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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.

For the first time in almost a decade, the number of U.S. children without health insurance is on the rise. The year 2017 saw an increase in uninsured children from 4.7% to 5%, and while the exact numerical increase may be relatively small, experts are concerned about the possible implications.

Coverage By The Numbers

While the overall population hasn’t seen a significant drop in insured people, remaining firmly at 8.8% uninsured, there are currently 276,000 more children without health insurance this year. This suggests an alarming overall trend that could set the precedent for future years. It is highly unusual to see rates of coverage drop during periods of economic growth, and as this is the first drop in insurance rates in the past decade, experts seem to have reason to worry.

In addition to an increase in uninsured children, out-of-pocket spending has accelerated for the past three years across all types of health insurance, including for employer-sponsored coverage. The ultimate end result is fewer people having health insurance, and higher insurance costs for those who do.

General Public Uninformed On Insurance Options

One of the many reasons that the state of health coverage in the United States seems to be worsening could be due to a general lack of education on health insurance options. For example, most Americans do not know crucial information about health insurance, such as the fact that 100 percent of medical and long-term care insurance premiums are deductible from gross income to arrive at adjusted gross income. The current administration and President Trump have slashed funding dramatically for programs that would educate Americans on health insurance options and assistance available for those unable to afford health insurance, resulting in a less educated general populace.

Lack Of Coverage Means Less Care

With fewer children covered by health insurance, more families are forgoing important preventative care measures that could make the difference for children’s overall health and safety. These crucial preventative care measures are essential to protecting not just children, but the health of the general public.

In 2017, an estimated 19.5 million children under one year old worldwide did not receive DTP3 vaccines, reflecting a harmful trend of forgoing vaccination. Many of these children did not receive vaccinations as a result of lack of health coverage that would make payments difficult. This contributes to an already dangerous and harmful trend of children not receiving appropriate vaccinations, putting those who are not able to be vaccinated at risk.

Additionally, if this trend of lack of coverage continues in combination with increasing out-of-pocket costs, many adults will also not seek out preventative care they need. This is especially important in adult populations, where different health risks arise. Certain preventative screenings, such as mammograms for the second most commonly diagnosed cancer among women, breast cancer, can prevent serious and expensive conditions. However, if people are forced to pay exorbitant out-of-pocket prices, it is unlikely these screenings will occur.

Overall, the decrease in insured rates for American children does not bode well for the state of American health. With 2019 just on the horizon, it remains to be seen whether this trend will continue into the new year, and what that might mean for Americans’ health insurance everywhere.

Updated 10/1/2020

Six people were trapped in an elevator in Chicago’s former John Hancock Center for three hours after plunging 84 floors. The rescue itself took a total of two hours.

In the early hours of the morning of Friday, Nov. 16, just after midnight, a hoist rope broke in an express elevator. Guests from the Signature Room on the 95th floor who were trying to go to the lobby without incident instead had a terrifyingly fast ride to the 11th floor. The elevator was able to stop there because several other hoist ropes had remained connected and worked to halt the elevator.

Elevators are necessary for a variety of reasons. Many differently-abled individuals rely on passenger lifts when they are unable to climb stairs. Additionally, for a building with 84 floors elevators are essential when it comes to making meetings on time. Learning when to use an elevator pitch can also help out your career when you’re stuck in an elevator with someone.

Expecting everyone in the building to climb stairs is simply unrealistic. But many buildings have staircases as well since the age-old question “can you use an elevator during a fire” is a hard no.

Are you curious about how elevators work? Check out this video:

When it spans more than 84 floors elevators are frequently inspected to meet the necessary safety protocols. Elevator maintenance happens frequently to prevent any issues from happening. How much does elevator maintenance cost? It depends on the type of elevator, its height, and how much the elevator can carry. Elevator maintenance jobs can enable top workers to make almost $100,000 per year in some cases. Passenger lift maintenance is essential, but most elevators come with safety protocols, like a safety brake, to slow the elevator down in the event of an emergency like this.

According to some of the elevator passengers, no one was injured but it took some time for building security to call the firefighters. As an elevator of standard-size is just 12 to 15 square feet and a mid-size one averages 15 to 18 square feet, this delay caused the passengers to be trapped in a small space for about an hour before rescue crews even arrived.

The elevator was stuck in a blind shaft, which is a shaft in which there are not openings at every floor to free the trapped passengers. Incidentally, the 11th floor was one floor without an opening. Once the rescue crews did arrive they had to break a concrete wall in the garage area of the 11th floor in order to free them.

After they broke through the wall, the crews shored up the elevator so that it wouldn’t fall further. They then used a small ladder to free those trapped inside. Elevator rider Jaime Montemayor told local news WBBM that he thought they were all going to die when the elevator started its plunge.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, escalators and elevators cause the deaths of about 30 and seriously injure about 17,000 people each year in the United States. Simply riding in an elevator is relatively low-risk, as the majority of these accidents involve workers on or near elevators.

The elevator in the Chicago skyscraper reportedly passed its annual safety inspection earlier this year. The elevator and two others are now closed as crews repair the broken hoists and investigators attempt to determine what caused the ropes to snap in the first place.