How to Prepare Your Home’s Exterior for Fall
Knowing how to prepare your home’s exterior for fall is a great way to avoid certain stress that comes with the season. Fall is coming, and with it comes the beautiful display of brown, orange, and yellow leaves falling from trees and decorating every available space. But then, with thousands of leaves falling every day, the beautiful display can quickly turn into a troublesome cleaning chore.
From cleaning your porch to having a clogged gutter, fall comes with a handful of chores. But you can save yourself stress by preparing ahead. When you prepare your home’s exterior for fall, you’ll easily manage the typical chores that come with the season – you may even have fun too. Here’s what you need to do to prepare your home’s exterior for fall:
Repaint Your Siding and Walls
By the time fall finally arrives, your house’s painting would have worn out. Besides the fact that worn-out paint might be an unpleasant sight, it’s also a maintenance risk. How? Worn-out paint leaves wood susceptible to rot, and this can easily result in dangerous cracks across the walls and floorboards.
Repainting your walls would protect your wooden exterior from deteriorating, and would easily fend off termites. What’s more? Repainting your walls would help with maintaining your home’s temperature, and would overall improve your home’s outlook and resale value.
Inspect and Reseal Siding Cracks
Cracks and open spaces are the perfect hideouts for pests and other dangerous animals such as snakes and scorpions. And with fall marking the beginning of the cold weather, these critters would joyfully seek shelter in those cracks. Coupled with leaves falling here and there, you’re left with hidden cracks and open spaces that are housing potentially dangerous animals/insects.
But that’s not all. Besides the fact that cracks will house unsafe creatures, they’re prone to growing worse during the fall. Why? The increased burrowing of creatures in such cracks and overall weathering would easily worsen cracks that appear “harmless”.
So, before fall settles in fully, now’s the time to inspect your entire house (in and out), and close off every crack or opening. Cover up cracks and unsafe openings with multiple coats of concrete and repaint to keep everything sturdy and appealing.
Clean Out the Drainage System
The season is called “fall” for a reason, and that’s because thousands of leaves fall daily. The likelihood of fallen leaves clogging your gutters and other drainage is high during fall. When this happens, your home’s environment is prone to flooding from rainfall.
So what do you do? Clean out every gutter or drainage around your house before fall starts. Take out large debris such as sticks and stones, and remove every dirt that’s already clogging the drainage. When this is done, it’ll be easier to clear out fallen leaves and avoid flooding during fall.
To preserve your drainage system during fall, you can go the extra mile to install drainage shields on all gutters around your house. This will greatly reduce the number of leaves that fall into the gutters, and thus make maintenance a lot easier.
Put Back Outdoor Furniture Into Storage
Summer was a great season for lounging on the patio, but the show’s over and fall is coming. With the heavy winds and chills that happen in fall, your outdoor furniture is at risk of getting damaged if they remain outside. So, if you wish to preserve your outdoor furniture for another lounging session in summer, you should pack up everything and put it into storage. Wash and dry every piece of outdoor furniture and put them in your garage, basement, or shed for safety. Be sure to secure your outdoor furniture with dust covers, to prevent dust and dirt that might accumulate while they’re in storage.
If you wish to lounge outside occasionally during the fall, you can bring out a chair or two anytime you wish. But be sure to take them in once you’re done.
Prepare Your Lawn
During fall, practically every plant switches to “hibernation” until spring. Although the grasses and trees appear as though they’re dying during the fall, think of it as shedding excess skin in preparation for spring. You can help with that preparation for spring by applying fertilizer to your lawn. When you do this, your lawn would survive through fall and winter, and would quickly turn green in spring. If you’re looking to have a lush green lawn that would definitely increase your home’s market value, then you should fertilize your lawn ahead of fall.
Conclusion
The cold and windy months are fast approaching. Fall is just around the corner, and your home’s exterior needs to be prepared for it. Your preparation is primarily to reduce the strain of home maintenance during and after fall, so it’s like a way of saving you from stress and avoidable expenses. All you need to do is to inspect your home’s exterior for potential issues and have them fixed ahead of fall. And when the leaves begin to fall, it’s time to get a rake.