Benefits Of Composite Doors

In terms of doors, composite doors are the new kids on the block, and they bring a lot of new benefits.

Many consider composite doors to be superior to most other kinds of door. This is due to the vast number of benefits that they offer your home. These benefits really come into play when you ensure that your new door is installed correctly, and by a FENSA approved installer.

This article will go over the main ways that composite doors will greatly benefit your home.

1. Energy Efficient

Composite doors can help you to save money on your energy bills. This is because they are amazingly energy efficient and are great insulators.

These brilliant doors will work to keep heat inside your home, meaning that you don’t have to waste as much energy to heat up your house. Also, their energy efficiency helps them to be more environmentally friendly.

When buying a new door for your home (whether it be composite or UPVC) you must check the energy efficiency rating. Each will be ranked from A-U, high efficiency to low efficiency respectively. Ideally, you want to be looking for a door above a ‘C’ rating.

2. Composite Doors Are Attractive

Available in a fantastically wide range of colours and styles, your new composite door is sure to benefit your curb appeal and make the whole of your property look much better!

First impressions, as it were, really do help to make a house look great!

Benefits of composite doors

3. Durable And Secure

Another of the benefits of composite doors is that they are incredibly durable, strong, and secure.

They are weather-resistant, and brush off most UK weather like it’s nothing! As well as being resistant to adverse weather, it would take a lot of force to do lasting damage to a composite door. This helps to make them more secure against intruders.

In addition to their durability, composite doors also feature individual cylinder locks, making them impossible for anyone to drill or pick through it – these doors really are great at keeping you, your family, and your home safe!

Benefits Of Composite Doors – Summary

Composite doors are a great replacement for your old, battered front door. They boast many useful benefits, and can make the front of your house look smart, homely, and spectacular!

If you’re interested in getting a composite door for your home, then contact us today to get a quote!

Solving Climate Change With Solar Panels

Solving climate change with solar panels means taking a leap towards a greener, cleaner future. Renewable sources of energy are the best way to put a stop to climate change, and one of the best renewable energy sources is solar power.

Solar panels can help to reduce the effects of climate change, as well as provide many benefits directly to you. The energy produced from solar panels is deemed ‘green energy’. This is because it is renewable (seeing as it comes from the sun) and does not release a tirade of harmful when burned.

The electrical energy that comes from the National Grid is largely procured from what is known as fossil fuels. These fuels are non-renewable sources of energy, and, while they provide a lot of energy, they release greenhouse gasses (such as harmful CO2). With solar panels, and solar energy, you do not get these gasses. Homeowners and businesses can use solar panels to decrease their reliance on the National Grid, and help themselves to save money on their bills at the same time!

What Is Climate Change?

Climate Change is defined by NASA as:

“Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates. These changes have a broad range of observed effects that are synonymous with the term.”

– NASA, Overview: Weather, Global Warming and Climate Change (https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming-vs-climate-change/)

This means the overall changes to a place’s weather or climate, not just unexpected freak weather.

Climate Change

The idea is that solving climate change with solar power would reduce the negative effects caused by greenhouse gasses and non-renewable energy sources.

What Can Solar Panels Do For You?

Aside from the environmental benefits to solar panels, there are a number of different benefits that directly affect you, as the homeowner.

Solar panels can reduce the amount that you have to take from the National Grid, meaning that your energy bills will be reduced!

They are also an incredibly pollutant-free way of powering your home. Chemically and noise. Other electrical energy sources can be loud, which is not ideal for home life.

If you would like a quote for solar panels, and do your bit to help the planet, then get in touch today!

Open Plan living design

Ways to make your house more open planned

While many of us dream of having an expansive, LA-style open planned home, very few of us have the budget for one. Sometimes our nine-to-fives don’t cover quite enough of the mortgage for a home that sprawls across multiple acres.

Instead, there are a few tricks we can deploy to make our homes feel much bigger and much more capable of resembling the party pad of our dreams.

These techniques involve the clever use of double glazed doors to create an illusion that will open out the back of your home into the great outdoors.

