North Phoenix Agent Blog

There’s some disagreement in the general public about whether cleaning your home’s ducts is actually worthwhile. Some say the air circulating through the ducts surely cleans them out. Others swear by duct cleaning, saying it improves overall circulation and even prevents the build up of microbes and mold inside the ducts.

I won’t weigh in on the debate, but will say if you’re going to clean your home’s ductwork, at least use someone who’s certified to do so. Recently one of my sellers agreed to clean the ducts during a buyer’s inspection negotiation, or BINSR period. We used Ductz Indoor Air Professionals and I recommend them. Here’s some of the info from their brochures:

1. Children are more likely than adults to be affected by polluted indoor air (Dept of Consumer Affairs)
2. The EPA claims indoor air has been found to be up to 70% more polluted than outdoor air
3. Air ducts contain more germs than chicken coops (American Lung Association)
4. A build up of 0.42 inches of dirt on a heating or cooling coil can result in a decrease in efficiency of 21% (EPA)

Vince DiVarco handled the duct cleaning for my seller and I; ou can contact Vince at 623-466-8625. He was a good communicator, very knoweldgeable about his job, and extremely careful to protect the seller’s home from his equipment. Vince set up a portable generator and the hosing systems needed to attach to each duct in the home. Vince brought along rubber corner protectors that he placed on the corners of the bookcases. He wore paper booties to protect the flooring from tracking unwanted dirt inside. The whole setup took about an hour or so for a 1900 square foot, 2 story townhome. The cleaning actually took less time than the setup and tear-down of the equipment.

The Ductz brochure indicates the benefits of a good cleaning last 3 or 4 years. The cost was $395. Ductz also offers additional services: duct sealing, deodorizing blocks that suck odors out of the air, dryer vent cleaning and air duct sanitizing.

Did it work? I can’t say. Vince & Ductz have the statistical information to back up what their claims about how important clean ducts are. I’m sure there will continue to be people who think duct cleaning is a silly thing to do. But the Buyer was happy. Given our current marketplace where it’s so incredibly difficult to sell a home, I count that as a success.

From one of my favorite home inspectors, Jason Farrier of Elite Home Inspections, LLC. You can reach Jason at (602) 793-0123. Or try Jason’s custom home building skills out when you’re building your dream home.

Consumerism is the name of the game in the US, and people who have been participants for any length of time usually end up with more things than they can comfortably fit into their living spaces. So the items which are no longer in regular use but are too valuable to toss or give to good will often head for garage storage.

This system, however, has one major drawback; if enough things make their way to the garage, the garage stops being a garage and turns into a garage storage unit. It may become so overloaded that it cannot even be closed, or have pathways between boxes and furniture by which people can access what they are looking for.

Eventually, however, most homeowners with overstuffed garages surrender to the reality that they need to do a garage storage cleanup. And those who do will help themselves a great deal by realizing that if they haven’t used some of the things in the garage since they were tucked away months or even years ago, they are not likely to use them in the future. It definitely makes the throwing-out process much less painful.

Getting Started  -  If your day of reckoning with your garage storage problem has finally come, arm yourself with the biggest, strongest trash bags you can find, and prepare to be merciless. If you have a van or truck into which you can place each bag as it is filled, even better.

If you have someone who can drive the truck or van to the nearest good will center as soon as it is filled, even better still. The more distance you can put between yourself and the things which constituted your garage storage problem, the easier it will be.

Re-Organizing  -  When you have eliminated all the things you can no longer use from the garage storage equation, it’s time to re-organize the rest. If you find things that really belong elsewhere in your house, put them in cartons marked with the names of their final destination, and get them out of the way.

Break down the remaining garage storage items according to their uses; place like near like. Paints, thinners, brushes and roller pans can go together; grass seed, lawn feeder, and other gardening necessities can go together. Just keep going until you have a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

When you’ve reached that point, you’ll be in a much better position to determine if its time to upgrade your garage with new garage storage cabinets and wall shelves. More importantly, you’ll have the room to do it!

If you know someone in need of a home inspection please contact Jason Farrier at 602-234-9233 or visit Elite Home Inspections LLC on the web.

Travis & Angela from Integrity Cleaning Systems are my favorite carpet cleaners in town. Integrity does a bunch of other services too. Call them at 602-486-3966 if you’re in need of:

• Carpet Cleaning
• Upholstery Cleaning
• Tile & Grout Cleaning & Sealing
• Natural Stone Honing, Cleaning, Polishing & Sealing (stone counters, anyone?)
• Area Rug Cleaning
• Allergy Relief and Mattress Cleaning

I used Travis to clean my own carpet within the last year. He’s great! He did minor furniture moving for me, and includes steam-cleaning the baseboards in the cleaning package I ordered. He uses industrial strength blowers to help shorten the drying time too. My carpet was grey when he started, and beautifully white and clean when he finished. Best of all, it was dry that evening. He even worked around my cats! Integrity Carpet Cleaning is a locally owned & operated, and I’ve never seen a guy work harder to ensure customer satisfaction.

