Here’s a yearly home maintenance checklist to prevent major repairs and replacements. Here’s a month by month guide of home maintenance and repair issues.
With any home, an ounce of prevention is TRULY worth a pound of cure. Owning a home, as any do-it-yourselfer will tell you, is a never-ending job. A new problem seems to arise just as a home improver completes a previous repair job.
One way to stem some of those problems is with a yearly home maintenance checklist with a monthly schedule of to-do items.
Each task will take only a few minutes each month, but the result is they will help keep your home in top shape.
WINTER
January is a good time of the year to make sure all the doorknobs in your home are working properly. Tighten the retaining screws that hold a doorknob to its spindle. Also, the screws in the doorknob’s faceplate often get loose and need tightening. If the screw hole is larger than the screw, fill it with wood putty. Also, check the strike plates and latch plates for loose screws.
February – While temperatures can be below freezing during most of this month, the spring rains are not that far away.
Here’s another Winter Checklist.
Hence, this is a good time to inspect your home’s sump pump. Remove the sump pit’s cover and make sure the bottom of the pit is free of debris. Then, test the pump by pouring water into the pit until rises about eight inches or so, raising the pump’s ballcock. The pump should then vacuum the water out of the pit via a vertical pipe.
March is the perfect time to inspect your roof for any damage caused during the winter months.
Use a ladder to get a close look at the roof. Watch for missing shingles, broken shingles or raised up shingles. Those can be the result of wind damage or ice damming in the gutters. Problem shingles should be repaired by a roofing contractor, or can be temporarily covered with a roofing patch.
SPRING
April showers not only bring May flowers but flooded basements. Hence, this is a good month to clean and check your home’s gutters to ensure water is diverted away from your home. Clean the gutters out with a garden hose, washing away any leaves, branches and other debris.
Leaks along the seams or corner should be repaired with a gutter patch compound, available in a caulk tube.
Tax Time brings spring-cleaning and a whole new checklist of home maintenance items. You might even want to learn how to paint a room.
May – The cold weather causes everything on a house to expand and contract and this is a good month to visually inspect the caulk that seals the gaps between your home’s windows and exterior doors and the siding. If the caulk has come loose or brittle, remove it and replace it.
With temperatures well above freezing, June is good time to make any painting repairs to the exterior of your home. Problems such as blistering or cracking paint should be addressed as soon as possible as they can lead to other problems, such as wood rot.
We’re half way through our yearly home maintenance checklist with 6 months to go.
SUMMER
July – An annual power washing and resealing of a pressure-treated wood deck is not only a way to make it look nicer but helps extend the deck’s life. Then coat the deck with new sealer.
August is a good month to clean out the traps at the ends of the faucets in your home. Often times, the flow of water is impaired by mineral deposits and other debris stuck in the traps, which looks like a small screen.
September – Before the extremely cold weather sets in, this is a good month to get into the habit of changing the furnace filter, if you have forced-air heat.
FALL
October is the time to reglaze a few of the windows on your home. Reglazing replaces the putty that seals a bond between the window and the frame. That helps cut down on a lot of cold air infiltration during the cold winter months.
November is the month to determine which of your exterior doors allow for cold air infiltration. There’s a good chance a lot of that cold air is coming from the bottom of the door, as opening and closing the door causes the sweep to wear out.
To repair the sweep, remove the old sweep, which may mean removing the door. Sweeps are usually held in place with screws.
For a more detailed list of fall and autumn things to do around your home.
December – While digging out holiday decorations each year, take some time to make a visual inspection of your attic. Check the roof and gable vents to make sure those are clear as the screens can act like lint traps. Those vents are extremely important in helping to remove the heat from the attic during summer. But the last thing you want to do is be hanging around your attic in the middle of summer.
By: Jim Sulski