Summer is just around the corner. While the sun’s rays make a more prominent appearance in your day, your home may not be as ready for the change of season as you are. Here are five ways you can ready your home for the summer to ensure your comfort all season.

1. Install an outdoor kitchen.

Barbecues are the staple of any American summer, bringing people together through the combination of grilled meats and great weather. If you plan to do more outdoor entertaining beyond the Fourth of July, consider expanding beyond a single portable grill. A full outdoor kitchen setup keeps you near all the action, giving you a complete work station for preparation, cooking, and serving.

Outfit your outdoor kitchen with a grill, sink, mini-fridge, storage, a wood-fired oven, and just about anything else you can imagine.

2. Set up a water feature.

Fountains, bird baths, water gardens, waterfalls, and ponds inherently exude a sense of harmony and tranquility. A water element can significantly cool your yard and help you relax when you feel like lounging in the sun. Water features certainly look cool, and the sounds of splashing water can drown out the more annoying noises of the average neighborhood, like lawn mowers, traffic, and passing helicopters.

3. Build a fire pit.

Installing a fire pit might seem strange considering summer’s heat, but at night, sitting around a roaring fire and sharing stories is a great way to unwind and pass the time. Fire pits add a distinctly earthy feel to your yard and provide an important focal point for night parties and entertaining throughout all seasons. A fire pit also offers another cooking element. Bake potatoes, roast weenies, or set up a grill and cook some steaks directly over the fire. There’s always the old fallback: marshmallows and s’mores.

4. Plant a garden.

It would be a shame not to take advantage of all the summer sun with a garden of your own. Plant seasonal, indigenous flowers alongside herbs, fruits, and veggies. You’ll get some amazing colors, tantalizing scents, and healthy, fresh ingredients for your summer meals. Even if you don’t have time, many herbs and flowers can take care of themselves, allowing you to benefit from the fruits of labor with minimal work.

5. Check your home cooling system.

When you’re not spending time enjoying the outdoors, you deserve to feel plenty comfortable in your own home. To stay cool and beat the heat, check your home cooling system now. You should get your air conditioning unit serviced professionally once a year. A professional can check for damage, leaks, or other elements that could prevent the equipment from running efficiently. Along with the unit itself, check the vents and air filters throughout your home. HVAC system filters can generally be cleaned and reused, though they should be replaced every few years.

Summer is a fun, adventurous time for all. Make sure your home is prepared and you’re sure to enjoy all that the season has to offer.

Room and second story additions are becoming more and more popular these days due to growing families and the popularity of home-based businesses. Of course, all that extra room can be a bit overwhelming. What was once nonexistent is now an empty room for you to fill! Here are some ideas for filling all that extra space in your expanded home.

• A Spare Closet: Now that you have the room, there’s no need to cramp your bedroom closet with your clothes. That doesn’t mean throwing your shirts, jackets, pants, and dresses into a room willy-nilly. Buy and install shelving/hanging units for clothing organization. Sort your clothes so that you can easily switch out your closet based on the season. Make that room into the walk-in closet you’ve always dreamed of.
• A Home Office: You need a proper space to run your burgeoning star-up business. Buy a desk, shelves, cupboards, and plenty of motivational posters to keep yourself going. A home office is an effective way of keeping yourself on task as it gives you a physical space that is separate from your home life.
• A Library: The dream of any bibliophile, your extra room would make the perfect space to store your favorite texts and tomes. Line the walls with shelves, create aisles by placing bookshelves in the center of the room, and make sure you have a comfortable couch or reading nook to curl up with your favorite stories.
• A Home Theater: A home theater is the perfect addition for movie lovers. Purchase a projector if you would like something larger and more versatile than a TV screen. Purchase a set of plush reclining couches, set up a surround sound system, and soundproof your walls. Decorate your walls with classic movie posters and top it all off with a popcorn maker and concession stand of your very own.
• A Game Room: A game room makes a great space to hang out with your friends or get away from the world. A pool table, foosball, and darts are a must. Add in pinball machines and classic arcade cabinets. Don’t forget the big screen TV hooked up to your favorite game consoles.
• A Hobby Center: Whether you paint, carve, make jewelry, or build models, an extra room gives you the private space you need to work on your side projects in peace. No more misplaced supplies or working around family members. It’s just you and what you love to do in an organized space.
• A Play Room: If you have kids, give them a room of their own to play, imagine, and explore. Fill the room with crayons, paints, and easels for your young Picassos. Move their toy chest into the new room to give them all the space they need to create action-packed scenes. Keep their many costumes nearby for when they feel the sudden urge to put on a one-act play. Giving your kids a separate play room keeps them from causing too much of a mess in their own bedrooms and gives them an added bit of responsibility.