Did You Know? You should clean your carpets every 6 months. Call Travis to find out what kind of gunk builds up if you wait longer than that. It ain’t pretty!

Related Posts:

1. Discounts on Paint
2. Recycle When You Remodel
3. B & B Appliances

One of my favorite sayings is “They call it real estate beige because it sells houses.” Don’t know where it came from. Brilliant as I am, I’m 100% certain that I’m not the first one to say it. But it is true. The most inexpensive high-return thing you can do when selling your home is slap on a fresh coat of paint. Do the baseboards, trim and doors while you’re at it. Expect it to cost about $1.15 to $1.30 per square foot (use your home’s total square footage here).

So what’s Real Estate Beige? These are some good beige tones from Dunn Edwards.

Swiss Coffee, Pearl White, Pale Wheat and Cottage White are all going to look like a nice off-white once the job is done. Same with the old standby Navajo White.  Swiss Coffee & Navajo White are in the taupe-y color family. Pearl White has a bit more yellowish undertone and Cottage White has a beige-tan undertone. If the room you’re painting gets lots of sun, you might be happier with Swiss Coffee, Pearl White or Najavo White.

Whisper and White Beach are nice yellow whites. Whisper is paler, White Beach is a creamy color about like a manilla folder. Little sun and/or a north facing room? The yellow undertones in Whisper and Pale Wheat will help warm up the room.

Ready for a bolder beige that’s a notch above off-white? Try Quicksand (yellowish undertones), Sandcastle or Inside Passage (mustard-y undertones), English Scone (brick red and pink undertones), Sandy Beach (peachy undertones), or Golden Gate (grayish beige undertones).

Want bolder still?! Try Gourmet Honey or Warm Buttersotch which are the darker hues of Inside Passage (yellowish brown tones). Or for beige with a little ruddy, reddish undertone try Travertine, Stonish Beige or Colorado Trail (listed in order from paler to deeper). Finally, Brichwood, Trail Dust and Mesa Tan are good taupe-y grayish beiges with a deeper tone than Sandcastle.

Want help choosing a color? Noelle Carpenter is a fabulous estimator for local company Certa Pro Painters and she offers excellent color-choosing help. You can contact me for her phone number or email her at nCarpenter@CertaPro.com.

Courtesy of the Queen of Clean, Linda Cobb, here are some natural & effective ways to deal with Arizona’s persistent dust/dirt.

To clean today’s trendy dark dark wood furniture, use a damp cloth (use plain tap water and wring the cloth out until it’s just damp) to wash it. Then immediately buff the furniture dry with a lint-free cloth such as chamois or bar towels.

Don’t use retail furniture polish on your wood furniture - it usually contains silicone which is actually drying. Here in the deserty dry of metro Phoenix, our furniture suffers from dry air enough with us helping it along with silicone. Instead, use a mixture of:
**About 1 cup mineral oil
**About 2 teaspoons lemon extract
Mix these together and store in a well-labeled glass jar.

Used fabric softener sheets work exceptionally well for cleaning glass.

Today is the birthday of Vita Sackville-West, best remembered as a writer (The Edwardians) and as one of Virginia Woolf’s several lovers. But she was also an avid gardener. Sackville-West is largely responsible for getting the English upper classes outside, working in their gardens beginning in the 1930’s. At a time when most considered gardening a masculine occupation best left to servants, Sackville-West brought gardening into the mainstream through her weekly column for The London Observer. She wrote about the joys she found digging in the garden and the satisfaction of arranging her own flowers at her beloved country home, Sissinghurst.

In Vita’s honor, I present a list of desert gardening resources for the Valley’s many transplanted humans, relocated to the desert Southwest from a “somewhere else” that invariably has more rainfall. For all of us struggling to figure out how to grow anything but rocks in a climate bursting with 100+ degree temperatures and less than 7 inches of rainfall annually, I invite you to click and grow.

Of course the mac daddy of all desert gardening books is The Sunset Western Gardening Book. First published in 1972 by the same folks who produce Sunset magazine, this has been the bible for desert gardeners since publication. I believe my good ole’ Dad still has a copy, proudly purchased when we first moved to the Valley in 1978. Dad bought a 4 bedroom, 2 bath family rambler on about a 1/2 acre of land in Squaw Peak and felt compelled to make that land produce something. Anything. (My link is to the original 1972 cover art. There are newer editions but the old cover is kitschy cool so I linked to it.)

Desert Botanical Gardens is a wonderful resource for desert gardening, both online and in person. They offer online photos & tips, adult education classes, and tours of their beautiful grounds. With our recent spring rains, the DBG is breathtakingly beautiful. Visit!

(photo credit to MaggieAZ of stock.xchng)

About.com has a monthly calendar of tips and to do’s for desert gardening.

