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Three Tips for Making This Year’s Garden Your Best Ever

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spring-planting-gardening-tools-garage-storageNow that the temperatures are steadily rising, your thoughts have likely turned to gardening. The Farmer’s Almanac predicts our last date of spring frost for Toronto as May 9th, but how can you be sure your soil is ready to be worked? Take a handful of soil and squeeze. If the soil forms a ball, it’s not quite ready. When the soil crumbles in your hand, it’s go time for gardening. Though you’re probably eager to start planting, to get the best results you must first prep the soil.

Feed and Prep Soil to Maximize Results

Building a rock-solid home begins with laying a solid foundation. Likewise, growing healthy, vibrant plants begins with healthy soil. Dry, sandy or compacted soil isn’t conducive to producing healthy plants. Amend problematic soil by introducing nutrient-rich, organic matter into it at the start of each growing season.

Spread a one to three-inch layer of dark, earthy, finished compost on flower beds and gardens. When used in a vegetable garden, use organic compost or a variety designated for use with edible plants. Work compost into the top six to twelve inches of soil using a shovel, rake or rototiller one to two weeks before planting. Compost adds nutrients to soil and encourages the presence of garden-friendly earth worms.

Compost improves the hardest, toughest soil, creating a nutrient-rich environment where flowers and vegetation can thrive. Strong, healthy plants, grown in a nutrient-rich soil, tend to be more naturally resistant to bugs and diseases.

Deciding What to Plant and Where

You’ve selected the perfect space to plant your garden. Only, it might not be so perfect. For instance, most flowering annuals won’t fare well in the shade. Other plants don’t do well with extended hours of sunlight. Carefully select plants that are optimal for your allocated space.

If the area receives less than six hours of daylight each day, plant vegetation that thrives in shade. Begonias, impatiens, elephant ears, black-eyed Susans and fuchsia do well in shade. If the area gets partial shade, pansies, petunias and snapdragons may be a good choice.Flower beds that receive more than six hours of sunlight daily are ideal for flowering annuals like colourful petunias, geraniums, marigolds, carnations, sunshine impatiens or verbena.

Your annuals will make the most impact if planted in groups of three or more. Each group of flowers should overlap the next to create a powerful punch of colour.

Sunlight should also dictate the makeup and layout of your vegetable garden. Kale, herbs, spinach and scallions can do well with as little as three hours of sunlight each day. Peas, beans and root vegetable require close to five hours of daily sunlight.

While tending to your flowers and garden, don’t forget the perennials. If they aren’t looking as lively and vivacious as they once did, it may be because they’ve overgrown the available space. Divide the plants, relocating some of them. The additional room will allow the plants left to flourish. The rest can be used in another part of your yard. If you don’t have room to plant them elsewhere, consider gifting them.

Once planting is done, give plants a weekly boost by feeding them with a calcium-rich eggshell tea. To create the eggshell tea, store eggshells in a container of water. Allow them to steep for a few days or weeks and continue adding more shells. Water plants with one cup of the eggshell mixture combined with a gallon of water. This calcium-rich mixture will strengthen plants and improve production.

Create a Gardening Space in the Garage

There is no shortage of tools and supplies required to keep your lawn and garden looking their best. Shovels, rakes, hoes, trimmers, hedgers, garden gloves, compost, grass seed and fertilizer can take over your garage during gardening season. Searching for tools amid chaos is frustrating.

slatwall - wall organizers, wood grain, hooks, garden toolsWhen a task becomes frustrating, it’s human nature to avoid it. So make time at the start of the season to take inventory of your gardening tools and supplies and organize them. If there isn’t enough room in the garage for all of your garden tools, consider installing a wall organization or shelving system to create dedicated storage space for each item. A purchased or custom-built garden bench will provide space for repotting plants. However, a repurposed table will achieve the same end.

Once your garden tools are neat and organized, the soil has been fed and you’ve chosen the right plants for your yard, you’re on the way to making this year’s garden your best yet.

To Insulate or Not to Insulate

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When planning a garage renovation, customers often ask about adding insulation to the garage. After all, what better time is there to add insulation than while in the midst of a renovation? Yet, there is a more important question to consider.

 

Is insulating your garage a worthwhile investment?

 

Customers are often shocked by this question. The garage is one of the most insidious energy vampires in a home. Insulation, by its very nature, impedes costly heat loss. So how could adding insulation to your garage not be beneficial?

