Protect Your Home
Home Maintenance
You’ve worked hard and saved to buy your home, and caring for your home, whether it’s new or not, is important. While your new home won’t need nearly as much maintenance as an older home, there are things you should do throughout the year to maintain your home and grow its value. These resources will help you know what to do throughout each year to protect your investment. Your home maintenance resource center includes home maintenance checklists, how-to videos and other helpful tips and tricks to give you the tools you need to maintain an efficient and happy home!
As the months turn from fall to winter, it’s important that you’re conducting a few important home maintenance items, to ensure your home is ready for the cold weather to come. In this video, our team covers several tips and tricks for what you should do during this time, including checking/reigniting your water heater, how to change your air filters, setting your thermostat, and installing vent and hose bib covers to ensure your pipes are protected.
We are joined by our landscaping partner, JB Instant Lawn, in Eugene, Oregon to discuss some important lawn care maintenance and tips. Including preventative measures you can take to ensure your lawn isn’t damaged by pests, like the Crane fly larva, that can take over and ruin much of your lawn. In this video, we discuss important fertilization methods and timing to ensure your lawn stays as health as possible. For other great lawn care tips, visit the JB Instant Lawn Blog with a 2021 Fertilization Schedule.
We’ve all messed up hanging a picture frame and ended up needing to patch a few small holes… this is likely one of the most common drywall repairs you may encounter. In this video, we’ll cover the tools and steps to fix a nail hole in your home’s drywall. The steps are fairly simple and in this video, we’ll show you how to take care of it like a pro.
A dent may seem like a small thing, but it may bother you each time you see it when the light hits it just right. In this video, we cover the tools and steps for repairing a minor dent in your home’s drywall. The steps are fairly simple and in this video, we’ll show you how to take care of it like a pro.
In this video, we cover the tools and steps to take to repair a small hole in your home’s drywall. The second video takes you through the steps to fix a smaller hole, which includes applying the spackle, sanding the area, and spraying the wall with wall texture to ensure you don’t notice the area in the future.
In this video, we cover the tools and steps to take to patch and repair a hole in your home’s drywall. The first video takes you through the steps to fix a larger hole, which includes sanding the wall, placing the patch, applying spackle, and spraying the wall with wall texture to ensure you don’t notice the area in the future.
In this video, we cover the tools and simple steps you can take to remove and replace the grout caulking in any location in your new home. Our home care experts recommend that you go around your home every six months and take a look at any area that has grout to see if it needs to be replaced. The most common areas where you may noticed cracking include, on exterior walls in the bathroom, behind your kitchen sink as well as showers. If you notice that you need to fix the grout, watch this video and we’ll show you a simple technique to make it look like it was done by a pro!
As your new home shifts and settles, one common occurrence is the hinges on your doors may begin to squeak. This can be frustrating when it happens every time you open and shut the door. In this video, Chris Hecker, provides two simple and effective ways that you can do anytime to help prevent or stop the doors in your home from squeaking! Watch the video to learn more.
Preparing your home’s landscaping during the spring, in preparation for the warm summer months is important for green-lush landscaping. In this video we show you how to turn your sprinkler system ON (de-winterizing) so you can get your Rain Bird irrigation system scheduled.
This simple “How To” video shows you how to check and change several important appliance filters located in your kitchen! Once a month, we recommend not only checking, but cleaning and/or changing your fridge filter, dishwasher filter and stove’s grease filter (located under your microwave). Watch this video for how to do all three.
In this short how-to video, you will be guided through a step-by-step process on how to adjust a 3-way hinge, to straighten out your cabinet door fronts (or face). Having a small amount of flex is natural, as our doors are an all-wood, natural product. With a 3-way hinge you are able to adjust the doors to put them back into proper alignment. On the hinge, one screw will change the depth, which moves the door in or out from the cabinet face; one screw will change the rack, which allows for a side-to-side adjustment; and one screw seats the hinge to the frame, that allows you to change the elevation of the door front. Watch this video to walk through how to make these adjustments.
In this quick 90 second video, we guide you through the process of removing slider windows to clean the window and tracks.
Pro Tip: We recommend using Pledge to clean the tracks. In addition, we recommend that you avoid any petroleum based products, as they can stain the tracks and are more likely to collect dust.
Follow along the rest of the process to remove your slider window and re-install it once it’s clean.
As a Hayden Homeowner you can have the peace of mind that we will partner with brand products that are included in every new Hayden Home. Kwikset SmartKey is one of those products. In this short video, we guide you through a step-by-step process on how to set your SmartKey re-key technology in 30 seconds. To learn more about Kwikset and their products visit their website here.
Changing your air filters is an important part of keeping your home happy and running efficiently. Energy Star suggests changing your HVAC furnace filter once a month, especially during the winter and summer months, when your HVAC unit is most commonly used. At a maximum, you should not let more than three months go by without swapping out the dirty one for a clean one. In this home maintenance how-to video we show you how to change your home’s HVAC air filter.
One question we get asked frequently is, “how do I know when it’s time to change my HVAC air filter?” In this video, we dive into the top two ways that you can tell if it’s time to change your home’s air filter, if not just the frequency of time. The two indicators could be sound and temperature. Watch our explanation in this short how-to video.
Regularly checking the batteries on your smoke detector is a must. Most of all for safety, but it’s also going to prevent you from having the annoying chirping sound coming from your smoke detector when the batter gets low. Here, we show you how to do this.
Most smoke detectors run on AC power with a battery back-up. The battery on most models is located on the back of the smoke detector. So you’ll need to remove it from the ceiling to get access. To remove the detector from the mount it’s typically as simple as twisting it counter clockwise. However, some models do require you to unplug the AC Power first. We recommend you test your smoke detectors every so often, to make sure it’s still working, and to change the battery twice a year.
Pro Tip: A good reminder of when to do this, is to do it when you set your clocks for Daylights Savings Time.
Each fall when you start to see frost on the roofs and snow in the mountains, it’s time to blow out your sprinkler system. We recommend having this done around Halloween weekend, near the end of October. In this video, we cover the steps on how to blow out your sprinkler system in order to prepare your home for the coming winter months.
Pro Tip: We recommend reaching out to a local professional landscaping company, to complete this process, if you’re uncertain if you have the right tools.