Stay creative and take into account your own needs and you should have no problem turning your extra space into something useful and amazing.

So you’re new to the “Green” movement?

Well, if you’ve ever turned a off a light when you left a room, opted for reusable instead of paper plates, or driven slower on the highway to get a better mileage, then you’ve contributed to the sustainability of the Earth, and that makes you green.

But there’s so much more you can do to be even greener. That includes green home remodeling projects that are not only good for the Earth, but they could save you money in the long run.

Let’s start with some modern green techniques that homeowners just like you are using all across Southern California.

New Green Techniques

You’ll notice in this section that most of these techniques don’t take enormous effort, and they don’t radically change the way your home looks now. They’re simple, effective ways to become more energy efficient. For example:

• Insulated windows and doors: Imagine your windows are like a car tire with a slow leak. You don’t notice day to day how much air you’re losing, but slowly and surely that air is escaping. When you run the air conditioning or heater, you’re using valuable energy to do so. If your windows aren’t sealed correctly, you are letting some of that precious energy (and cash) flow right out your window.
• Low-flow faucets and toilets: We’re all culprits of excessive water use; perhaps it’s the fault of the faucets we use. Many push out streams of 3 gallons a minute. By introducing a low-flow faucet, you could cut that down to 2 gallons a minute. By reducing the amount of time you spend using the faucet, the lower the volume of water you waste. And that sure adds up when it comes to the monthly water bill.
• Roofing installations: Your roof is a major source of energy, both incoming and outgoing.
  • On the outside, you can install a radiant barrier to reflect heat in the summer, reducing the amount you have to run the AC. Or, use that space for solar panels and harvest your own energy from the sun.
  • On the inside, use recycled cotton or wool insulation, or advanced fiberglass products. These help to keep temperatures level and comfortable and prevent unwanted energy loss.

What Happens to My Current Windows, Faucets and Other Junk?

When you upgrade to greener materials in your home, a major concern is what happens to the stuff you’re getting rid of. There are entire companies whose main purpose is to reduce these materials to their basic components: faucets are essentially steel or brass, windows are glass and plastic, etc.

These individual materials can be recycled and used in other ways by construction companies like Murray Lampert. When you decide to go green and update your home’s systems, you’re not only helping out your own monthly bills, but you’re potentially making products cheaper for other homeowners as well.

Now, just because you’re doing all this for the environment, it doesn’t mean you need to stop turning off lights or being more economical about recycling. But it does give you cause to brag to your friends.

BBQ season is finally almost here. When we finally escape the doldrums of winter for the more favorable temperatures that accompany spring, we also escape the restrictions of indoor cooking.

Who wants to spend a beautiful spring day inside hunched over the oven cooking a casserole? Trade in the oven mitts for a grilling apron—it’s time to barbeque.

But if you’re serious about getting your grillin’ on, you know you can’t just wheel out an old rusty Kenmore and get right into burning hot dogs. The onset of BBQ season means hosting intimate gatherings with friends, backyard baseball tailgate parties, and even an occasional morning meal of steak and eggs before work.

None of this is possible without an adequate space to do it. Follow this handy guide and get on your way to BBQ season in style.

Preparing Your Outdoor Space for BBQ Season

Step 1: Clear Your Space

The first step to a new BBQ space is to rid yourself of the old stuff that has no value, aesthetic or otherwise. That means tossing the musty old furniture, the cracked parasol table, the plastic drink cart and of course, the rusty old Kenmore.

Besides, you need to make room for what comes in Step 2.

