Toronto, ON

Gingerbread House Build!

This weekend (December 5th and 6th) Habitat for Humanity Toronto is hosting a gingerbread house build to help give Toronto families a Hand Up, not a Hand Out.

You can purchase a kit on the Toronto Habitat for Humanity website. These kits can either be picked up for you to enjoy at home, or you can book a time to decorate at the Delta Chelsea Hotel. If you don't have time to decoate one yourself, why not look into their eBay auction of Celebrity Gingerbread Homes.

Habitat for Humanity is a cause we at casaGURU strongly support. Through casaGURU Cares, with every free registration to casaGURU.com, we make a donation to the closest Habitat for Humanity affiliate. Plus, I'll be out doing my part by decorating some gingerbread this weekend :)

As featured on Canada AM, download your free copy of the "Home Seller's Guide: Energy Efficient Upgrades that Pay".

It is filled with tips from energy, renovation and real estate gurus you can find on casaGURU.com plus lots of money saving rebates for Winter Home Maintenance and Energy Efficient Upgrades.

Click to Download (PDF)

This caught my eye recently about a Realtor's plight in being banned from a number of local publications and boards for his "creative and descriptive" use of the English language.

Jules Bending of the Real Ralph Bending, an estate agent in Glastonbury, has been banned from advertising in a local paper and taken down from property websites Rightmove and Primelocation.comfor an unconventional approach to marketing properties. Here are some examples of his style:

• "Lease available for what can only be described as a prime piece of retail crumpet."

• "Three bedroom former school house with everything except the randy old teacher and fag butts down the loo."

• "Cheap but not particularly cheerful ground floor apartment."

• "Characterful as a vegetarian's fart, this Victorian beauty hums to the rhythm of a well soaked mung bean."

It may not be to everyone's taste and there's a touch of innuendo, but how offensive is it? It's not obscene, racist or classist; it doesn't attack people with disabilities. And none of it contravenes the Property Misdescriptions Act - claiming a tenant could "stare out of the window at Morrisons superstore in sheer delight" is a matter of fact. Well, maybe not the delight part.

Rightmove says Bending's listings on its site were removed after "public complaints", although it's a bit confused over the nature and number of them, as well as what sort of appeal Bending was offered against the decision. Of course, these "members of the public" could be rival estate agents. Whoever they are, should they have the right to ban slightly colourful language in a world where bland is the norm?

Whether they are offensive or not is not for me to decide. They have their own council and standards. The point that strikes me is that a REALTOR's purpose is to fill your housing need. This does include getting your property noticed. Has this realtor been effective? Absolutely. Impact advertising does get noticed on Google. You can search for yourselves or click here.

Its not the common place event that gets you noticed; Remember Talk is cheap.
If you would like some help getting noticed Give me a call.

In cooperation with Lastdetail.ca, professional Home Staging Toronto company, we prepared another article about wooden furniture. This time we are going to desribe differences between hardwood and softwood furniture.

When it comes to wooden furniture, all of you are aware there are different types. But if you believe the hardness is the feature which distinguishes them, you are inaccurate. I believe most of you will suspect its slightly more complicated than that.

The names hardwood/softwood probably come from logging camps, where it used to be given to wood types dependent on their resistance to sawing. Balsa wood, although very soft, is categorized as a hardwood, this is an oddity rather than the rule.¨

The real variation is based on the reproduction of the trees. Angiosperm seeds, which are seeds with a shell or marrow cover create hardwood trees, whilst gymnosperm seeds, which have no covering, create softwood trees. Trees that are evergreen, they preserve their needles/leaves all through the year, are softwood, they also grow much faster than their hardwood counterparts. More than 80% of the world's timber generation comes from softwood trees, even though there many more variations of hardwood trees grown. Mahogany, walnut and ash are the typical trees thought of with hardwoods, while cedar, redwood and yew are the trees usally associated with softwoods.

Differences in the trees can be viewed in their microscopic structures. Softwood lacks the pores which enable water carriage in hardwoods. The dissimilarities between grade in both hardwoods and softwoods counts on this. Hardwood furniture is usually acknowledged to be of higher grade than softwood furniture. Its surface is more scratch repellent and since the furniture is weighty, it is solid and therefore lasts longer. Furniture made of hardwood is also more visually attractive due to its elaborate cell structure, which formulates various patterns on the surface and which are not as visible on softwood furniture.

Softwood does have benefits even with some of the negatives. Caring for the environment is important; as softwood trees grow faster forest reproduction is quicker. The majority of casual furniture is made of softwood due to this and the fact that the wood is more straightforward to prepare, which means the cost is kept down.

Softwood furniture requires greater care compared to hardwood due to the higher possibility of receiving scratches and structural damage during every day use. On the other hand, with some looking after, hardwood furniture can last for centuries. Did you think, that the seats in your church may have been there for hundreds of years - your great, great grandfather may have sat in the same spot as you.

Humidity is a wood's enemy, causing severe damage. altering humidity can led to swelling, shrinkage and damage in porous hardwood. This lead us to write an article, which will be published soon, about the correct care of wooden furniture, so it lasts as long as possible and still looks good.