When staging a home, overall composition matters. Potential buyers don’t come into a home looking at walls, cabinets, or windows alone; they take a tour to see the house as a whole.

However, when staging a home, paying attention to specific elements is a must. In particular, paying attention to the floors in every room can help tie together the overall look of the house, motivating buyers to make higher offers more quickly.

If you’re trying to sell a property, don’t forget to improve the appearance of floors. Here are just a few home-staging tips to impress buyers with beautiful flooring:

Clean Hardwood Floors ’til They Shine

While flooring trends come and go, hardwood flooring will always be very popular among buyers, and for good reason. Woods in all tones bring a warm natural beauty to a space, and hardwood is incredibly durable. With proper care, wood elements can last for hundreds of years without rot or wear.

The trick, however, lies in properly cleaning and maintaining hardwood floors. Take a dust mop or vacuum and do your best to remove dry particles, like dirt and pet hair. Then, go to town with a liquid cleaner designed to deep-clean and polish wood floors. Finally, look for small scratches that might mar the beauty of the wood. Take a brown crayon and rub the scratch until the gap is filled, then buff away access wax. With a little elbow grease, even old hardwood floors can gleam!

Use Rugs to Your Advantage

Hardwood floors are beautiful, but they should be protected and broken up visually with well-placed area rugs. To truly tie together a space, a rug needs to be the right color, the right size, and placed in the correct position.

To choose the best rug, first measure the space. Remember that rugs should be at least 12 to 14 inches away from the perimeter wall. Generally, larger rugs make a space feel larger, so try to lean towards the biggest size the space can afford.

Next, consider where the rug will be placed. Any couches or chairs should at least have their front legs resting on the rug. Coffee tables should fit entirely on or off the rug. When placed properly, rugs tie together groupings of furniture, which is especially important in homes with open floor plans.

Finally, make sure that a rug’s colors, texture, and pattern work with the surrounding room. Try contrasting the hue of the rug with the hue of the furniture, but matching the color family. For example, a dark blue rug will make light blue or green furniture pop. Additionally, avoid choosing fluffy rugs for high-traffic areas, since the threads will likely wear more quickly, and stains from spills will be difficult to clean.

While clean floors can impress potential buyers, good care of hardwood and carefully chosen area rugs can take your home staging to the next level. With a little creativity, your property will sell in no time!

Owning a home comes with a startling number of responsibilities. Though many of them are related to renovation (more than four out of five homeowners are upgrading their bathrooms) or appliance repair, Canadian residents have become concerned over basement flooding. While there are a multitude of causes that attribute to wet basements, a new bill has been proposed for those who find themselves looking at the average $43,000 dollar cost: sue fossil fuel firms who have been contributing to the climate change that caused the flooding in the first place.

Canada Pushes For Climate Change Compensation

Peter Tabuns, an Ontario member of provincial parliament, suggested Bill 37 as a response to those whose properties are at such a high risk of flood that the owners cannot buy overland flood at a reasonable price.

“When thousands of people’s basements fill up with sewage for the third time in a row after a major storm has overwhelmed the sewer system, who is going to pay,” he asked. “When people who are already struggling to pay their bills are hauling out waterlogged couches and other furniture to put on the front lawn, who is going to pay to help replace that furniture?”

Bill 37 is not only limited to private homeowners: it would let governments, companies, and individuals alike sue gas and coal companies in Ontario for several types of damages, including “economic loss or physical loss of property, infrastructure, structures, resources, or other assets” as well as the cost of insurance to begin with. It is based on the same legislation currently in place that allows those suffering from illnesses as a result of smoking cigarettes to sue tobacco companies.

The Realities In America

Though it is unclear whether or not this bill will be passed, one thing is for sure: Americans will not have such a cushion when it comes to their own basement flooding. Instead, we will do as we always have — pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get to work protecting ourselves against the inevitable.

If you’re looking to safeguard your home from the risk of flooding, there are two main things you should focus on: the cause and the coating. Surprisingly, clogged gutters are the number one source of flooded basements, so you should spend a good amount of time examining the state of yours to ensure they’re functioning as they should, and are funneling water away from your home. Installing covered gutters are one of the best ways to protect your home in the future (not to mention the time cut on spring cleaning).

When it comes to a waterproof coating, you have a few options to choose from. If you’re looking for a complete sealant (which we recommend) you’ll find two primary options: epoxy and polyaspartic. Though epoxy is easier to apply (especially in a DIY sense), they take between six and eight hours to fully cure and require multiple coats — this means you won’t have access to your basement for a few days.

Polyaspartic coatings, on the other hand, usually harden within five minutes and provide a solid, waterproof seal, although that quick cure means a professional is needed for installation. They’re also, as a result of their strength and the need for a professional application, generally more expensive than epoxy coatings. Ultimately, the choice comes down to your personal needs and desires. America may not have the ability to go after multi-billion dollar companies as a result of their personal flooding, but — as always — we’ll find a way forward.