc on just about anything he touches – is definitely more of a show on how to destroy your house than one on how to repair it, but it makes our list for one reason: it brings heart and comedy to the usually boring concept of fixing up a house. A show that aired on ABC from 1991 to 1999, Home Improvement, eight years later, still has a unique way of bringing out the handyman in all of us.

By: Jennifer Jordan

Home Improvement » Thousand Dollars

Quick Guide To Home Improvement Grants

The Best Home Improvement Shows