Bi-fold doors

At the moment, these are the absolute royalty of patio doors. The reason for this is they act as a glass wall that sits between your home and the outside world. The door opens out using a concertina effect, which removes the need for endless panelling and door handles.

Open Plan style Bi-Fold Doors

You may have even seen these on popular design programmes. They are used to blur the distinction between outdoors and indoors in the warmer months as they can be easily unlocked and pushed to the side.

This is ideal if you are aiming to create more social, open planned living space in your home. In the warmer months, you can virtually extend your property by seamlessly opening out onto the patio. 

Patio doors

One of the best ways to add space to your home is to create a gateway to the outdoors. This can be done by the simple addition of traditional patio doors. The first style that often comes to mind for many is French patio doors.

These have two panels that open out by simultaneously pulling the two handles. Even adding these to a dining room or kitchen will have a more dramatic effect than just a single opening door.

Choosing French doors with glass panels will instantly flood in extra light and provide you with an amazing view of the outside. They are also said to be a great match for older, period homes.

If bi-fold doors are a little out of your budget, but you still want the effect of large panes of glass opening out into the garden, then sliding doors could be a much more cost-effective, but equally clever design feature.

You can leave sliding doors slightly ajar if you want more fresh air circulating in your house, or you can slide them completely open to give a clear walkway from your home onto your patio area outside. 

A cost-effective solution that provides many benefits 

Choosing a uPVC version of either French or sliding doors is a very cost-effective way of making your home more open plan. It’s worth noting too, that if you want particularly big panes of glass, you will want to opt for an aluminium frame.

Patio doors are one of the easiest ways to add space and light to your property without having to shell out for an extension. If you feel one or more of your rooms at the back of your house are feeling a little bit claustrophobic, then patio doors will add an instant dimension of openness that won’t require your home to be a complete building site. 

DIY Project

Pro DIY ideas for your home

DIY Project

A bit like painting or learning to play a musical instrument, many people feel as if ‘do it yourself’ is a category that some people are simply born at being good or not good at. However, this is not always the case. By starting with small and simple projects, you can help to grow your confidence and move onto much more complex, demanding tasks. Here are a few DIY projects to try out, with varying levels of difficulty.

Reclaimed wood caddies

If you are eco-minded, then reclaimed wood could be a great resource for you. You can find it at scrap and lumber yards, or alternatively, you could even put something you already have to use. If you did woodwork at school, this will bring back memories, as this will require you to draw out shapes, saw out those pieces and bond them together either using wood glue or if you’re feeling confident, nails. Once you’ve done this once, you’ll find it easier to repeat time and time again.

Reupholster an old chair

This DIY trick is surprisingly easy; just have some self-belief! All this project entails is detaching the seat padding, removing staples and replacing both the fabric and padding. This may require you to buy new padding, new fabric, and a staple gun. Once you’ve purchased all of these components, it’s just a process of assembly – measuring out fabric and staple-gunning it really doesn’t require a tailor’s knowledge. Just be extremely careful when handling the staple gun – take your time.

A custom headboard

Custom bedroom headboard

Once you’ve got confident cutting out wood and bonding it, you may wish to move on to a more advanced project. A custom bed headboard is a great way to put your new skills to the test. This project will require you to cut out a piece of plywood to the right size and shape of your bed, and so you will need space to saw through the wood safely. A nifty little way to decorate your headboard is to use rubber foot mats to create a custom relief shape: paint them and nail them to the plywood and no one will ever know they were sold separately.

Cover an old frame with fabric

If you have a large, feature mirror hanging in one of your rooms, and feel as if the wood has seen better years, you actually have a few options to play with (and the same goes for artwork frames). You can sand and re-paint the wood, re-varnish it, or even upholster it with fabric. This will require you to carefully measure and glue the fabric onto the wood (doing this hastily will result in creases and air-bubbles) but otherwise, the skill need to do this is incredibly low.

If you’re planning on trying your hand at some DIY this year then don’t be intimidated. By starting on small-scale projects, you can build up your ability. For example, cutting out wood for a small accessory could give you the skills to build a bed frame or even pieces of furniture.