Step 2: Plan Your Space

Now that you can look out at your outdoors space without any obstructions, think about what major features you’ve always wanted in your BBQ area that will guide your overall outdoor living area design. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• If you host parties, make sure to include ample seating by way of benches or heavy-duty furniture.
• If you want to chill outside and watch the game on TV while you grill, go for an outdoors entertainment center with an all-weather cover for safe storage.
• Whether you grill late at night or not, install a fire pit. There’s nothing like fireside grilling, especially when your pit is built right into your patio.

But the coup de gras of outdoor cooking is, of course, the outdoor kitchen.

An outdoor kitchen is a scaled-down version of your indoor kitchen and includes whatever utilities you want. A popular strategy is to knock out the top half of the kitchen’s exterior wall. By making a peninsula out of the wall’s bottom half, you can make a double-sided counter that gives you access to utilities and food from both the inside and outside. Doors or windows can be installed where the wall used to be so you can close off the room to the elements.

After all, some summer days in San Diego are just too hot not to spend in the air conditioning.

Step 3: Enjoy Your Space

Once your new patio kitchen is completed, along with your custom fire pit and seating area, you’ll wonder why you ever used to spend time indoors at all.

Before you hire a contractor to help you remodel your home or do any other work on your property, it’s extremely important to verify that the contractor and all his or her employees are covered by general liability insurance and workers’ compensation insurance.

Insurance shouldn’t be the only concern, of course. You’ll also want to examine what kind of warranty your contractor will offer for his company’s work and you should check out his or her reputation. Hiring an insured contractor means you’re getting a real professional, not a jack-of-all-trades who might not be up to the specific task you need completed. Otherwise, it’s kind of like going to the dentist and finding out that the hygienist is out and your teeth will be cleaned by someone who specializes in billings.

Following are some frequently asked questions about contractors and their insurance:

How do I find out if my contractor is insured?

Before you sign a contract, request the name of your contractor’s insurance agent in order to verify that he is covered. You should ask to see a Certificate of Insurance that lists the effective date of the policy, the type of insurance coverage carried and the types and dollar amounts of applicable liability.

It’s important to check that the policy will not expire before your contracted work is completed.

How can I verify my contractor’s insurance information?

It’s definitely a good idea to run the contractor’s proof of insurance past your own trusted insurance agent to make sure it is sufficient in the event an accident occurs on your property. A licensed agent is best qualified to review the coverage limits and specifics of the policy to help you determine exactly what kind of risks you should be protected against. If the contractor’s policy does not include a sufficient amount of coverage, your agent may recommend increasing your own liability coverage to offer extra protection in the event a worker is injured severely on your property.

You’ll also, by doing this, make sure that your agent and your insurance company know about the renovations you’re doing. Some renovations could greatly increase the value of your home, meaning you’ll need more dwelling coverage – the part of your homeowners policy that protects the physical structure of your house against specified perils. The dwelling coverage should be equal to the amount it would take to replace your home should it be destroyed by a covered peril.

What should I be protected against?

Your licensed agent should recommend checking that your contractor is covered with general liability insurance and workers’ compensation insurance.

General liability insurance offers protection in the event a contractor accidentally causes damage to your property or the property of a neighbor. Rather than having the costs to repair the damage come out of your pocket, the contractor’s insurance should cover it. If your contractor’s ladder falls and breaks a window, you shouldn’t be held responsible to picking up the tab.

Workers’ compensation insurance offers protection in the event one of the contractor’s employees is injured on your property. If an employee falls off the ladder or has an accident with a piece of machinery, you shouldn’t be held responsible for the resulting medical bills and treatment.

Standard home insurance policies typically do not cover accidents involving contractors, which is why it’s important to verify your contractor’s coverage before signing on the dotted line. It may be a good idea to review the liability coverage in your homeowners insurance policy as well. Work with a licensed agent to find out exactly what kind of risks you’re covered against and exactly what kind of additional coverage you’ll require when you hire a contractor.

This article was contributed by Kelly McMurtrie, a writer for HomeInsurance.com. Kelly has been writing content for HomeInsurance.com and other major brands since 2011 after graduating from the University of South Carolina with a B.A. in Media Arts.