Keeping your family safe and comfortable is a 24-hour responsibility, and it starts with responding to your home’s maintenance needs right away. Electrical safety is no accident, and it’s easy and affordable to perform most upgrades. It’s also a great idea to schedule an in-home safety inspection to ensure that your home meets all current safety standards.

If you’re looking for a smart way to get the most bang for your home improvement buck, you owe it to yourself to consider upgrading your home lighting. It’s easy and affordable, and it instantly makes a home much more comfortable. Well-designed interior lighting can also increase your home’s resale value, and outdoor lighting enables you to enjoy great backyard activities with your family and friends long after the sun has gone down!

Whether you just moved into a new home or you’ve been living in your current home for decades, you should always be concerned about electrical safety; the older the home, the more likely it is to require upgrades to meet current safety standards. But even a recently-built home can have electrical safety issues, and what you don’t know can hurt you!

Most homeowners are accustomed to paying high energy bills all year long. The electric bills are lower in the fall and winter, but gas bills predictably increase as we run our home heating. We don’t get to shop around for utility providers the way we can for other household expenses, and each time their costs increase, they pass them along to us in the form of higher energy bills. The only surefire way to lower your bills is to reduce consumption and eliminate waste.

If your home was built before the turn of the century, you probably identified numerous restoration projects before you made an offer. Older homes have a charm you’ll never find in a cookie-cutter subdivision, but safety standards were far less rigorous when those homes were built. Even a home constructed more recently typically needs some updating. When Underwriter’s Laboratories mandated three-prong plugs for all new electrical appliances, only about half of USA’s homes had three-prong electrical outlets.

Whether you’re flipping a bargain-priced “fixer-upper” or making improvements to your permanent home, a little advance planning and professional help is your best way to manage your costs. You should always know your own limitations when it comes to DIY projects, and shouldn’t be ashamed to call professionals to do the job right.