The Sierra Vista Garden Club website seems to be kept up to date with tips, events, recipes, links, and a super list of nontoxic household items useful in gardening such as tea, ammonia, baby shampoo & beer. Sierra Vista is a good deal south of the metro Phoenix region (just southeast of Tucson) so take note that their climate might be slightly different than our urban heat island affected climes. The SV Garden Club has a link to the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. You can zoom in on a region, but its a little hard to tell if Phoeix is in Zone 8b or 9a.

The Tucson Gardener has a fabulous list of desert gardening books. No links, but you could print and take to your local library.

Finally, for those who’d like to enjoy the desert beauty without attempting to garden on their own, try the Desert Foothills Land Trust and their 13th Annual Sonoran Symphony. Get out and view the desert’s beauty while being serenaded by a full symphony.

InmanNews.com ran a good little snippet on this morning’s news bulletin about draining your water heater. Since I don’t want to just re-post their article here (pesky copyright laws!) I did a couple Google searches. Links below. Draining your water heater from time to time will increase the life of the heater, and ensure you have more hot water for your daily needs.

DIY Network - Drain Your Water Heater - seems like a fairly thorough article; great pictures of each step

The Natural Handyman - chatty & entertaining, but don’t make this the only article you read before atttempting at home

Lowes - fairly short but with excellent illustrations

HGTV - amusing pics of having a professional plumber do the job. Being a total girl, this is the option I choose. I don’t do home maintenance; I exercise my check writing skills.

I had to pick up some paint today for a client at a Dunn Edwards retail store. The very nice manager, Larry, asked me if I lived in an HOA. I thought that was odd, and wondered if DE kept a file of each HOA’s approved paint colors. Wouldn’t that be cool?!

Instead, Larry explained that Dunn Edwards gives discounts to HOA members. Now that is really cool!  Manager Larry says every Dunn Edwards store gives HOA members a discount and you have to volunteer the information that you’re living in an HOA to get the discount. He wasn’t supposed to ask, it seems.

So if you’re painting your house, go get the quality stuff the contractors use and a get a discount on it to boot!  Dunn Edwards store locator.

I read Travis Schnepp of the Focused on Phoenix blog from time to time. He had a great recent post about Stardust Building Supplies. These folks help you recycle when you remodel your home. They’ll literally come to your house and take everything you’re throwing away, even including the kitchen sink. Then they refurbish the stuff, and sell it at a steep discount to families in need.

Way better than just dumping it all in the landfill. Check ‘em out!

Did you know the following common foods are harmful for your pet?

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1.  Avocados
2. Chocolate
3. Coffee
4. Onions & onion powder
5. Garlic
6. Grapes (choking hazard)
7. Raisins
8. Macadamia nuts
9. Alocholic beverages of any kind
10. Salt
11. Fatty foods
12. Gum, candies, or other treats sweetened with xylitol
13. Tea leaves
14. Raw yeast dough (including store-bought raw pizza dough)

Got stinky sponges in the kitchen sink? Use a wooden clothespin to clip the sponge to a top dishwasher rack. Run ‘er through a cycle and extend the life of that sink sponge.

Plastic coating on the dishwasher racks going a little thin? Coat them with a light layer of silicone caulk to extend their life and avoid rusting through.

Garbage disposals get smelly from time to time. Whenever yours does, dump a tray of ice cubes and some chopped up lemon rinds down there. Turn on the water and run the disposal for a minute. The ice will help flush the smelly food bits down the drain, and the lemon rinds will deodorize the unit.

Best way to unclog a clogged showerhead is to soak it in vinegar. You can do this without removing the showerhead. Use a heavyduty gallon sized zip top bag. Heat enough vinegar to fill the bag, then tie it around the showerhead. Leave it there for 8 hours or overnight. Voila!

Taken from the Yankee Magazine’s book Make It Last.

Another quickie for household maintainers. Re-use your used dryer sheets to quickly mop up pet hair off hard floor surfaces. Works for hairy husbands who shed a lot too. ;-D

No, this is not what most of you think of when I say the word “quickie.” ;-)  This is a quick household tip, and I hope a recurring series of entries into the future.

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Did you ever notice that your hands smell for hours (or even days!) after chopping onions and garlic, or handling smelly foods like fish or kimchi? Here’s a household quickie that gets those odors off your fingers. To remove food odors from your hands after handling smelly foods like onions, garlic or fish, simply rub your hands around the stainless steel neck of your kitchen sink faucet. Voila! Odors gone. (I suppose this would work on the trendy new stainless steel appliances, too, but since I don’t have ‘em I don’t know.)

I don’t know why it works, but it does. Try it. Really. It’s one of those things I expect that Saint Peter will explain when I die and arrive at the Pearly Gates. I’m also expecting him to explain where I lost my skate key in 3rd grade, and where all my missing sunglasses went to. Actually, I expect old Peter will hand me a cardboard box full of the stuff I’ve lost here on Earth (including the mate to all those single socks that emerge from the clothes dryer), but that’s a whole other entry, now isn’t it?

Eat smelly foods!