 

Assess the Benefits of Adding Insulation

The short answer is: adding insulation to any room does stem the loss of heat.  Therefore, it is beneficial. However, the cost benefit of insulating a garage is situational. To make an accurate cost benefit analysis of the proposed insulation of a garage, you must first consider:

  • The current state of your garage;
  • What you hope to accomplish; and
  • How the space will be used.

The age of your home and whether it already has some insulation is a primary consideration. Older homes tend not to have any insulation. Installing it requires starting from scratch—a costly prospect. Newer builds usually have some insulation. However, it doesn’t always extend to exterior walls. The effectiveness of the insulation is dependent upon the quality of the product used.

Next, consider what you hope to accomplish by adding insulation. If you anticipate that insulation alone will raise the frigid temperature of your garage to one comparable to the interior of your home, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If, however, you simply want to raise the temperature of the garage interior several degrees, fully insulating the space may be the perfect solution.

Lastly, there is the matter of how you intend to use the space. If you’d like for your garage to be a bit cozier because you’re housing a collection of vintage automobiles, insulation alone may do the trick. If the space will serve as an extension of your home’s current living space, more than insulation alone will be needed.

To get a better sense of whether insulating your garage would be a good investment, let’s consider the three most typical scenarios we encounter during garage renovation projects:

  1. There is a room above the garage that is consistently several degrees cooler the rest of the home.
  2. The homeowner wants to protect a collection of vintage or exotic cars from the harsh winter temperatures.
  3. The customer would like to expand the home’s living space by setting up a workshop in the garage.

Each situation must be assessed on the three criteria listed earlier: the state of the garage; what the homeowner wishes to accomplish; and how the space will be used. Let’s take a moment to break down each scenario.

 

A Cold Bedroom Above the Garage and The Battle of Thermodynamics

Take a moment and think about your garage space.  There are uninsulated exterior walls (including the garage door itself). Additionally, the garage door is opened several times each day, allowing any warmth inside the garage to escape and be replaced by colder air. As a result, the garage is nearly as cold as the outdoors in winter. How does this affect any living space over the garage?

garage insulation renovation projectsThe science of thermodynamics tells us that two spaces which interact will eventually reach thermal equilibrium, or equal temperature. In this case the two spaces interacting are the interior of your garage and the bedroom above it. The heat from the bedroom elevates the temperature of the garage while the chilled garage air lowers the temperature of the bedroom. Seems like an open and shut case for insulation, but is it?

Adding insulation will stem the loss of energy in the bedroom. However, insulation alone will not increase the temperature of the bedroom to the level of the other rooms in your home. The extensive scope of work required to fully insulate the garage must also be considered. This may include insulating all exterior walls; insulating the garage ceiling; replacing the drafty garage door seal; and replacing the garage door with a highly-insulated model. This all comes at considerable cost.

Insulating the garage offers marginal heat benefit to the bedroom above. On the other hand, installing a baseboard heater in the bedroom is typically more cost effective. Investigate other options that will reduce your overall heating bill, like replacing drafty windows in the bedroom and elsewhere in the home. These methods are more efficient and offer a larger heat benefit than insulating the garage.

 

Making Your Garage Habitable—For Your Cars

Frigid temperatures can be tough on your car. The vehicle’s paint is vulnerable in colder temperatures. When oil and other lubricants get extremely cold, the engine and other systems are negatively impacted. A warmer garage not only protects your vehicles, it makes starting them much easier on cold winter mornings.

Not surprisingly, classic car enthusiasts often insulate their garages. The cost of thorough insulation, as described above, can be substantial. However, when you have a considerable investment to protect, the expense is worthwhile.

What if your garage is only used to store lawn furniture, recreational equipment and tools? The expense of insulation may not add up. Whether it makes sense for you depends on the cost, heat benefit and the value that you place on warming your garage.

 

Insulation is Only the First Step in Extending Your Living Space

When you think of a garage renovation do you envision a handy new workshop or a man cave complete with state-of-the-art electronics? Extending your home’s living space not only provides enjoyment for you and your family, it can significantly increase the resale value of your home. However, insulating the garage is just the first step.  

Insulation is designed to retain heat, so the insulated space will be warmer. However, insulation alone won’t transform your frosty garage into a cozy living or work space. If you plan to convert your garage to usable living space during the winter, a more active measure is required. A heat source, such as an electric or gas heater, must also be installed to make the space comfortable year-round.

 

Decide What Works Best for You

The best way to determine whether to insulate or not to insulate is by doing a cost benefit analysis. A garage renovation specialist can help you estimate the cost of insulating and/or heating your garage and any adjacent rooms. An experienced professional will also help you assess other factors, like estimated temperature improvement and heating and cooling costs. Once you fully understand the realities of what insulation can and cannot do for your space, you can confidently make the decision that is best for you.

 

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How much is a disorganized garage really costing you?

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Are you a Have or a Have Not? 

As you have probably noticed, it’s that time again.  Yes, the days are getting shorter, the kids are back in school and it’s time to set up your garage for the winter season.  In our many years of helping people organize their garages, we have identified two distinct types of homeowners in our area, the haves and the have nots.

1 car garage parks bmw plus 7 high end bicycles, portable workshop and all tools
HAVE: 1 Car Garage – parks 1 BMW, 7 high performance road bicycles, flip down workbench, all garden tools & seasonal tire storage

In this case, we are talking about homeowners who have taken steps to setup and organize their garages for easy seasonal transitions.  These homeowners greet the seasonal change with open arms.  They know that seasonal garage setup is not a chore at all, but a simple task that can be completed in a fairly short amount of time.

On the other hand, there is the other group of homeowners, those who have not organized their garages.  As you might guess, these homeowners warily glance around the inside of their garage.  They desperately try to figure out how long it will take to gather up all that clutter, move all that stuff around, store all the summer tools, toys and more away and bring out the winter gear. Sometimes, these garages are so disorganized that homeowners actually consider taking almost everything outside and then bringing the stuff back inside in the order they need.  Unfortunately, if they are honest with themselves, they know this will most likely never happen.  The end result is chaos or worse. 

Back right 1 car central toronto garage
HAVE NOT: 1 Car Garage – cluttered, no storage, unable to park family vehicle, lacks organization

Then, once the first cold snap hits for these homeowners, it’s a mad dash to move the piles from here to there and everywhere in between to make room for the car.  Oh, and should the home be equipped with a 2 car garage, too often, there is so much clutter piled up that just one car can be safely squeezed into the remaining space.

The point is simple and easy to understand: an organized garage will save a lot of headaches throughout the year, but especially so when it’s time to adjust for the season change.  Look, if you plan on just shoving your stuff into various piles around the garage that’s your choice. Yet, you might want to consider what a disorganized garage is really costing you.

Of course, it’s obvious that a disorganized garage costs you extra time throughout the year.  Do you ever find yourself hunting all over your garage for a particular garden tool?  Do you ever move stuff aside to get to more stuff behind the first pile?  Have you ever sent one of your kids out to the garage to fetch a garden tool and they can’t find it?  Then, you head into the garage and it takes you a bit of time to find it yourself.  You can see that you could end up spending a lot more time than necessary; if only your garage was better organized, you would save yourself a lot of headache.

Another way a cluttered garage is costing you comes right out of your wallet.  Our storage solution team members regularly surprise homeowners when they point out that the homeowner has two or more of the same item such as weed whackers, garden hoses or rakes, one of which was buried deep in a pile of clutter years ago.  Or, in a more painful hit to your wallet, what about the car door that bangs into a wheelbarrow or other item in the garage simply because the garage is over stuffed with clutter.  Whether a small dent or ding, the damage is unsightly and will most likely need repair.

 A third way that a cluttered garage can end up costing also concerns your vehicle.  Think of it this way.  Think about what happens if a garage is so cluttered that one or both vehicles (for a 2-car garage) can’t comfortably fit inside during the winter.  A vehicle that’s worth more than everything in the garage combined has to sit outside and endure the brutal winter; but your garden tools, the lawnmower, the bikes, etc get to rest comfortably indoors.  Of course, when you look at it that way, it’s immediately obvious there has to be a better way.

 Actually, it’s about this time of year the storage solution team here at Garage Tailors Garage starts to field anxious calls from worried homeowners.  Remember, your garage is not just a dumping ground for what doesn’t belong in the house.  Your garage is there for your vehicles plus your other belongings.  With the right organization system in place, your car and your bikes, sports equipment, garden tools and more can comfortably occupy the same space.

GARAGE VIEWS FROM NUVO

Garage Tailors INC.
51-3176 Ridgeway Drive
Mississauga, Ontario
L5L 5S6

416.617.7551
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